WEBVTT - The Shadow Biosphere: Is There Other Life on Earth? 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:07.760 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.960 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.599 And we're doing it together, doing it, doing it. We're 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:20.799 just doing it together, and this is stuff you should know. 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.400 That's right. I have the rainy day blues, you guys, 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:25.639 but we're doing it anyway. 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:27.400 We're doing it together. 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:32.480 The rain shouldn't stop an indoor podcast, right, No. 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:35.720 But I'm with it. It's been raining too much lately 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:37.720 and it can get to you after a while. 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:42.760 Yeah, that's right, I'll persevere. The sun is shining in 0:00:42.800 --> 0:00:43.200 my head. 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:45.440 Oh that's very pleasant. 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:48.159 It's not true, but it's a nice thing to say. 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:54.120 Okay, So that reminds me of that. I remember when 0:00:54.120 --> 0:00:57.760 Pebbles and Bambam on Flintstones had like a brief singing career. 0:00:57.880 --> 0:00:59.680 Oh yeah, wasn't. 0:00:59.520 --> 0:01:01.680 It like, let's the sunshine in? Or there is something 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:04.440 there hit single head to do with sunshine? 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:06.840 Well? I remember let the sunshine in? But was that 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:10.080 the Brady bunch? Was that Pebbles and Bam Bam you 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:14.160 let the sunshine in? Something something with the grin. 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:17.839 I don't think it was either of them, not even 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.000 the Brady Bunch though. Well, at any rate, it just 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:23.360 reminded me of Pebbles and Bambam, so that did my 0:01:23.440 --> 0:01:24.120 heart good too. 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:27.800 Alrighty, So can I just briefly say what we're talking 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:31.080 about so people don't think this is about the fund Stones? Yeah, 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:32.920 although that'd be a fun episode. 0:01:32.920 --> 0:01:36.640 Actually, I agree, I think that is a future episode. 0:01:36.680 --> 0:01:37.600 Good idea, all right. 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.280 The shadow biosphere, which is to say, this notion, this 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:47.040 theoretical notion that perhaps, if you know, we're constantly looking 0:01:47.080 --> 0:01:50.200 for life on other planets and it has been positive, 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.520 well what if there if that life exists here on Earth, 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:57.200 but it just doesn't look at all, and it's not 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:00.840 made up of all the things that make up life 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:03.560 as we know it here on Earth, and so we're 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.640 just either looking in the wrong places or not recognizing 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:10.240 it as something that's alive, or both. And that's the 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:12.720 shadow biosphere, this idea. It's pretty cool. 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:16.640 Yeah, it is pretty cool. I mean. One of the 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:18.960 big problems that you run into when you're talking about 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:24.000 a shadows biosphere or plotting to look for other forms 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:27.280 of life that just don't conform to what we think 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:31.800 of as life as we know it. The big problem 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:36.079 is is we don't really have a working definition of 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:41.320 life as life as we know it, like us, microbes, birds, like, 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:45.080 there's not a real definition that covers all of them, 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.639 and there is one that scientists have agreed to generally 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:53.240 settle on. But if people who are into the shadow biosphere, 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:58.480 which is to say, usually a combination of astrobiologists and microbiologists, 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:02.320 it's where they're two feel overlap in a ven diagram, 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:06.200 that's where the shadow biosphere lives, they will say like, 0:03:06.280 --> 0:03:09.320 this is holy inadequate, Like there are we need to 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:11.920 broaden the horizons or else we're never going to detect 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:13.480 anything that's not living. 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:16.639 Yeah, and I'll tell you what, my friend, I hope 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.200 one day during the life of the show, we do 0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:23.040 find life on other planets that significant, so you will 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:24.480 stop doing articles about it. 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:29.520 Well, this is so yeah, okay, fair, fair, This is 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:33.640 a pursuit of astrobiology. But the thing that I find 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:38.400 the most fascinating is where microbiology comes in. And they're saying, yeah, 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:40.800 this would help us find or look for life off 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:44.080 of Earth. Yeah, but it'll also help us find life 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.000 on Earth. Like the idea that we share a planet 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:49.760 with other trees of life that aren't related to us 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:52.440 in any way, shape or form other than we we 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:56.280 share the planet and they function in ways similar that 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.080 life as we know it functions, but we're not related. 