Browsed by
Category: Life

We need new metaphors that put life at the center of biology

We need new metaphors that put life at the center of biology

Philip Ball writes: You could be forgiven for thinking that the turn of the millennium was a golden age for the life sciences. After the halcyon days of the 1950s and ’60s when the structure of DNA, the true nature of genes and the genetic code itself were discovered, the Human Genome Project, launched in 1990 and culminating with a preliminary announcement of the entire genome sequence in 2000, looked like – and was presented as – a comparably dramatic…

Read More Read More

Watching Biden, many see the heartbreaking indignities of aging

Watching Biden, many see the heartbreaking indignities of aging

The Washington Post reports: President Biden shuffled onto the debate stage. He whispered, mumbled and repeatedly trailed off. When he wasn’t speaking, he stood slightly stooped, his mouth at times agape and his eyes flickering between apparent confusion and recognition. When his halting 90-minute 2024 debate debut was over, his wife took him by the hand, escorting him gingerly offstage. Biden’s debate performance a week and a half ago set off a swirl of political angst and upheaval in the…

Read More Read More

Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an ‘emergency brake’

Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an ‘emergency brake’

Dan Samorodnitsky writes: Researchers recently reported the discovery of a natural protein, named Balon, that can bring a cell’s production of new proteins to a screeching halt. Balon was found in bacteria that hibernate in Arctic permafrost, but it also seems to be made by many other organisms and may be an overlooked mechanism for dormancy throughout the tree of life. For most life forms, the ability to shut oneself off is a vital part of staying alive. Harsh conditions…

Read More Read More

Young people are getting unhappier – a lack of childhood freedom and independence may be partly to blame

Young people are getting unhappier – a lack of childhood freedom and independence may be partly to blame

Africa Studio/Shutterstock By Fiorentina Sterkaj, University of East London Experts often highlight social media and harsh economic times as key reasons why young people are getting unhappier. And while those factors are important, I would like to emphasise another. Younger generations have less freedom and independence than previous generations did. The area where children are allowed to range unsupervised outside has shrunk by 90% since the 1970s. Parents increasingly organise entertainment – ranging from play dates and sports and music…

Read More Read More

‘Monumental’ experiment suggests how life on Earth may have started

‘Monumental’ experiment suggests how life on Earth may have started

The Washington Post reports: A much-debated theory holds that 4 billion years ago, give or take, long before the appearance of dinosaurs or even bacteria, the primordial soup contained only the possibility of life. Then a molecule called RNA took a dramatic step into the future: It made a copy of itself. Then the copy made a copy, and over the course of many millions of years, RNA begot DNA and proteins, all of which came together to form a…

Read More Read More

Scientists reveal how first cells could have formed on Earth

Scientists reveal how first cells could have formed on Earth

The Scripps Research Institute: Roughly 4 billion years ago, Earth was developing conditions suitable for life. Origin-of-life scientists often wonder if the type of chemistry found on the early Earth was similar to what life requires today. They know that spherical collections of fats, called protocells, were the precursor to cells during this emergence of life. But how did simple protocells first arise and diversify to eventually lead to life on Earth? Now, Scripps Research scientists have discovered one plausible…

Read More Read More

What pigeons teach us about love

What pigeons teach us about love

Brandon Keim writes: Last spring I came to know a pair of pigeons. I’d been putting out neighborly sunflower seeds for them and my local Brooklyn house sparrows; typically I left them undisturbed while feeding, but every so often I’d want to water my plants or lie in the sun. This would scatter the flock—all, that is, except for these two. One, presumably male, was a strapping specimen of pigeonhood, big and crisp-feathered in an amiably martial way. The other,…

Read More Read More

What chaos theory has to teach us about human events

What chaos theory has to teach us about human events

Brian Klaas writes: The 21st century has been defined by unexpected shocks—major upheavals that have upended the world many of us have known and made our lives feel like the playthings of chaos. Every few years comes a black swan–style event: September 11, the financial crisis, the Arab Spring, Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the coronavirus pandemic, wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Even daily life can feel like a roll of the dice: With regularity, some Americans go to…

