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The Shadow Biosphere: Is There Other Life on Earth? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: And we're doing it together, doing it, doing it. We're
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: just doing it together, and this is stuff you should know.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: That's right. I have the rainy day blues, you guys,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: but we're doing it anyway.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: We're doing it together.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: The rain shouldn't stop an indoor podcast, right, No.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: But I'm with it. It's been raining too much lately
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: and it can get to you after a while.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, I'll persevere. The sun is shining in
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: my head.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Oh that's very pleasant.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: It's not true, but it's a nice thing to say.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, So that reminds me of that. I remember when
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Pebbles and Bambam on Flintstones had like a brief singing career.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wasn't.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: It like, let's the sunshine in? Or there is something
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: there hit single head to do with sunshine?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Well? I remember let the sunshine in? But was that
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the Brady bunch? Was that Pebbles and Bam Bam you
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: let the sunshine in? Something something with the grin.
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  Speaker 2: I don't think it was either of them, not even
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: the Brady Bunch though. Well, at any rate, it just
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: reminded me of Pebbles and Bambam, so that did my
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: heart good too.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Alrighty, So can I just briefly say what we're talking
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: about so people don't think this is about the fund Stones? Yeah,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: although that'd be a fun episode.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Actually, I agree, I think that is a future episode.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Good idea, all right.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: The shadow biosphere, which is to say, this notion, this
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: theoretical notion that perhaps, if you know, we're constantly looking
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: for life on other planets and it has been positive,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: well what if there if that life exists here on Earth,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: but it just doesn't look at all, and it's not
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: made up of all the things that make up life
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: as we know it here on Earth, and so we're
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: just either looking in the wrong places or not recognizing
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: it as something that's alive, or both. And that's the
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: shadow biosphere, this idea. It's pretty cool.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is pretty cool. I mean. One of the
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: big problems that you run into when you're talking about
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: a shadows biosphere or plotting to look for other forms
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: of life that just don't conform to what we think
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: of as life as we know it. The big problem
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: is is we don't really have a working definition of
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: life as life as we know it, like us, microbes, birds, like,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: there's not a real definition that covers all of them,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: and there is one that scientists have agreed to generally
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: settle on. But if people who are into the shadow biosphere,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: which is to say, usually a combination of astrobiologists and microbiologists,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: it's where they're two feel overlap in a ven diagram,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: that's where the shadow biosphere lives, they will say like,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: this is holy inadequate, Like there are we need to
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: broaden the horizons or else we're never going to detect
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: anything that's not living.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'll tell you what, my friend, I hope
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: one day during the life of the show, we do
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: find life on other planets that significant, so you will
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: stop doing articles about it.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Well, this is so yeah, okay, fair, fair, This is
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: a pursuit of astrobiology. But the thing that I find
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: the most fascinating is where microbiology comes in. And they're saying, yeah,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: this would help us find or look for life off
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: of Earth. Yeah, but it'll also help us find life
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: on Earth. Like the idea that we share a planet
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: with other trees of life that aren't related to us
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: in any way, shape or form other than we we
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: share the planet and they function in ways similar that
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: life as we know it functions, but we're not related.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's neat.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: I think it's totally neat. And here's the other thing too,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: is if, and this is a pretty important note, if
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: we do find something here on life on Earth that
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: is like a shadow life form of some sort, we're
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: probably talking about microbes. Just so people don't get super
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: excited about the idea of chuds being a real thing.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: That's not a real thing. We're not going to We're
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: not going to go deep down enough to find any
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers sadly. So what we're talking about
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: here microbes, and what we're talking about is this idea
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: put forth by a very smart woman named Carol Cleland