0:03:59.760 --> 0:03:59.960 Yeah. 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.080 Yeah, I think that's neat. 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.200 I think it's totally neat. And here's the other thing too, 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:07.680 is if, and this is a pretty important note, if 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.880 we do find something here on life on Earth that 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:15.200 is like a shadow life form of some sort, we're 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:18.040 probably talking about microbes. Just so people don't get super 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:23.520 excited about the idea of chuds being a real thing. 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.160 That's not a real thing. We're not going to We're 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:31.000 not going to go deep down enough to find any 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:35.240 cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers sadly. So what we're talking about 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.479 here microbes, and what we're talking about is this idea 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.520 put forth by a very smart woman named Carol Cleland 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:46.920 from the University of Colorado Go buffaloes. And I think 0:04:46.960 --> 0:04:48.800 the way she came about it was like you hear 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:50.640 about like she came about it. Honestly, I think this 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:54.000 is like one of those times because she was in Spain, 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:58.920 she was observing some molecular biologists. They were looking for 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.960 soil mic and microorganisms looking through these samples and she 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:08.720 was like, hey, they went see, and she said, how 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.719 do you know, like that you found something new, like 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:13.680 a new microbe And they said, well, and I'm not 0:05:13.720 --> 0:05:15.440 going to say this in Spanish because I didn't translate 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:19.520 at all. I just know what yes is. See, but 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.920 they said, well, what we do is we look until 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:25.159 we find something that looks like it might hold some promise. 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:29.960 Then we you know, we've looked at it under a microscope. 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:31.800 Then we put it in a Petri dish and just 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:34.320 grow the heck out of it and then isolate its 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.440 DNA and then look at the genome and see, like, hey, 0:05:37.480 --> 0:05:39.960 what does this look like? And then she went, oh, 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:43.280 that's kind of cool, but I have another question. It's 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:44.760 kind of like Tom Hanks and Big like. 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:45.760 They get still here. 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:50.359 She said, well, what if it's not related to life 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:52.520 on earth? Like, how would you even know? You're like, 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.640 how to recognize something as being alive? And they all 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:58.040 shrugged and she wrote a book about it. 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:00.760 Oh see, I imagine them all for and one of 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.840 them just drops the Petrie dish without they just drop 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.680 like they can't believe what they've just heard. They're stunned. 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:08.080 Yeah, and COVID. 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:12.440 So so, Carol Cleveland makes a really excellent point. And 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:16.000 like you said, this kicked off the idea of shadow biospheres, 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:19.560 and in fact she coined that term. But what she's 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:22.960 saying is that our process of looking for life would 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:27.440 just walk right past anything that doesn't conform to our 0:06:27.600 --> 0:06:30.920 understanding of life. But that still is living in a 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:32.560 certain definition of things. 0:06:33.040 --> 0:06:33.520 Nailed it. 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:37.760 Yeah, So just to kind of step back for a second, 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:41.680 there there is a some there's a consensus among scientists 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.159 that life conforms to a few rules. This is the 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:49.440 the generally agreed upon definition of life. It's carbon based. 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.080 Anything else is non living. You know, you look at 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:58.520 a piece of courts it's from silicon, I think not living. 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:05.359 Great example thinks it's programmed by DNA and RNA. Right, 0:07:05.440 --> 0:07:10.640 so it has transcription of its genetic code, and that 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.480 is just it does not live without that. Those things 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:18.360 are built by amino acids and proteins. Those are the 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:23.240 basic building blocks of the organism. It's self replicating very important. 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:28.080 And then it also evolves according to Darwinian principles, which 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:32.720 is to say that the best properties and traits are 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.040 selected for over time. So if you put all those 0:07:35.040 --> 0:07:38.040 things together, you have a pretty good idea about life. 