Slate asked me to take a look at the scientific reactions emerging to last week’s big news about arsenic-based life. I got in touch with a dozen experts, and let’s just say, the results weren’t pretty. Check it out.
Originally published December 7, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
Slate, December 7, 2010
On Thursday, Dec. 2, Rosie Redfield sat down to read a new paper called “A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus.” Despite its innocuous title, the paper had great ambitions. Every living thing that scientists have ever studied uses phosphorus to build the backbone of its DNA. In the new paper, NASA-funded scientists described a microbe that could use arsenic instead. If the authors of the paper were right, we would have to expand our notions of what forms life can take.
Redfield, a microbiology professor at the University of British Columbia, had been hearing rumors about the papers for days beforehand.
Continue reading ““This Paper Should Not Have Been Published””
Rumors have been swirling this week about a press conference NASA is starting right now. Some people have speculated that they’re going to announce evidence for life on another planet.
Well, not quite. Scientists have found a form of life that they claim bends the rules for life as we know it. But they didn’t need to go to another planet to find it. They just had to go to California.
On my latest podcast, I explore the invisible ocean of life through which we swim every day: the air. I talk to Jessica Green of the University of Oregon about life in the clouds, in our houses, and everywhere in between. Gee-whiz science at its finest. Check it out.
Originally published November 29, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.
Recently I paid a visit to a place where the world’s most mysterious viruses go to find a name. The result was my profile of Ian Lipkin of Columbia University for tomorrow’s New York Times. I first started thinking about this story when I heard Lipkin give a lecture about his work identifying unknown viruses this spring. And when I read this review of Lipkin’s, entitled simply, “Microbe Hunting,” I knew it was time to get cracking.
One thing I didn’t have room for is the fact that Lipkin has gone all Hollywood. By which I mean that he’s helping Steven Soderbergh on a new movie on a virus outbreak called Contagion, starring Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, and other big stars. Lipkin seems pretty stoked about the movie, which is slated for 2011, so I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for it.
Originally published November 22, 2010. Copyright 2010 Carl Zimmer.