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: from the University of Colorado Go buffaloes. And I think
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the way she came about it was like you hear
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: about like she came about it. Honestly, I think this
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: is like one of those times because she was in Spain,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: she was observing some molecular biologists. They were looking for
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: soil mic and microorganisms looking through these samples and she
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, they went see, and she said, how
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: do you know, like that you found something new, like
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a new microbe And they said, well, and I'm not
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: going to say this in Spanish because I didn't translate
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: at all. I just know what yes is. See, but
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: they said, well, what we do is we look until
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: we find something that looks like it might hold some promise.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Then we you know, we've looked at it under a microscope.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Then we put it in a Petri dish and just
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: grow the heck out of it and then isolate its
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: DNA and then look at the genome and see, like, hey,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: what does this look like? And then she went, oh,
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: that's kind of cool, but I have another question. It's
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: kind of like Tom Hanks and Big like.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: They get still here.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: She said, well, what if it's not related to life
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: on earth? Like, how would you even know? You're like,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: how to recognize something as being alive? And they all
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: shrugged and she wrote a book about it.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: Oh see, I imagine them all for and one of
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: them just drops the Petrie dish without they just drop
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: like they can't believe what they've just heard. They're stunned.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and COVID.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: So so, Carol Cleveland makes a really excellent point. And
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: like you said, this kicked off the idea of shadow biospheres,
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: and in fact she coined that term. But what she's
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: saying is that our process of looking for life would
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: just walk right past anything that doesn't conform to our
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: understanding of life. But that still is living in a
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: certain definition of things.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Nailed it.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So just to kind of step back for a second,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: there there is a some there's a consensus among scientists
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: that life conforms to a few rules. This is the
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: the generally agreed upon definition of life. It's carbon based.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Anything else is non living. You know, you look at
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: a piece of courts it's from silicon, I think not living.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Great example thinks it's programmed by DNA and RNA. Right,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: so it has transcription of its genetic code, and that
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: is just it does not live without that. Those things
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: are built by amino acids and proteins. Those are the
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: basic building blocks of the organism. It's self replicating very important.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: And then it also evolves according to Darwinian principles, which
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: is to say that the best properties and traits are
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: selected for over time. So if you put all those
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: things together, you have a pretty good idea about life.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: But again, this is a really narrow definition, and if
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: you really kind of look at it, you're like, this
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: is there's a lot of room for other things to
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: function in a manner that's living that doesn't necessarily use
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: DNA or RNA, that doesn't use amino acids or at
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: the very least the amino acids that we use, and
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: it might not even be carbon based. Like maybe we
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: can broaden this a little bit, and that's the pursuit
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: of shadow biosphere.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Carol Cleland was right in the money said
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: she wrote a book. It's really a paper, but you know,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: she could bind it like a book, probably sell it
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: in a store, sure, But it was called the Possibility
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of Alternative Alternative Microbial Life on Earth. We're also going to,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you know, talk a little bit about looking on other planets,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: because we've talked a lot about that and suffice to say,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: when we're looking for life on other planets where you know,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: we're always looking for like an earth like place where
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: something like life as we know it could exist kind
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: of in the same way. But she was like, this
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: stuff might be right under our noses, everybody right, And
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: here's a paper about it, and I think it was
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: pretty smart paper. There was a should we talk about
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: the central dogma?
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: I guess yeah, I think we need to.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know, you went over what life on
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Earth contained, but the central dogma is a little more specific.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: It was first proposed by Francis Crick in the nineteen fifties.
