El Siglo 21 es Hoy

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Gardens at the Bottom of the Sea, with Laurie Barge Billions of years ago, life may have gotten started at hydrothermal vents, cracks in the sea floor where hot fluids from inside our planet mix with colder ocean water. Laurie Barge, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, studies how plant-looking mineral structures called chimneys grow from chemicals found at the deepest depths of the ocean. In her lab she has glass vials and bulbs full of different chemical mixtures that simulate undersea conditions. Through careful mixing, scientists can even form amino acids, which are essential building blocks of life. Could similar processes happen in oceans under the ice shells of moons farther away in our solar system, like Europa and Enceladus?

Por NASA Podcast #Recomendado Tweet Gravity Assist: Could We Find Billion-Year-Old Cholesterol? With Lindsay Hays When we search for life beyond Earth, we have to figure out what we could measure that would tell us that life was, or is, there. And the starting place for that search must be Earth itself, the only place where we know for sure that life has lived. Every rock tells a story, and so does each fatty acid called a lipid. Your cholesterol, which is part lipid and part protein, could last for billions of years, and contains the information that you are a mammal. Could we find lipids beyond Earth? NASA astrobiologist Lindsay Hays explores this and other topics in her research. She also discusses places interesting for the search for life in our solar system and beyond.