Posted inAstrobiology Life Philosophy
Why the term ‘life’ is useless in astrobiology
A post to make you laugh and then perhaps think about the meaninglessness of ‘life’ as a scientific term.
Posted inAstrobiology Life Philosophy
Why astrobiologists should NOT get rid of the term ‘life’
Carol Cleland rebuts Spacek's argument about uselessness of the term 'life' to astrobiologists. According to her 'life' is useful despite our inability to define it.
Posted inAstrobiology Life
Cleland & Grinspoon response to Benner: Do synthetic microbes provide another example of life?
The NfoLD's White Paper on Standards of Evidence in Life Detection opened a discussion on this blog. In this piece Carol Cleland and David Grinspoon tear down Benner's "second example" of life.
Posted inAstrobiology Life Origin of Life
Finding Life, the Universal Way
Lee Cronin's contribution to our ongoing discussion about the universal agnostic biosignatures: The assembly theory is the key.
Posted inAstrobiology Life
The Problem with Agnostic Biosignatures
Agnostic criteria, which are currently very popular among NASA scientists, are not truly agnostic and share many of the same problems with a definitional approach for searching for unfamiliar forms of life.
Posted inAstrobiology Life
Grave Expectations
The problem with trying to codify an official protocol for recognizing biosignatures:
We can try to devise rules for how detecting alien life should unfold, but E.T. might not play along.
Posted inLife Life on Mars NASA Synthetic Biology
NASA Headquarters Misses the Ball. Polyelectrolytes as the Key to Agnostic Life Finding
Synthetic biology, 20 years ago, taught NASA how to search generally, agnostically, and universally for alien life. NASA still does not understand the opportunity
Posted inAstrobiology Life NASA
2022 State of NASA Address: Astrobiology at NASA no longer looks for life on Mars
NASA gave up on looking for life on Mars, while planning to irreversibly biologically contaminate its surface. It is now up to private philanthropists to support life searching missions, while Mars is still biologically pristine. We know how to do it.
Posted inAstrobiology Life Origin of Life
Why searching for extraterrestrial life with a universal biosignature detection framework is a mistake.
A couple of weeks ago a group affiliated with NASA released a “white paper” claiming that scientists need a universal biosignature detection framework for searching for extraterrestrial life.
Unfortunately, there is a serious problem with the first part of their proposal.
Posted inLife
Null hypothesis: the term ‘life’ is not needed in biology
Before we go any deeper in the Universal Theory of Life debate we need to examine the following null hypothesis: ‘Life’ exists only as a concept. We mistakenly assume that 'life' exists independently of our culture as a natural phenomenon, just like we did with ‘luminiferous aether’, ‘preformationist’s homunculi’, and ‘vital force’. A theory of life is as useful as a theory of ‘phlogiston’.
Posted inLife
Universal Theory of Life, a debate
A useful definition-theory of life drives research into origins and synthetic biology.