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  Speaker 1: That is that DNA, the nucleic acid that we know
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: and love, has instructions for building all the proteins that
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: are required for something to be alive. You also have RNA,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: which copies those instructions to take them to the ribosomes,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: which also exists. Because that reads that RNA and assembles everything,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: all those amino acids to make each protein, and bada
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: bing bada boom, you have life.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Right, And so you take that process and you end
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: up with what's called the origin of life, the genesis
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: of life here on Earth.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Genesis.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: We've talked about that. That's the scientific way of.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Saying, well, okay, we go put on my lab coat.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: We've talked about this before multiple times. Remember we did
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: an episode on panspermia. We've done a bunch of episodes
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: that I think this primordial soup came up. And that's
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: the whole idea that either in some shallow tidal pool
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: or you know, some warm part of the ocean or
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: some body of water, there was a bunch of those
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: basic building blocks of life, amino acids, proteins floating around
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: and that somehow a self replicating process got kickstarted. And
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: the self replicating process is considered what's called a privileged function,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: This idea that this mechanism for creating life was present
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: at the outset and is still around today, so we
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: self replicate. A couple others were metabolism, that's another suggestion
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: for the privileged function that kickstarted life. Or then compartmentalization
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: like having something to hold all of these processes in
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: like a bag of guts. Basically, so one of those
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: they say is what was responsible for kickstarting this process
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: of life, and that somehow, some a bunch of chemical
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: reactions started a chain reaction that became self sustaining that
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: eventually turned into increasingly complex processes, organelles, and eventually living organisms.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: That's how life developed. That's the idea behind the primordial
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: soup that the central dogmas based on that's right.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: But in Cleveland's paper, she was like, well, hold on
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a second, that's great, what a story. We love it,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: we all believe it. But what if this happened like
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: more than one time. What if it happened multiple times
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: right here on Earth there were just different conditions in
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: different places, different chemicals came together. And what if that
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: happened and these are the shadow microbes? And what if
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: this stuff is still there? And the reason that we
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: haven't found it is because we're looking for again for
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: life that we understand as being alive and the ramifications
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: that would have not only to find stuff like that
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: here on Earth, but you know this idea that when
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: we go out and look in outer space for life
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: on other planets again we're looking for earthlike, you know,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: atmospheres and Earth like conditions. She was like, well, what
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: if we're looking on the entirely wrong planets. There could
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: be stuff that's alive because we're just not looking in
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: the right places because we have such a narrow definition.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and we definitely have found increasingly extremophile organisms, like
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: for a long time we thought that organisms couldn't survive
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: past one hundred and twenty something degrees farenheight. Then we
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: found some extremophiles that can survive around hydro thermal events
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: that are as hot as two hundred and twelve degrees farentheight. Like, okay,
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: that's pretty awesome, but it's still life as we know it,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: you know, like they're crazy in their adaptation, but they
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: still function according to the properties of life as we
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: know it. What Carol Cleland and others are saying is like, Okay,
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: we'll keep looking in even more extreme and vironments and
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: eventually you may find something that has had to adapt
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: to such an extreme environment. It uses different processes or
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: different raw materials that life as we know it could
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: not possibly use. And there you have your first shadow
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: bio organism.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I think we should pick a great rest here. Rest.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: We'll be back everybody after this rest.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: And lo, the podcasters rested low and then on day
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: two they got on with the show. We should mention,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: by the way, we did a pretty good episode on extremophiles, yeah,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: a while back, So just if you haven't heard it,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: you should just look up on the search engine of
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: your choice extremophile so if you should know, pretty neat.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: But back to the shadow biosphere. You know, we mentioned
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: the fact that you know, Carol Cleveland's beating that drum, saying,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: what if it's not something that we recognize because we
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: just don't recognize it as life as we know it.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: And then she started digging in and she was like,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. DNA and RNA aren't the only building
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: blocks of life. In theory. They are made of base
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: pairs of nucleic acids. For DNA, it's a D nine
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: cyanine quinine, and thymine. For RNA it's thymine that is
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: swapped out for ucell. But there are other three are
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: the same, but there are more nucleic I believe there's
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: six more nucleic acids that exists exist in nature. So
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: you know, why are we not even considering the fact
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: that those could be a part of life in a
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: way that we don't fully understand.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Right, And first, ursill sounds like over the counter urinary
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: tract infection treatment totally does. Secondly, I could not, for
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: the life of me and I really looked find what
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: the other six nucleic acids are. I can't find it, Chuck.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: But in that search I did come across something called
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: the hatch emoji DNA, which is those four at, which
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: is always together in GC, which are always together to
