Christopher McKay – Life beyond the Earth

So that’s my job in a sense: search other worlds for alien life.

So when I’m on a long plane flight, like coming over here, and the guy sitting next to me says: “So what do you do?”. Chatty fellow. I say: “Well I search other worlds for alien life.”. And then, he leaves me alone for the rest of the flight, I can get some sleep. It’s a great job description, I like it.

This excerpt is part of the introduction of the following lecture by NASA scientist Dr. Christopher McKay, on the search of life beyond Earth. He talks about Mars exploration, a potential mission to Enceladus, the challenges of field research in such environment, how to detect life (without accidentally destroying it in the attempt), how to avoid contamination and what would be some practical consequences to finding life. It’s a great insight into the current state of the field, delivered with an entertaining tone.

Molecular Visualizations of DNA

This post is a topic a bit different from the usual on this blog, but I thought the following video to be really worth sharing. Made back in 2003, it was featured on the Astronomy Picture of the Day yesterday (if you want your daily delivery of stunning pictures, just subscribe to their feed) and shows a visualization of the DNA, including the incredible replication process.