The search for life in the solar system involves following the water and looking for the building blocks of life. In the next decade, we could possibly find evidence of past life on Mars, which had an atmosphere and a wonderful gravity level, making it a good candidate for carbon-based life.
This episode discusses the evolution of oxygen on Earth from about 2.2 billion years ago leading up to the time of the Cambrian explosion around 550 million years ago, including the dispute around whether the common ancestor of life on Earth was photosynthetic.
The search for life beyond our planet is fueled by the possibility that there may be other forms of intelligent life that exist outside of our planet, especially since we know that the conditions to sustain basic life forms may exist on other planets.
In this podcast, the discussion revolves around the search for extraterrestrial life and the contributions of Joshua Lederberg, including his discovery of bacteria exchange of genes and his work with NASA to find life on Mars. The question of whether these organisms could be similar to us biologically and the possible implications of discovering life is also explored.
Terraforming Venus could make it habitable in tens of thousands of years by artificially stimulating the formation of its thin atmosphere to block solar radiation and create a suitable environment for water.