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: form those base pair nucleotides that eventually build up into DNA.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: And they added p z B and.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: S and let's see them right.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Well, that's four, so there's still two many. But the
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: really interesting thing that they found is that if you take,
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: if you rearrange say the original four bay pairs, or
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: you add these other brand new four base pairs and
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: run them through a ribosome, the ribosome, if you arrange
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: it correctly, and they're made of nucleic acids, the ribosome
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: will be like, okay, I'm transcribing this, So it's entirely possible.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: They proved that it's possible that life could have evolved
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: separately from us by using different amino acids but similar mechanisms.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: So maybe we are or could be, in this sense
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: distantly related to them, like maybe in the primordial soup,
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: but it branched off so early that for all intents
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: and purposes, it's non living life as far as our
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: definition of life goes.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, nice job finding four of those six letters.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: At least, let's just call the other two FU.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Science.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's how DNA and RNA could be you know,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: different as we know it. The same thing is true
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: for amino acids. All the proteins are built from the
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: same combination of twenty amino acids, because when Earth formed,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: those were the twenty amino acids that, in a Darwinian sense,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: were most successful making proteins that survived when life emerged.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: There are five hundred we're not gonna name them, five
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: hundred other amino acids, or more than five hundred amino
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: acids on Earth. So yeah, totally. So it's just the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: fact that Earth started when it did that those particular
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: twenty amino acids were the ones that were good at
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: doing what needed to be done to make things that
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: survived here. But it could have been, you know, at
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: a different time. It could have been any other combination
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: of amino acids, and they're.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Still out there exactly. So a lot of scientists are like, well,
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: that just goes to show you that life as we
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: know it is the only kind of life. If we're
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: using the same twenty amino acids and there's all these
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: others out there, these are the ones that got selected
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: for These are the ones that worked in the primordial
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: soup and caroclelans forward again with her index finger raised
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: and says, Okay, I can see where you're coming from.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: But again, as I said before, if life emerged in
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: other places, in other situations, under other conditions, in the
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: primordial soup, it's entirely possible that completely different combinations of
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: the other kinds of amino acids were the most usable,
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: and we're selected for that. And again, this is how
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: the shadow of biosphere could have started. And another petri
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: dish got dropped. And these guys are starting to second
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: guess undermining Carol Cleland, or even attempting to because she
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: just keeps facing them over again.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're like, well, how would that have happened
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: or how could that happen? She said, I don't know.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: How about a meteor sucker because meteorites have fallen to
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the Earth and asteroids that basically plant stuff on Earth
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: that come from another place. There have been meteorites that
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: have fallen that are carrying up to eighty other amino acids.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: And her whole theory is it like, what if this
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: has happened, and maybe it's happened repeatedly, and again we
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: just don't know about it because we're not looking correctly, right.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, the panspermia episode that was the basis of it,
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: that Earth got seated with the necessary ingredients for life
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: from space. Right, that's right. So there's another peculiar aspect
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: of life as we know it that doesn't really make
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: sense to us, and I don't fully get how it
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: would tie into the shadow biosphere. So if you do,
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: let me know. But the best I can understand is
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: that because we don't know it, and because it's like
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: it just seems like a random, arbitrary development in life
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: as we know it, that it suggests things could go
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: the other way and maybe they have elsewhere on Earth.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Is that how you read it too?
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I think so. Okay, just like an example of like,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: see this can happen.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Right, Okay, good, That's what I'm taking as too. And
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: we're talking about chirality, and chiralness is handedness and Greek
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: you're either right handed or you're left handed, or you
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: could be ambidextrous. But that's neither hum nor there. When
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: we're talking about cellular biology or molecular science, which is
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: what this pertains to, and if you make a bunch
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: of sugars or a bunch of amino acids in the lab.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: Some are going to be left handed and some are
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: going to be right handed. But as far as life
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: on Earth is concerned, only left handed amino acids and
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: only right handed sugars can be useful as the building
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: blocks of life. So there's right handed amino acids and
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: left handed sugars, but they are completely useless to us
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: because all life on Earth only uses left handed amino
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: acids and only uses right handed sugars. And we just
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: don't know why.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and if this sounds like, all right, guys, what
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: are you talking about here with these hands, it's not hands,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: it's the direction that their atoms are oriented. Yeah, they
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: talk about it in terms of handedness. I think just
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: as a well, I hate to say it is a shorthand.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: So dumb humans like us can understand what they're talking
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: about at least halfway right.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: And so, because there's left handed and right handed amino acids,
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: they are mirror images of one another. They're constructed the
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: exact same way. They're constructed with the exact same components
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: to make up these molecules, but they are mirror images.
