The Shadow Biosphere: Is There Other Life on Earth? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

[Music]. welcome to stuff you should know a. production of iHeart. [Music]. Radio hey and welcome to the podcast I'm. Josh and there's Chuck and we're doing. it together doing it doing it we're just. doing it together uh and this is stuff. you should know that's right I have the. rainy day Blues you guys but we're doing. it anyway we're doing it together cuz. little rain shouldn't stop a indoor.

podcast. right no but I'm with you it's been. raining too much lately and it it can. get to you after a while yeah that's all. right we'll we'll uh I I'll persevere. the sun is shining in my head oh that's. that's very pleasant Chuck it's not true. but it's a nice thing to say okay um so. uh that reminds me of that um remember. when Pebbles and bamb Bam on Flintstones. had like a brief singing career oh yeah. wasn't it like the sunshine in or there.

was something there hit single had to do. with Sunshine well I remember let the. sunshine in but was that the Brady Bunch. or was that Pebbles and Bam Bam you let. the sun shine in something something. with a. grin I don't think it was either of them. could have been the Brady Bunch though. well at any rate it just reminded me of. Pebbles and Bam Bam so that did my heart. good too alrighty so can I just briefly. say what we're talking about so people. don't think this is about the. Flintstones.

yeah although that'd be a fun episode. actually I agree I think that is a. future episode good idea all right uh. the shadow biosphere which is to say the. this notion this theoretical notion that. perhaps if you know we're constantly. looking for life on other planets and it. has been posited well what if there if. that life exists here on Earth but it. just doesn't look at all and it's not. made up of all uh the things that make.

up Life as we know it here on Earth mhm. and so we're just either looking in the. wrong places or not recognizing it as. something that's alive or both and. that's the shadow biosphere this idea. it's pretty cool yeah it is pretty cool. this I mean the one of the big problems. that you run into when you're talking. about a Shadows bi biosphere or plotting. to look for other forms of life that. just don't conform to what we think of. as Life as we know it um.

the big problem is is we don't really. have a working definition of life though. as Life as We Know It Like Us microbes. birds like there's not a real definition. that covers all of them and there is one. that scientists have agreed to generally. um settle on but if people who are into. the shadow biosphere which is to say. usually a combination of astrobiologists. and microbiologists it's where they're. two Fields overlap in a VIN diagram.

that's where the shadow biosphere lives. um they will say like this is wholly. inadequate like there are we need to. broaden the horizons or else we're never. going to detect anything that's not. living yeah and and I tell you what my. friend I hope one day during the life of. this show we do find life on other. planets that's significant so you will. stop doing articles about. it well this is so yeah okay fair fair. this is a pursuit of astrobiology but.

the thing that I find the most. fascinating is where microbiology comes. in and they're saying yeah this would. help us find or look for life off of. Earth yeah but it'll also help us find. life on earth like the idea that we. share a planet with other trees of life. that aren't related to us in any way. shape or form other than we we share the. planet and they function in ways similar. that Life as We Know It functions but. we're not related.

yeah I think that's neat I think it's. totally neat uh and here's the other. thing too is if and this is a pretty. important note if we do find something. here on life uh on earth that is uh like. a shadow life form of some sort we're. we're probably talking about microbes. just so people don't get super excited. um about the idea of chuds um being a. real. thing that's not a real thing we're not. going to CHS aren't real we're not going. to deep go deep down enough enough to.

find any cannibalistic humanoid. underground dwellers sadly uh so what. we're talking about here are microbes. and what we're talking about is this. idea put forth by very smart woman named. Carol Cleland from the University of. Colorado go. Buffalo's and I think the way she came. about it was like you hear about like. she came about it honestly I think this. is like one of those times uh because. she was in Spain uh she was observing. some molecular biologists they were. looking for uh soil microbes and.

microorganisms uh looking through these. samples and she was like hey they went. see and she said how do you know like. that you found something new like a new. microbe and they said well and I'm not. going to say this in Spanish because I. didn't translate at all I just know what. yes is see uh but they they said well. what we do is we look until we find. something that looks like it might hold. some promise uh then we um you know. we've looked at it under a micros scope.

then we put it in a Petri dish and just. grow the heck out of it and then isolate. its DNA and then look at the genome and. see like hey what does this look like. and then she went oh that's kind of cool. but uh I have another question it's kind. of like Tom Hanks and big like I don't. get it you're still. here uh she said well what if it's not. related to life on Earth like how would. you even know you're like how to. recognize something as being alive and. they all Shrugged and she wrote a book. about it oh see I imagine them all. freezing and one of them just drops the.

