Pathways Planets Habitable

1. Pathways Planets Habitable

3. Completing the Copernican Revolution: • - the Earth is just an ordinary planet, • life on other planets.

4. Completing the Copernican Revolution: • - the Earth is just an ordinary planet, • life on other planets.

5. LIFE: chemistry + Darwin + feedback + ? • biochemistry - strict homochirality; • structure & function of DNA & RNA molecules; • ribozyme: auto-catalytic replicating RNA molecule • (molecular Darwinian evolution). • 20-th century

6. The Tree of Life G. Klimt

7. …or Plurality of Worlds ?

9. LIFE: creating ‘artificial’ life forms (new “trees of life”) • ab initio synthesis: all biomolecules (105x speed-up); • self-assembling vesicles: evolving populations; • genetic transformation between species; • writing the genome of a new species; • first synthetic ribosomes: any design is now possible, • … new life form (… 2011 ?) • 21-st century

10. Does the diversity of planetary environments map onto a diversity of biochemistries ?

11. Super-Earths: a very diverse family, in which Earth is a marginal member, in terms of habitable potential. Image: Cundiff & Sasselov (Sasselov 2008)

12. Does the diversity of planetary environments map onto a diversity of biochemistries ?

13. Thank you !