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:43.480 But again, this is a really narrow definition, and if 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:45.320 you really kind of look at it, you're like, this 0:07:45.400 --> 0:07:48.920 is there's a lot of room for other things to 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:54.400 function in a manner that's living that doesn't necessarily use 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:58.080 DNA or RNA, that doesn't use amino acids or at 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:01.480 the very least the amino acids that we use, and 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:05.640 it might not even be carbon based. Like maybe we 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:07.720 can broaden this a little bit, and that's the pursuit 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:08.880 of shadow biosphere. 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:11.720 Yeah, and Carol Cleland was right in the money said 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:14.240 she wrote a book. It's really a paper, but you know, 0:08:14.440 --> 0:08:16.840 she could bind it like a book, probably sell it 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:19.800 in a store, sure, But it was called the Possibility 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:25.960 of Alternative Alternative Microbial Life on Earth. We're also going to, 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:28.760 you know, talk a little bit about looking on other planets, 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:32.679 because we've talked a lot about that and suffice to say, 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:35.200 when we're looking for life on other planets where you know, 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:37.560 we're always looking for like an earth like place where 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.040 something like life as we know it could exist kind 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:41.800 of in the same way. But she was like, this 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:44.760 stuff might be right under our noses, everybody right, And 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:48.319 here's a paper about it, and I think it was 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:52.200 pretty smart paper. There was a should we talk about 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:52.960 the central dogma? 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:54.920 I guess yeah, I think we need to. 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:57.520 Yeah. So you know, you went over what life on 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:02.360 Earth contained, but the central dogma is a little more specific. 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:06.200 It was first proposed by Francis Crick in the nineteen fifties. 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:10.480 That is that DNA, the nucleic acid that we know 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.400 and love, has instructions for building all the proteins that 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:19.079 are required for something to be alive. You also have RNA, 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:23.920 which copies those instructions to take them to the ribosomes, 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:27.880 which also exists. Because that reads that RNA and assembles everything, 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:31.480 all those amino acids to make each protein, and bada 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:32.960 bing bada boom, you have life. 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.880 Right, And so you take that process and you end 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:41.319 up with what's called the origin of life, the genesis 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:42.560 of life here on Earth. 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:43.880 Genesis. 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:46.840 We've talked about that. That's the scientific way of. 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:51.240 Saying, well, okay, we go put on my lab coat. 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:54.400 We've talked about this before multiple times. Remember we did 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:58.520 an episode on panspermia. We've done a bunch of episodes 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:00.960 that I think this primordial soup came up. And that's 0:10:00.960 --> 0:10:04.560 the whole idea that either in some shallow tidal pool 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.640 or you know, some warm part of the ocean or 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:13.800 some body of water, there was a bunch of those 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:18.000 basic building blocks of life, amino acids, proteins floating around 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:24.199 and that somehow a self replicating process got kickstarted. And 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:28.200 the self replicating process is considered what's called a privileged function, 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:34.559 This idea that this mechanism for creating life was present 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:36.760 at the outset and is still around today, so we 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.760 self replicate. A couple others were metabolism, that's another suggestion 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:45.240 for the privileged function that kickstarted life. Or then compartmentalization 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:49.679 like having something to hold all of these processes in 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:53.120 like a bag of guts. Basically, so one of those 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:57.920 they say is what was responsible for kickstarting this process 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.600 of life, and that somehow, some a bunch of chemical 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:06.440 reactions started a chain reaction that became self sustaining that 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:14.320 eventually turned into increasingly complex processes, organelles, and eventually living organisms. 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:18.319 That's how life developed. That's the idea behind the primordial 0:11:18.400 --> 0:11:21.840 soup that the central dogmas based on that's right. 