petri dish without like just drop like. they can't believe what they've just. heard they're stunned yeah and Co was in. that petri dish so so Carol Cleveland. makes a really excellent point and like. you said this kicked off the idea of. Shad Shadow biospheres and in fact she. coined that term but um what she's. saying is that our process of looking. for life would just walk right past. anything that doesn't conform to our. understanding of life but still is.

living in a certain definition of things. nailed it yeah so um just to kind of. step back for a second there there is a. some there's a consensus among. scientists that life conforms to a few. rules this is the the generally agreed. upon definition of life it's carbon. based check uh anything else is. non-living you know you look at a piece. of quartz um it's from Silicon I think. not living great example thanks Josh um.

it's programmed by DNA and RNA right so. it has transcription of um its genetic. code and that is just it does not live. without that um those things are built. by amino acids and proteins um those are. the basic building blocks of the. organism it's self-replicating very. important and then it also evolves. according to darwinian principles which. is to say that um the.

the best properties and traits are. selected for over time so if you put all. those things together you have a pretty. good idea about life but again this is a. really narrow definition and if you. really kind of look at it you're like. this is there's a lot of room for other. things to function in a man that's. living that that doesn't necessarily use. DNA or RNA that doesn't use amino acids. or at the very least the amino acids. that we use um and it it might not even.

be carbon based like maybe we can. broaden this a little bit and that's the. pursuit of Shadow biosphere yeah and. Carol Cleland was right of the money I. said she wrote a book it's really a. paper but um you know she could bind it. like a book and probably sell it in a. store sure but it was called the. possibility of alternative alternative. microbial life on Earth uh we're also. going to you know talk a little bit. about looking on other planets because. we've talked a lot about that and um.

suffice to say when we're looking for. life on other planets we're you know. we're always looking for like an. earthlike place where something like. Life as we know it could exist kind of. in the same way but she was like this. stuff might be right under our noses. everybody right uh and here's a paper. about it and uh I think it was pretty. smart paper um there was a uh should we. talk about the central dogma I guess. yeah I think we need to yeah so you know. you went over what life on Earth. contained but the central Dogma is a.

little more specific it was first. proposed by Francis Crick in the. 1950s um that is that uh DNA the nucleic. acid that we know and love has. instructions for building all the. proteins that are required for something. to be alive uh you also have RNA uh. which copies those instructions uh to. take them to the ribosomes which also. exist because that reads that RNA and. assembles everything all those amino. acids uh to make each protein and bada.

bing bada boom you have life right and. so you take that process and you end up. with What's called the origin of Life. the the Genesis of life here on Earth. and we. Genesis we talked about that's the. scientific way of saying it well okay um. put on my lab coat we've talked about. this before multiple times remember we. did an episode on. panspermia oh yeah um we've done a bunch. of episodes that I think this primordial. soup came up and that's the whole idea.

that either in some shallow tidal pool. or you know some warm part of the ocean. or some body of water there was a bunch. of the those basic building blocks of. life amino acids proteins floating. around and that somehow a. self-replicating process got kickstarted. and the self-replicating process is. considered what's called a privileged. function this idea that the that this.

mechanism for creating life was present. at the outset and is still around today. so we self-replicate a couple others. were metabolism that's another. suggestion for the privileged function. that kickstarted life or then. compartmentalization like having a um. something to hold all of these processes. in like a a bag of guts basically so one. of those they say is what was. responsible for kickstarting this. process of life and that somehow some. way a bunch of chemical reactions.

started a chain reaction that became. self- sustaining that eventually turned. into increasingly complex processes. organel and eventually living organisms. that that's how life developed that's. the idea behind the primordial soup that. the central dogma is based on that's. right uh but in Cleveland's paper she. was like well hold on a second that's. great what a story we love it we all. believe it um but what if this happened.

uh like more than one time what if it. happened multiple times right here on. Earth right uh there were just different. conditions and different places uh. different chemicals came together and uh. what if that happened and these are the. shadow microbes and what if this stuff. is still there and the reason that we. haven't found it is because we're. looking for again for life that we. understand as being alive right uh and. the ramifications that would have not. only to find stuff like that here on. Earth Earth but you know this idea that.

when we go out and look in outer space. for life on other planets again we're. looking for earthlike uh you know. atmospheres and earthlike conditions uh. she was like well what if we're looking. on the entirely wrong planets there. could be stuff that's alive cuz we're. just not looking in the right places. because we have such a narrow definition. yeah and we definitely have found. increasingly uh extremophile organisms. like for a long time we thought that. organisms couldn't survive past 120.