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: So if you overlay them, they're not twins mirror images.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: So in exactly the same way. If you hold your
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: hands out in front of you, palms down so the
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: tops up, and you just kind of hold one over
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: the other, they're not twins. They're mirror images of one another.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly true with amino acids and sugars. They
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: each have a mirror image. And again, only one kind
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: is useful to life. The other ones just get spit out.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: So what if, again, under different conditions, at some point
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: in the past, there were organisms that learned to use
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: the other kind left handed sugars and right handed amino acids,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: that would certainly qualify as a shadow biosphere bioorganism.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we have synthesized these in labs. But what's
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the deal. What I don't understand. If they were able
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: to synthesize it, that means that it did already exist,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: but it just isn't anything that was alive.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know exactly what they did. They built
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: a cell that uses right handed sumino acids. Yeah, yeah,
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: and they I don't know if it was living or not.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: I don't think it was living or else they would
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: be like we created artificial life here. I don't think
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: anyone's ever done that. I think they just created the
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: structure of it. Like if there if there was something
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: like a cell that use that kind of stuff, this
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: is what it would be structured as. The whole reason
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: they built it was to try to attract things like
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: chiro viruses that function using the opposite stuff that we
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: use for life. It was a honeytrap, is the way
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: that they put it.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Like they take it out to a club and set
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: it on a bar table and they're like, hello, everybody,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: exactly right.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: So nothing came along and took the bait, But that
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean it's not there. The better argument against things
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: like that living, if you asked me that I ran across,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: is that if you did have something like that that
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: could consume other things, it would have no natural predators.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: It would it would not be able to be infected
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: by any of the known viruses we have. It would
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: be unstoppable, and it would replicate in such an unchecked
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: manner that it would apocalyptically destroy the food web based
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: on whatever, you know, one microbe that it feasted on.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: And because that's not happen, and there's a pretty good
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: chance that there's no such thing as that.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess now we can talk a little bit
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: about the last universal common ancestor or the LUCA, which
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: is the idea that all life on Earth can be
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: traced back to this very first functioning cell that started
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: the whole party. If we believe in something like the
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: shadow biosphere, there can still be a last universal common ancestor,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: I think in terms of what created our life. But
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: we have to consider the fact that there were multiple
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: genesis that happened at a certain point and you know,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: maybe they just didn't evolve because you know, part of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: that opening four things that we talked about was that
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: things evolved in a sort of the Darwinian sense that
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: we recognize. But the idea of the shadows biospheres, maybe
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: these things did occur at various sort of calm periods
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: on Earth where there weren't you know, ice ages, or
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: it wasn't being bombarded by asteroids, and that there's still
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: they just never evolved. They're just sort of trapped.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one example. There's another explanation that they might
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: be in places we haven't explored yet, so like there
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: could be you know, life on the surface of Earth
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: and then we find microbes all the way down to
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: some you know level and it gets too hot for them,
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: and then it's a dead zone. Well maybe beyond the
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: dead zone there's these you know, shadow biosphere organisms. And
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: then another argument I saw against the idea. So a
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: lot of scientists are like, sure, it's entirely possible there
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: were different origins of life, but the other one sputtered out,
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: only ours continued on a lot of that's not a
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: very controversial idea. What's controversial is that it didn't sputter out,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: that they just evolved and we share Earth with them, right,
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: But a lot of the arguments against that state that, Okay,
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: well maybe it did make it beyond the sputtering stage,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: and it was you know, we shared the primordial soup
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: with it, but it got absorbed into us and now
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: it's a part of us, but you know, not really anymore.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: And that misses the point because what they're talking about
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: is lateral gene transfer, where like say one cell just
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: takes over another cell and they share DNA from that
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: point on. That's totally missing the point. Like that would
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: not be a shadow organism, it'd be an early additional
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: ancestor to us. This is stuff that we couldn't possibly have,
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: you know, mixed with to become us or else it
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: wouldn't be a shadow bio organism. It would just be
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: another component that created life as we know.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Would That's right, And lateral gene transfer was totally an
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: a cappella skiking group from the seventies, a gospel group, oh,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: led by a guy named Gene Nice.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Nice.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've got the record. It's not even a joke.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Are you kidding? You're not kidding? Ah, wow, you did
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: get me. That was finally, Well, we're pretty wacky, so.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Oh goodness. It is a meal, best serve cold.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Do you do you want to take a break and
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: savor that for a little while.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, sure, let's go ahead and take a break.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take another nap and dream about getting
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Josh and then we'll be right.
