WEBVTT
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Supported by
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Supported by
Protocol Labs
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Supported by
Protocol Labs
Follow your curiosity.
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Supported By
Protocol Labs
Follow your curiosity.
Lead humanity forward.
00:00:09.187 --> 00:00:09.437
Protocol Labs
Follow your curiosity.
Lead humanity forward.
00:00:09.437 --> 00:00:09.687
Follow your curiosity.
Lead humanity forward.
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"In all the universe,
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"In all the universe,
there stands only one known tree of life."
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"Does it stand alone?
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"Does it stand alone?
Or is it part of a vast cosmic wilderness?"
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"Imagine a museum
containing every type of life in the universe."
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"What strange things would such a museum hold?"
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"What is possible under the laws of nature?"
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LIFE BEYOND
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CHAPTER II
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CHAPTER II
THE MUSEUM OF ALIEN LIFE
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To have any hope of finding alien life,
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we have to know what to look for.
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But where do we begin?
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How do we narrow down a seemingly
infinite set of possibilities?
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There's one thing we know for sure:
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nature will have to play by her own rules.
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No matter how strange alien life might be,
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is going to be limited by the same physical
and chemical laws that we are.
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6 CO2 + 12 H2O → C6H12O6 + 6 O2
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On top of this, each alien environment will further
limit what kinds of life forms can evolve there.
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Despite these natural boundaries,
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the possibilities are staggering to imagine.
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Trillions of planets, each a unique
cauldron of chemicals,
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undergoing their own
complex evolution.
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To guide our thinking, this museum of alien life
will be divided into two exhibits:
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Life as we know it: home to beings
with bio-chemistries like ours.
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And life as we don't know it: home to beings
that challenge our concept of life itself.
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Before we venture too far
into the unknown,
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we have to ask ourselves:
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what if alien life is more
like ours than we think?
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EXHIBIT I
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EXHIBIT I
LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
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EXHIBIT I
LIFE AS WE KNOW IT
CARBON & WATER BASED
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If there's one feature that unites us with
these other specimes in this museum, it's carbon.
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Carbon is ubiquitous, it's one of the
most common elements in the universe,
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and is very good at forming
large stable molecules.
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Carbon has the rare ability to form four way
bounds with other elements
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and to bind to itself in
long, stable chains;
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enabling the formation of
huge complex molecules.
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This versatility makes carbon the center piece
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in the moleculary machinery of life.
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And the same carbon compounds that we use
have been found far from Earth,
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clinging to meteorites
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and floating in far off
clouds of cosmic dust.
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The building blocks of life drifting
like snow through the universe.
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And if alien life has selected other carbon
compounds for the biochemistry,
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they will have plenty to choose from.
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Scientists recently identified over a
million possible alternatives to DNA:
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all carbon based.
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If we ever discover other
carbon based life forms,
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we will be fundamentally related.
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They will be our cosmic brother.
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But would they look anything like us?
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If they hail from Earth like planets,
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we could share even more in common,
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than just our biochemistry.
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What would life be like in another
planets, if its evolved?
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Would it be like, the world
today here on Earth?
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Or would be completely different?
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There are those, who argue that
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from the argument of convergent evolution,
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if conditions on other planets are similar to here, then we will see very similar life forms;
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animal and plant-like organisms, that look very familiar.
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On Earth, certain features like eyesight, echo-location and flight
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have evolved multiple times, independently, in different species.
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This process of convergent evolution could extend to alien planets like Earth,
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where creatures share similar environmental pressures.
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It's no guarantee, but there could be certain universalities of life;
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the greatest hits of evolution on repeat across the Universe.
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Each feature would be a tune to its local environment.
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Dimly lit planets would produce huge eyes to suck in extra light, like nocturnal mammals.