something degrees Fahrenheit then we. found some extremophiles that can. survive around hydrothermal vents that. um that are as hot as 212 degrees. Fahrenheit like okay that's pretty. awesome um but there it's still Life as. we know it you know like they're crazy. in their adaptation but they still. function according to the the properties. of Life as we know it what Carol Cleland. and others are saying is like okay we'll. keep looking in even more more extreme. environments and eventually you may find.

something that has had to adapt to such. an extreme environment it uses different. processes or different raw materials. that Life as we know it could not. possibly use and there you have your. first Shadow bio. organism I think we should take a great. rest here a long. rest we'll be back everybody after this. rest.

[Music]. and lo the podcasters rested hello and.

then on day two they got on with the. show uh we should mention by the way we. did a a pretty good episode on extrema. files yeah uh a while back so just if. you haven't heard it you should just uh. look up on the search engine of your. choice extrema file stuff you should. know pretty neat yeah um but back to. Shadow biosphere um you know we. mentioned the fact that uh you know. Carol Cleveland's beating that drum. saying what if it's not um something. that we recognize cuz we just don't. recognize it as Life as We Know mhm and.

then she started digging in and she was. like here's the thing DNA and RNA uh. aren't the only building blocks of life. in theory um they are made of base pairs. of nucleic acids uh for DNA it's um. adenine cyanine guine and thymine uh for. RNA it's thyine uh that is swapped out. for uh EUR cell but the other three are. the same but there are more nucleic I. believe there are six more nucleic acids. that exist uh exist in nature so you.

know why are we not even considering the. fact that those could be a part of life. in a way that we don't fully understand. right and first uracil sounds like an. over-the-counter urinary tract infection. treatment totally does secondly I could. not for the life of me and I really. looked find what the other six nucleic. acids are I can't find it Chuck but in. that search I did come across something. called the hachim Moji uh DNA which is.

those four a which is always together. and GC which are always together to form. those base pair nucleotides that. eventually build up into. DNA and they added p z b and s and well. that's them right the well that's four. so there's still two missing okay but. the really interesting thing that they. found uh is that if you take um if you. rearrange say the original four based.

pairs or you add these other brand new. four based Pairs and run them through a. ribosome the ribosome if you if you. arrange it correctly and they're made of. nucleic acids the ribosome will be like. okay I'm transcribing this so it it's. entirely possible they proved that there. it it's possible that life could have. evolved separately from us by using. different amino acids but similar. mechanisms so so maybe we are or could.

be in this sense distantly related to. them like maybe in the primordial soup. but it branched off so early that for. all intents and purposes it's it's. non-living life as far as our definition. of life goes yeah well you nice job. finding four of those six letters at. least let's just call the other two. Fu science yeah so uh so that's how DNA. and RNA could be you know uh different. as we know it um the same thing is true.

for amino acids uh all the proteins are. built from the same combination of 20. amino acids because when Earth formed. those were the 20 amino acids that in a. darwinian sense were most successful uh. making proteins that survived when life. emerged um there are 500 we're not going. to name them 500 other amino acids or. more than 500 amino acids on Earth. exclamation point yeah totally so it's. just the fact that earth started when it.

did that those particular 20 amino acids. were the ones that were good at doing. what needed to be done to make things. that survived here but it could have. been you know at a different time it. could have been any other combination of. amino acids and they're still out there. exactly so a lot of scientists are like. well that just goes to show you that. Life as we know it is the only kind of. life if we're using the same 20 amino. acids and there's all these others out. there these are the ones that got. selected for these are the ones that. worked in the primordial soup and Carol. Cleland steps forward again with her uh.

index finger raised and says okay I can. see where you're coming from but again. as I said before if life emerged in. other places in other situations under. other conditions in the primordial soup. it's entirely possible that completely. different combinations of the other. kinds of amino acids were the most um. usable and were selected for that and. again this is how the Shadows biosphere. could have started and another Petri. dish got dropped and these guys are.

starting to second guess uh undermining. Carol Cleveland or even attempting to. because she just keeps facing them over. and over again yeah and they're like. well how would that have happened or how. could that happen she said I don't know. how about how about a meteor uh sucker. sure uh because meteorites have fallen. to the Earth and asteroids that. basically plant stuff on Earth that come. from another place uh there have been. meteorites that have fallen that are. carrying up to 80 other am acids and her.

