Blogs / The Loom

Earlier this summer my cover story on the meaning of life (or, at least, “life”) came out in the July/August issue of Seed. Now, at long last, the Seedsters have posted the story online. Read it here.

Today is a day for short updates, rather than deep essays. Update number 1: if you’re interested in going to Mars, check out this podcast from Popular Mechanics in which I discuss the challenges astronauts would face living and working on Mars. The magazine will be running a series of articles on the future space travel, including one by me on the Red Planet. (NB: contrary to how PM introduces me, I am not officially “New York Times astrobiology reporter.” The Times just lets me write about life elsewhere when a cool story arises.)

Over the past few years, more and more scientists have been talking about the possibility that life exists, or can theoretically exist, in exotic forms that lack DNA, or perhaps even carbon or water. I’ve been keeping up with the conversation, and writing articles about it in the New York Times, Discover, Popular Mechanics, and, most recently, in Seed.

Today I report in the New York Times that a panel of scientists arranged by the National Academies of Sciences has issued the first official weird life report. They’re calling for a more aggressive search for strange forms of life. You can read the report for yourself here. It’s very interesting. You could organize a whole year’s worth of high school science around it, chapter by chapter. Aliens 101, call it.

Galileo discovered Saturn’s rings, but called them ears. If only he could see what Cassini sees.

Cue kettledrums…

I’ll admit, I was a bit surprised when Popular Mechanics got in touch with me a while back about writing a story about aliens. I had always associated the magazine with people who knew how to take their car apart down to the last bolt and put it back together again. (Me, I gush with pride if I can change a wiper blade.) But they’ve actually been making a big push into science reporting, and they wanted me to look into what scientists are learning about life on other planets. I ended up focusing specifically on how life on Earth (and in labs) can guide the search for aliens. That’s an angle I’ve been interested in for some time now, and has led to stories in Smithsonian and Discover. With moons spouting ice and other surprises in recent months, it was tricky to keep the story up to date, but I’m proud of the results, which are in the September cover story. You can get the text and some of the images online here. And if that doesn’t satisfy you, you can also learn how to build a shed.