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: Back, all right, Chuck. So we said that, or I
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: should say, you said at the outset that nobody's looking
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: for you know, some silicon were wolf or something so great.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: So instead there were we're looking for my crubs. And
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: the reason that everybody agrees if there is a shadow
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: by its microbial life is a couple of reasons. One
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: we could look at a microbe and look right past it.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: They don't have faces, they don't have tails, they don't
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: have hair, they don't really have any features that would
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: really stand out just visually. We have to really examine
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: them to find the differences that we would be looking for.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: And then on top of that, we've only cultured and
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: described less than one percent of all of the estimated
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: species of microbes on Earth, right so we have very
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: little understanding in the big picture of the microbial life
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: we share Earth with. So it's entirely possible we just
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: haven't stumbled upon one yet. But that doesn't mean it's
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: not there in that other ninety nine percent of the
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: kinds of microbes on Earth with us right.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, for sure. And you know we've kind of
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: walked around this very plain statement. But the plain statement
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: is look where we think or look where we so
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: far think that nothing here can live, because that might
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: be a great place to start, you know, if we're like,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: nothing can live in the dead sea micro organisms, because
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: it's just it's so full of saline that we just
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: know nothing could live, Like, well, maybe start there, or
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier the fact that things we didn't think
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: anything could sustain life greater than like one hundred and
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: twenty two degrees fahrenheit. But then we discovered colonies of
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: bacteria that could. We're like, well, that's evidence right there
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: that maybe we should look in like really really hot places,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: really really cold places, really acidic places, really base places.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Anything on the list that says human life can't exist there,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: maybe start looking there.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: What's crazy is when we have looked there, we keep
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: finding stuff that can exist, like life that yeah, doing
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: just fine there that just should not be there. The
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: best example I found are types of I think slime
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: mold maybe or algae that it lives in abandoned uranium
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: minds so this place is so crazy radioactive, No life
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: should be able to survive there, and yet they think
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: these things are actually taking that radiation and using it
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: as chemical energy. And then there's also a kind of
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: single cellular life that they found growing in one of
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: the abandoned chernobyl reactors. Again should not be aware because
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: of the radioactivity. But these things still conform to the
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: basic principles of life as we know it. The point is, though,
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: is you just keep thinking in more and more extremes,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: and you know, maybe we'll find it like the upper
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: atmosphere is the one that suggested because no life's supposed
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: to be able to live up there because of the
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: cosmic rays and the temperature and all that stuff. It's
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: just not a pleasant place to live from what I understand.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: And then other people are like, Okay, if we keep
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: looking and in these more extreme environments and we're just
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: finding life as we know it, maybe we should look
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: around and see if we find anything weird in places
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: like right under our very noses. And one of the
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: big ones that has been touted is desert varnish. And
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: this one, from what I can tell, is still the
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: jury's out whether it's a shadow bio organism.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah or not or not. You're hanging out there like
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: a chad. So yeah, if you've ever been out to
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: the desert in the United States, if you've ever driven
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: around like Utah or Arizona, maybe even Colorado, maybe New Mexico,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: you might have been driving along and seeing like a
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: very sheer sort of cliff face, and within that cliff
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: face you might be like, oh, that's just weird, sort
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: of shiny, dark area of it. There are always really
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: arid environments. Indigenous peoples used to create petroglyphs, so instead
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: of like you know, writing on something, they would scrape
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: away that varnish to make their art for the original
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: lighter colored earth underneath it. But I mean, I've seen
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: these things in person. I've driven by it, and I
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: didn't know what it was. I just figured it was
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: dark rock or something. But it's called desert varnish, and
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: scientists have been fascinated for a long long time. One
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: reason is because it grows about the pace of a
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: width of the human hair every millennium, and because that
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: happens so slowly, they were like, well, this is just
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: a geological process that's going on, maybe the sun hitting it,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: some sort of chemical reaction takes place. But they found