whole theory is that like uh what if. this has happened and it maybe it's. happened repeatedly and again we just. don't know about it because we're not. looking correctly right so um yeah the. the pans spermia episode that was the. basis of it that Earth got seated with. the the necessary ingredients for life. from space right that's right so um. there's another peculiar um aspect of. Life as We Know It that doesn't really. make sense to us and and I don't fully.

get how it would tie into the shadow. biosphere so if you do let me know but. the best I can understand is that. because we don't know it and because. it's like it just seems like a random. arbitrary um development in Life as We. Know It that it suggests things could go. the other way and maybe they have. Elsewhere on Earth is that how you read. it too yeah I think so okay just like an. example of like see this can happen. right okay good that's what I'm taking. it as too and we're talking about.

chirality and uh chyal is handedness in. Greek um you're either right-handed or. you're left-handed um or you could be. amodex but that's neither here nor there. when we're talking about cellular. biology or molecular science which is. what this pertains to and if you make a. bunch of um sugars or a bunch of amino. acids in the lab some are going to be. left-handed and some are going to be. right-handed but as far as life on Earth.

is concerned only left-handed amino. acids and only right-handed sugars can. be useful in as the building blocks of. life so there's right-handed amino acids. and left-handed sugars but they are. completely useless to us because all. life on Earth only uses left-handed. amino acids and only uses right-handed. sugars and we just don't know why yeah. and if this sounds like all right guys.

what are you talking about here with. these hands um it's not hands it's the. direction that their uh atoms are. oriented yeah uh they talk about it in. terms of handedness I think just as a. well I hate to say it as a Shand uh so. dumb humans like us can understand what. they're talking about at least halfway. right and so um because there's. left-handed and right-handed amino acids. they are mirror images of one another. they're constructed the exact same way. they're constructed with the exact same.

components to make up these molecules. but they are mirror images so if you. overlay them they're not they're not. twins mere images so in exactly the same. way if you hold your hands out in front. of you Palms down so tops up and you. just kind of hold one over the other. they're not twins they're mirror images. of one another and that's exactly true. with amino acids and sugars um they each. have a mirror image and again only one. kind is useful to life the other ones.

just get spit out so what if uh again. under different conditions at some point. in the past there were organisms that. learned to use the other kind. left-handed um sugars and right-handed. amino acids that would certainly qualify. as a a shadow biosphere bio. organism yeah and we have uh syn. synthesize these in Labs um but what's. the deal what I don't understand if they. were able to synthesize it that means. that it did already exist but it just.

isn't anything that was. alive yeah I don't know exactly what. they did they they built a cell that. uses um. right-handed sugarin acids. yeah yeah um and they they I don't know. if it was living or not I don't think it. was living or else they would be like we. created artificial life here I don't. think anyone's ever done that I think. they just created the structure of it. like if there if there was something. like a cell that used that kind of stuff.

this is what it would be structured as. and the whole reason they built it was. to try to attract things like um chairo. viruses that function using the opposite. stuff that we use for life it was a. Honey Trap is the way that they put it. like they take it out to a club and set. it on a bar table and they're like Hello. everybody ex here right so um nothing. came along and took the bait but that. doesn't mean it's not there the better. argument against things like that living. if you ask me that I ran across is that.

if you did have something like that that. could consume other things um it would. have no natural Predators it would um it. would not be able to be infected by any. of the known viruses we have it would be. unstoppable and it would replicate in. such an unchecked manner that it would. apocalyptically destroy the food web. based on whatever you know one microbe. that it feasted on and because that's. not happened there's a pretty good.

chance that there's no such thing as. that yeah uh I guess now we can talk a. little bit about the last Universal. common ancestor or the Luca uh which is. the idea that all life on Earth can be. traced back to this very first. functioning cell that started the whole. party um if we believe in something like. the shadow. biosphere um there can still be a last. Universal common ancestor I think in. terms of what created our life um but we. have to consider the fact that there.

were multiple Genesis that happened at a. certain point um and you know maybe they. just didn't evolve because you know part. of that uh opening four things that we. talked about was that things evolved in. a sort of the darwinian sense that we. recognize right but the idea of the. Shadows biosphere is maybe these things. did occur at various sort of calm. periods on Earth where there weren't you. know uh ice ages or it wasn't being. bombarded by by asteroids. um and that they're still there they.

just never evolve they're just sort of. Trapped yeah that's one that's one. example there's another explanation that. they might be in places we haven't. explored yet so like there could be you. know life on the surface of Earth and. then we find microbes all the way down. to some you know level and it gets too. hot for them and then it's a dead zone. well maybe Beyond The Dead Zone there's. these you know Shadow biosphere. organisms um and then another argument I. saw um against the idea so a lot of. scientists are like sure it's entirely. possible there were different origins of.