0:11:22.320 --> 0:11:24.560 But in Cleveland's paper, she was like, well, hold on 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.160 a second, that's great, what a story. We love it, 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:31.640 we all believe it. But what if this happened like 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:33.760 more than one time. What if it happened multiple times 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:36.760 right here on Earth there were just different conditions in 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:41.960 different places, different chemicals came together. And what if that 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:45.440 happened and these are the shadow microbes? And what if 0:11:45.480 --> 0:11:47.800 this stuff is still there? And the reason that we 0:11:47.880 --> 0:11:51.800 haven't found it is because we're looking for again for 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:56.720 life that we understand as being alive and the ramifications 0:11:56.720 --> 0:11:58.840 that would have not only to find stuff like that 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:01.920 here on Earth, but you know this idea that when 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.960 we go out and look in outer space for life 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:08.640 on other planets again we're looking for earthlike, you know, 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:11.960 atmospheres and Earth like conditions. She was like, well, what 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:15.680 if we're looking on the entirely wrong planets. There could 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.840 be stuff that's alive because we're just not looking in 0:12:18.840 --> 0:12:21.080 the right places because we have such a narrow definition. 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:28.080 Yeah, and we definitely have found increasingly extremophile organisms, like 0:12:28.440 --> 0:12:30.920 for a long time we thought that organisms couldn't survive 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:34.760 past one hundred and twenty something degrees farenheight. Then we 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:38.520 found some extremophiles that can survive around hydro thermal events 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:42.920 that are as hot as two hundred and twelve degrees farentheight. Like, okay, 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:47.280 that's pretty awesome, but it's still life as we know it, 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:51.160 you know, like they're crazy in their adaptation, but they 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.560 still function according to the properties of life as we 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.720 know it. What Carol Cleland and others are saying is like, Okay, 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:00.840 we'll keep looking in even more extreme and vironments and 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.320 eventually you may find something that has had to adapt 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:09.560 to such an extreme environment. It uses different processes or 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:12.880 different raw materials that life as we know it could 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:16.520 not possibly use. And there you have your first shadow 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:17.480 bio organism. 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:23.319 I think we should pick a great rest here. Rest. 0:13:24.840 --> 0:14:14.439 We'll be back everybody after this rest. 0:13:56.400 --> 0:14:01.000 And lo, the podcasters rested low and then on day 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:03.680 two they got on with the show. We should mention, 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:08.640 by the way, we did a pretty good episode on extremophiles, yeah, 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:10.480 a while back, So just if you haven't heard it, 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:13.079 you should just look up on the search engine of 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:15.520 your choice extremophile so if you should know, pretty neat. 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:20.520 But back to the shadow biosphere. You know, we mentioned 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.000 the fact that you know, Carol Cleveland's beating that drum, saying, 0:14:24.400 --> 0:14:27.320 what if it's not something that we recognize because we 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:29.280 just don't recognize it as life as we know it. 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:31.720 And then she started digging in and she was like, 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:36.200 here's the thing. DNA and RNA aren't the only building 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:40.160 blocks of life. In theory. They are made of base 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:44.880 pairs of nucleic acids. For DNA, it's a D nine 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:51.160 cyanine quinine, and thymine. For RNA it's thymine that is 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.560 swapped out for ucell. But there are other three are 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.600 the same, but there are more nucleic I believe there's 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:01.800 six more nucleic acids that exists exist in nature. So 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:04.960 you know, why are we not even considering the fact 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.840 that those could be a part of life in a 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:09.800 way that we don't fully understand. 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:13.680 Right, And first, ursill sounds like over the counter urinary 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:18.080 tract infection treatment totally does. Secondly, I could not, for 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:22.040 the life of me and I really looked find what 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:26.600 the other six nucleic acids are. I can't find it, Chuck. 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:29.840 But in that search I did come across something called 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:35.880 the hatch emoji DNA, which is those four at, which 0:15:35.920 --> 0:15:38.440 is always together in GC, which are always together to 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:43.040 form those base pair nucleotides that eventually build up into DNA. 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:46.160 And they added p z B and. 0:15:46.360 --> 0:15:48.000 S and let's see them right. 