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: that that's it's actually a living thing, right.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: They don't know there's no geochemical process that accounts for it.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: There's no biological process that accounts for it. They just
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: don't know. It's largely manganese in nature. But the problem
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: is it's not drawing manganese out of the rock, like
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: a lot of these rocks don't have any manganese or
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: have such trace amounts that it certainly wouldn't account for
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: this desert varnished. So they just don't know how this
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: stuff is growing or what it is. But it's probably
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: the greatest contender right now for a shadow organism from
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: what I can tell. Like they're like, well, then it
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: must be a geochemical process. We just don't understand. And
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: it's like, maybe what you're calling geochemical is actually life
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: in a different manner.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess there's just said the theory that it's
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: alive that is biochemical.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There was also one that was like we founded everybody,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: we found the shadow organism and it went downhill from
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: there back in twenty ten.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was gfag dash one that is a bacterium
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: that was found in Mono Lake, California, And they were like, well,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: this bacterium is really weird because it doesn't it's not
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: sort of playing by the rules that we understand. Because
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: if you're going to be a living thing to make
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: DNA and RNA, you need phosphorus, and it doesn't look
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: like this thing is using phosphorus. It looks like it's
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: using arsenic, which would be a huge, huge mind And
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: so they thought GFA j dash one, you're you're the dude,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: And everyone was really hot on this idea, and then
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: they did follow up experiments and very sadly found out
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: that it used very very very small amounts of phosphorus
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: and it just wasn't instantly evident. So they're like, all right,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: just another extremophile. That's that we understand.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now we know.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: So cool.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: That's another benefit of it, Like we're finding stuff because
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: we're out looking for shadow life. We're finding other life
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: still too, So that's I mean, it's not like they're like, oh,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: another extra file. It's never been seen in the history
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: of humanity.
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: Just juke it.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: That's an interesting way that you pronounced that. I've been
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: in my head pronouncing it gufage, you know. So okay,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: let's move on. Let's move on to life with the
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: y chuck, because I think that that's a good next
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: place to start.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a guy. Well here's the idea, is that, like, hey,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: maybe there is just we should just accept the idea
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: that l i f E isn't all we think it is,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: and maybe it's broader than that and maybe or maybe
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: we just need another definition l y f E. And
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: I think that was put forward by an astrobiologist named
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Stuart Barleot not Bartlett, just Barlatch, And he said, well,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: maybe that is the l y f E definition is
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: just any system and this is a quote any system
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: that fulfills all four processes of the living state, namely dissipation,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: auto catalysis, catalysis either one, catalysis, homeostasis, and learning.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so just to get into it real quick, dissipation
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: means that it dissipates energy or something like waste brought
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: byproducts like heat. That's a big one. Or else it'll
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: overheat and die, or it will never poop out its
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: food and will die from that. That's it's just a
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: really easily overlooked component of something organism that can keep going. Also,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: it needs to be able to make more copies of itself.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: That's that auto calysis, catalysis, auto catalysis, Sure, that's that's
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: important because what it's doing is it's creating a process
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: that creates another version of itself and also a product
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: that triggers that process over again, so it can just
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: keep going. It also has to be able to maintain homeostasis,
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: so it can't just go totally haywire anytime you know,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: somebody nearby coughs. And then lastly, it's got to be
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: able to record information about the environment like this is
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: how you keep from going haywire when somebody coughs, and
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: it can be encoded in some way, shape or form,
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: so it can be passed on to the replicants of itself. Yeah,
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: that's life with a why. And I think that's exactly
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: the kind of broadened definition that we need. And the
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: other thing about life with a why, that includes life
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: with an eye, like life as we know it, and
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: just saying life with an eye is so much less
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: clunky than life as we know it, and it falls
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: under a larger umbrella. So it's a broader definition that
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: includes life as we know it, but also potentially includes
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: members of the shadow biosphere as well.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and what this potentially means is if there is
