With so much attention given to one problematic study this week, astrobiology is getting an awful lot of attention–and probably not the sort that astrobiologists would like. If you want to broaden your view of this intriguing area of research, get thee to Itunes! Lynn Rothschild teaches a class on astrobiology at Stanford, and the winter 2010 edition of the course is available FOR FREE on Itunes. (I just started watching a couple classes and then decided to download the whole thing.) Also, check out the snazzy class web site for more on the study of life in the universe.

Originally published December 9, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

I just appeared this morning on the Madeleine Brand Show on KPCC in California to talk about arsenic life. Check it out.

Originally published December 9, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

Ed Yong has written a great post on a new paper on how blue whales snarf up half a million calories in every gulp. The paper is the latest in a series put out by Jeremy Goldbogen of Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his colleagues. If you want to dig back into the earlier research, check out my 2007 New York Times article and this Loom post on how a physicist who studies parachutes helped solve the mystery of big gulps.

Originally published December 9, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.

A lot of people are interested in my Slate story yesterday on the arsenic aliens. It’s still the most-read story of the site at the moment, Slashdot and others have linked to it, and I’m doing some more radio and maybe other media (details to come).

Continue reading “Of arsenic and aliens: What the critics said” →