Read More Read More

Giant space rock made Earth’s ocean boil but also helped early life

Giant space rock made Earth’s ocean boil but also helped early life

Joel Achenbach writes: The young Earth got beat up a lot, including one day 3.26 billion years ago when a rock four times the size of Mount Everest slammed into the planet. Scientists believe that the rock, which was much bigger than the Chicxulub object that ended the reign of the dinosaurs, probably landed in the ocean, since Earth had barely begun to form continents. The collision was so violent it boiled off the top layer of that ocean and,…

Read More Read More

Several ingredients for life found on Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn

Several ingredients for life found on Enceladus, a small moon of Saturn

The New York Times reports: Scientists have detected a poison among the spray of molecules emanating from a small moon of Saturn. That adds to existing intrigue about the possibility of life there. The poison is hydrogen cyanide, a colorless gas that is deadly to many Earth creatures. But it could have played a key role in chemical reactions that created the ingredients that set the stage for the advent of life. “It’s the starting point for most theories on…

Read More Read More

Earth may have had all the elements needed for life within it all along − contrary to theories that these elements came from meteorites

Earth may have had all the elements needed for life within it all along − contrary to theories that these elements came from meteorites

Scientists still debate the origins of Earth’s life-sustaining elements. BlackJack3D/E+ via Getty Images By Shichun Huang, University of Tennessee and Wenzhong Wang, University of Science and Technology of China For many years, scientists have predicted that many of the elements that are crucial ingredients for life, like sulfur and nitrogen, first came to Earth when asteroid-type objects carrying them crashed into our planet’s surface. But new research published by our team in Science Advances suggests that many of these elements,…

Read More Read More

When Nietzsche said ‘become who you are’, this is what he meant

When Nietzsche said ‘become who you are’, this is what he meant

Ryan A Bush writes: In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche published The Gay Science, a work he referred to as ‘the most personal of all my books’. It came after a series of setbacks in his life, including the weak reception of his previous work, a soured friendship, and his declining health, which caused severe migraines and vomiting, forcing him to resign from his professorial position. Yet it strikes a surprisingly cheerful tone. It’s in this book that the philosopher first penned the…

Read More Read More

Magnetism may have given life its molecular asymmetry

Magnetism may have given life its molecular asymmetry

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: Scientists have debated why life became homochiral [that is, having molecular asymmetry], and whether it needed to happen or if it was purely a fluke. Were chiral preferences impressed on early life by biased samples of molecules arriving from space, or did they somehow evolve out of mixtures that started out as equal parts right- and left-handed? “Scientists have been mystified by this observation,” said Soumitra Athavale, an assistant professor of organic chemistry at the University of…

Read More Read More

All lifeforms, from worms to corals, transform the planet

All lifeforms, from worms to corals, transform the planet

Olivia Judson writes: I want to start with a proposition: if Earth had never come alive, it would be a profoundly different world. Conversely: the planet of today has, to a remarkable extent, been made what it is by the activities of lifeforms. Over the course of the planet’s long history, a history that extends back more than 4.5 billion years, lifeforms have shaped the rocks, the water, the air, even the colour of the sky. A Never-Life Earth would not even…

Read More Read More

Postponing death by prolonging illness

Postponing death by prolonging illness

Robert S Gable writes: Everyone dies sometime. But when and how? Those questions become more salient as birthdays roll by. It has been said that wherever old people gather there is an ‘organ recital’ of malfunctioning body organs and parts. I, too, have a recital. Last year, at age 88, I woke up in a San Francisco hospital room after having my aortic heart valve replaced by one made of a metal spring and some cow tissue (an ‘Edwards Sapien…

Read More Read More

New finding boosts Panspermia, the theory that life on Earth originated in deep space

New finding boosts Panspermia, the theory that life on Earth originated in deep space

Lina Zeldovich writes: Floating in the middle of our galaxy, near the center of the Milky Way, inside a cloud of gas that swirls at the temperature of 100 Kelvin or -279.67 Fahrenheit, a molecule essential to life on Earth has just been discovered. It sounds inconceivable that such a level of cosmic cold could harbor anything remotely related to a living organism—and yet it does. In fact, without this molecule, humans—and all other breathing, growing things on the planet—would…

Read More Read More