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: life with a why here or elsewhere, that means that
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: kind of anything is possible. It doesn't mean that, hey,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: there's intelligent life out there, but it doesn't mean there's not.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: I mean it would certainly kind of interest toward that idea.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: In a very real way, we found that there is
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: a different kind of life we just never understood before
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: here or elsewhere. There's an astrophysicist named Paul Davies really
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: smart guy obviously who has done a lot of scholarship
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: work about intelligent life elsewhere, and he talks about timing
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: a lot, like, you know, Earth happened the way it did,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: and it's kind of like what we touched on earlier.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Earth happened the way it did because of the timing
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: of it all. We've been around for about four and
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: a half billion years, and we won't be around in
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: about a billion years, Like the Earth will be scorched
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: basically by the Sun, and it was just sort of
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: cosmic luck that everything evolves when it did as it did,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: because there's a kind of a short window in the
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: grand scheme of things between when something starts happening and
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: being able to get to the point where you have
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: like intelligent life like human beings and the planet being
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: scorched or being blasted away by a large Yeah.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: So Paul Davies's argument kind of suggests that life is
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: probably pretty rare, if not singular, like the only we
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: do know that life emerged once in the entire universe
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: that led to us in all life as we know it,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: but that's it. We don't know that life emerged anywhere
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: else any other time, including on Earth. And that's one
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: of the things that would make detecting a shadow biosphere
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: so amazing, is it would it would essentially immediately say
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: the universe is teeming with life. If life developed two
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: different ways on the same planet. That strongly suggests that
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: not only is there life elsewhere in the universe, but
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: that biology is as immutable a cosmic or universal law
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: as physics or chemistry. Right that if you have even
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: just a few components put together that that gives rise
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: to life, biology is going to take over and life will.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: That's ultimately the most exciting thing that gets scientists jazzed
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: about looking for the shadow biospheres. What the implications that
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: we'll have about us sharing life elsewhere in the universe.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally pretty cool stuff.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Huh Yeah, I like it, Chuck, I'm glad that we
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: did this. Thanks for doing it with me.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: It was fun. We got through it.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we did well. Since we got through it, everybody,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: that means it's time for listener. Mayo.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna just read this one from Joel because it's
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: kind of just a fun little little ditty. Hey, guys,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I guess it's not a diddy. It's a story. First off.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I want to say thanks for all the work you
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: do to create an enjoyable and informative listening experience. I've
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: been a casual listener since twenty eighteen, and your show
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: has positively redirected the course of my day or staved
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: off boredom through long winter nights. Because I live on
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Salt Spring Island, BC, off the coast of Vancouver Island
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: and work at a golf course there. Today I was
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: mowing the fairways on a wet and dreary morning. I
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: put on the Manson Murders podcast and relax into my work.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Part Way through, Dennis Wilson came into the story and
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Chuck mentioned his solo album. I think it's called Pacific
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Ocean Blue.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I think so great record. Feeling a little low, I
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: decided to pause the podcast and listen to the full album.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: I listened to all the songs as I continued my
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: mo lines. Truly a wonderfully enjoyable album. Thank you for
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: that excursion into the music. Once the album finished, I
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: listened to the mower for a few minutes and then
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: resumed the podcast. And the first words I hear are
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: Chuck saying Eventually they leave Dennis Wilson's house and I
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: chuckled as I genuinely felt I had just been in
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: his house myself.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: Nate.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Anyway, short little story for me. Thank you for the
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: years of entertainment. Keep up the great work that is
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: from Joel. And Joel sent a picture of that fairway
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: mode while listening to Pacific Ocean Blue and Joel as
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: a beautiful golf course and I would love to play
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: it one day.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Oh, very nice. Yeah you're a golfer. I forget that
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: sometimes I am.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not very good, but I enjoy putting the phone
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: away for five hours and walking around with my buddies
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: in the sunshine.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Very nice. Well, thanks a lot, Joel, much appreciated. We
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: love stories like that, And if you want to be
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: like Joel, send us an email. Send it off to
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.