Life everywhere

The cosmos is teeming with complex organic molecules, the building block of carbon-based life.

Everywhere we look, space seems to teem with biology’s raw materials. Saturn’s moon Titan has lakes of liquid methane and ethane that are made of organic molecules, as are its hydrocarbon sand dunes. Organic molecules called tholins are probably responsible for Pluto’s reddish blush. Veritable zoos of extraterrestrial organics are found in meteorites. Organic dust drifts between the stars and rains down on Saturn from its rings.

It remains one of the great mysteries, how did life start on Earth.

The “PAH world” hypothesis, for instance, posits a stage of the primordial soup that was dominated by polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Out of this slurry the first genetic molecules emerged.

This is the subject of so many great science fiction works. It could be a super-intelligent alien species. Or is it just pure chance, that life happened here? We don't know yet. But organic compounds exist in abundance in the extremes of the cosmos. It is not a big stretch to imagine that something similar could have happened on other planets in this universe.

The second piece I read, which goes nicely with this is about what happens to the natural world when people disappear.

But scientists continue to find evidence that the old idea of humans as antithetical to nature is also wrong-headed, and that rosy visions of thriving, human-free environments are more imaginary than real. “People are still imagining nature as this kind of pristine place that’s going to be saved from people,” says US environmental scientist Erle Ellis. “That is definitely a misunderstanding.”

There is this assumption that humans are the problem. One surprising insight in the article was that that is not necessarily the case. Diversity is important, in nature, and in human societies. Previously, mammoths, bisons, etc. roamed the land and caused this great diversity. Now, humans remain one of the only species which can cause this change. Otherwise, monocultures are much more likely to form in spaces devoid of people.