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.880 Well, that's four, so there's still two many. But the 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:56.240 really interesting thing that they found is that if you take, 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:01.240 if you rearrange say the original four bay pairs, or 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:05.120 you add these other brand new four base pairs and 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:09.880 run them through a ribosome, the ribosome, if you arrange 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:13.000 it correctly, and they're made of nucleic acids, the ribosome 0:16:13.040 --> 0:16:17.680 will be like, okay, I'm transcribing this, So it's entirely possible. 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:23.640 They proved that it's possible that life could have evolved 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:28.400 separately from us by using different amino acids but similar mechanisms. 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:32.000 So maybe we are or could be, in this sense 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:36.280 distantly related to them, like maybe in the primordial soup, 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:38.880 but it branched off so early that for all intents 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.400 and purposes, it's non living life as far as our 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:43.760 definition of life goes. 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.760 Yeah, well, nice job finding four of those six letters. 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:50.119 At least, let's just call the other two FU. 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:52.960 Science. 0:16:53.760 --> 0:16:58.920 Yeah, so that's how DNA and RNA could be you know, 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:01.720 different as we know it. The same thing is true 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:05.520 for amino acids. All the proteins are built from the 0:17:05.560 --> 0:17:09.600 same combination of twenty amino acids, because when Earth formed, 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:13.960 those were the twenty amino acids that, in a Darwinian sense, 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:18.360 were most successful making proteins that survived when life emerged. 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:21.880 There are five hundred we're not gonna name them, five 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:25.040 hundred other amino acids, or more than five hundred amino 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:29.159 acids on Earth. So yeah, totally. So it's just the 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.240 fact that Earth started when it did that those particular 0:17:32.280 --> 0:17:34.679 twenty amino acids were the ones that were good at 0:17:34.760 --> 0:17:37.560 doing what needed to be done to make things that 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:39.719 survived here. But it could have been, you know, at 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:41.880 a different time. It could have been any other combination 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:43.200 of amino acids, and they're. 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:46.080 Still out there exactly. So a lot of scientists are like, well, 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:48.960 that just goes to show you that life as we 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:50.760 know it is the only kind of life. If we're 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.240 using the same twenty amino acids and there's all these 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.680 others out there, these are the ones that got selected 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:57.920 for These are the ones that worked in the primordial 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:02.480 soup and caroclelans forward again with her index finger raised 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:06.040 and says, Okay, I can see where you're coming from. 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:09.119 But again, as I said before, if life emerged in 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:13.399 other places, in other situations, under other conditions, in the 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:17.800 primordial soup, it's entirely possible that completely different combinations of 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:22.080 the other kinds of amino acids were the most usable, 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:25.119 and we're selected for that. And again, this is how 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:28.760 the shadow of biosphere could have started. And another petri 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:31.240 dish got dropped. And these guys are starting to second 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:35.679 guess undermining Carol Cleland, or even attempting to because she 0:18:35.840 --> 0:18:38.560 just keeps facing them over again. 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:41.520 Yeah, and they're like, well, how would that have happened 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:44.320 or how could that happen? She said, I don't know. 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:49.119 How about a meteor sucker because meteorites have fallen to 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:52.800 the Earth and asteroids that basically plant stuff on Earth 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:55.679 that come from another place. There have been meteorites that 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:59.400 have fallen that are carrying up to eighty other amino acids. 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:03.560 And her whole theory is it like, what if this 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:08.040 has happened, and maybe it's happened repeatedly, and again we 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:11.000 just don't know about it because we're not looking correctly, right. 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:15.119 So, yeah, the panspermia episode that was the basis of it, 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:18.760 that Earth got seated with the necessary ingredients for life 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:24.399 from space. Right, that's right. So there's another peculiar aspect 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.920 of life as we know it that doesn't really make 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:31.320 sense to us, and I don't fully get how it 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:33.960 would tie into the shadow biosphere. So if you do, 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:38.080 let me know. But the best I can understand is 0:19:38.160 --> 0:19:41.239 that because we don't know it, and because it's like 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:46.920 it just seems like a random, arbitrary development in life 0:19:46.920 --> 0:19:50.119 as we know it, that it suggests things could go 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:52.400 the other way and maybe they have elsewhere on Earth. 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:53.560 Is that how you read it too? 0:19:54.440 --> 0:19:56.840 Yeah? I think so. Okay, just like an example of like, 0:19:56.880 --> 0:19:58.120 see this can happen. 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:00.480 Right, Okay, good, That's what I'm taking as too. And 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:05.600 we're talking about chirality, and chiralness is handedness and Greek 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:10.879 you're either right handed or you're left handed, or you 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:13.280 could be ambidextrous. But that's neither hum nor there. When 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:16.960 we're talking about cellular biology or molecular science, which is 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:21.760 what this pertains to, and if you make a bunch 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:25.440 of sugars or a bunch of amino acids in the lab. 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:28.479 Some are going to be left handed and some are 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:31.200 going to be right handed. But as far as life 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:35.720 on Earth is concerned, only left handed amino acids and 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:41.040 only right handed sugars can be useful as the building 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:44.679 blocks of life. So there's right handed amino acids and 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:48.640 left handed sugars, but they are completely useless to us 0:20:48.760 --> 0:20:53.479 because all life on Earth only uses left handed amino 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:57.040 acids and only uses right handed sugars. And we just 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:57.960 don't know why. 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:01.520 Yeah, and if this sounds like, all right, guys, what 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:05.200 are you talking about here with these hands, it's not hands, 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:10.000 it's the direction that their atoms are oriented. Yeah, they 0:21:10.000 --> 0:21:12.000 talk about it in terms of handedness. I think just 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.280 as a well, I hate to say it is a shorthand. 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:18.000 So dumb humans like us can understand what they're talking 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:19.840 about at least halfway right. 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:24.200 And so, because there's left handed and right handed amino acids, 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:27.560 they are mirror images of one another. They're constructed the 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:31.640 exact same way. They're constructed with the exact same components 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.400 to make up these molecules, but they are mirror images. 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:39.440 So if you overlay them, they're not twins mirror images. 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:42.080 So in exactly the same way. If you hold your 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:44.560 hands out in front of you, palms down so the 0:21:44.680 --> 0:21:47.480 tops up, and you just kind of hold one over 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:51.240 the other, they're not twins. They're mirror images of one another. 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:55.080 And that's exactly true with amino acids and sugars. They 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:58.520 each have a mirror image. And again, only one kind 0:21:58.760 --> 0:22:01.280 is useful to life. The other ones just get spit out. 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:05.240 So what if, again, under different conditions, at some point 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:09.640 in the past, there were organisms that learned to use 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:14.560 the other kind left handed sugars and right handed amino acids, 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:19.480 that would certainly qualify as a shadow biosphere bioorganism. 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:25.440 Yeah, and we have synthesized these in labs. But what's 0:22:25.520 --> 0:22:27.640 the deal. What I don't understand. If they were able 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:31.240 to synthesize it, that means that it did already exist, 0:22:31.440 --> 0:22:33.960 but it just isn't anything that was alive. 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:38.119 Yeah, I don't know exactly what they did. They built 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:46.240 a cell that uses right handed sumino acids. Yeah, yeah, 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:49.359 and they I don't know if it was living or not. 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:51.359 I don't think it was living or else they would 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:53.760 be like we created artificial life here. I don't think 0:22:53.760 --> 0:22:56.119 anyone's ever done that. I think they just created the 0:22:56.160 --> 0:22:58.800 structure of it. Like if there if there was something 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:01.080 like a cell that use that kind of stuff, this 0:23:01.119 --> 0:23:03.240 is what it would be structured as. The whole reason 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.840 they built it was to try to attract things like 0:23:07.680 --> 0:23:11.919 chiro viruses that function using the opposite stuff that we 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:14.560 use for life. It was a honeytrap, is the way 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:15.240 that they put it. 0:23:15.440 --> 0:23:16.920 Like they take it out to a club and set 0:23:16.920 --> 0:23:19.760 it on a bar table and they're like, hello, everybody, 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:21.040 exactly right. 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:24.760 So nothing came along and took the bait, But that 0:23:24.760 --> 0:23:28.879 doesn't mean it's not there. The better argument against things 0:23:28.960 --> 0:23:31.720 like that living, if you asked me that I ran across, 0:23:32.320 --> 0:23:35.080 is that if you did have something like that that 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:40.600 could consume other things, it would have no natural predators. 0:23:40.840 --> 0:23:43.520