life but the other one sputtered out. only ours continued on um a lot of they. that's not a very controversial idea. what's controversial is that it didn't. sputter out that they just evolved and. we share Earth with them right um but a. lot of the arguments against that state. that okay well maybe it did make it. beyond the sputtering stage and it was. you know we shared the primordial soup. with it but it got absorbed into us and. um now it's a part of us but you know.

not really anymore and that misses the. point because what they're talking about. is lateral Gene transfer where like say. one cell just takes over another cell. and they share DNA from that point on um. that's totally missing the point like. that would not be a shadow organism it'd. be an early additional ancestor to us. this is stuff that we couldn't possibly. have you know mixed with to become us or. else it wouldn't. a shadow bio organism it would just be.

another component that created Life as. we know it that's right and lateral Gene. transfer was totally an AC capella skin. group from the 70s a gospel group oh led. by a guy named Jean nice yeah wow I've. got the record I'm not it's not even a. joke are you kidding you're not kidding. ha I got you wow you did get me that was. good finally well the 70s were pretty. wacky so. oh goodness it is a meal best serve cold.

do you um do you want to take a break. and Savor that for a little while uh. yeah sure let's go ahead and take a. break I'm going to take another nap and. dream about getting Josh and then we'll. be right back. [Music].

all right Chuck so we said that um or I. should say you said at the outset that. nobody's looking for you know some. silicon werewolf or something right oh. man so great so instead there we're. we're looking for microbes and the. reason that everybody agrees if there is. a shadow biosphere it's microbial life.

is a couple of reasons one we could look. at a microb and look right past it they. don't have faces they don't have tails. they don't have hair they don't really. have any features that would really. stand out just visually we have to. really examine them to find the. differences that we would be looking for. and then on top of that we've only. cultured and described less than 1% of. all of the estimated species of microbes. on Earth right so we have very little.

understanding in the big picture of the. microbial life we share Earth with so. it's entirely possible we just haven't. stumbled upon one yet but that doesn't. mean it's not there in that other 99% of. the kinds of microbes on Earth with us. right now yeah for sure and you know. we've kind of walked around this very. plain statement but the plain statement. is look where we think or look where we. so far think that nothing here can live. cuz that might be a great place MH to.

start you know if we're like oh nothing. can live in in the Dead Sea uh micro. organisms because it's just it's so um. full of saline that we just know nothing. could live like well maybe start there. or you mentioned earlier the fact that. uh things uh we didn't think anything. could sustain life greater than like 122. degrees Fahrenheit but then we. discovered colonies of bacteria that. could we're like well that's evidence. right there that maybe we should look in. like really really hot places really.

really cold places really acidic places. really base places uh any anything on. the list that says human life can't. exist there maybe start looking there. what's crazy is when we have looked. there we keep finding stuff that can. exist like life um that is doing just. fine there that just should not be there. um the best example I found are um types. of I think slime mold maybe or algae. that it lives in um abandoned uranium.

mines so this place is so crazy. radioactive no life should be able to to. survive there and yet they think these. things are actually taking that. radiation and using it as chemical. energy and then there's also a kind of. um singular single cellular life that. they found growing in one of the. abandoned Chernobyl. reactors again should not be there. because of the radioactivity but these. things still conform to the basic. principles of Life as we know it the the.

point is though is you just keep. thinking in more and more extremes and. you know maybe we'll find it um like the. upper atmosphere is the one that's. suggested uh because no life supposed to. be able to live up there because of the. cosmic rays and um the temperature and. all that stuff it's just not a pleasant. place to live from what I understand and. then other people are like okay if we. keep looking and um in these more. extreme environments and we're just. finding Life as we know it maybe we.

should look around and see if we find. anything weird in places like right. under our very noses and one of the big. ones that uh has been touted is Desert. varnish and this one from what I can. tell is still the jury's out whether. it's a shadow bio organism yeah or not. or or. not you're hanging out there like a Chad. uh so so yeah if you've ever been out to. the to the desert in the United States.

if you've ever driven around like Utah. or Arizona maybe even uh Colorado maybe. New Mexico you might have been driving. along and seeing like a a very sheer. sort of Cliff face and within that Cliff. face you might be like oh that's weird. sort of shiny dark area of it um they're. always really Aid environments um. indigenous peoples used to create uh. petroglyphs um so instead of like you. know writing on something they would.

scrape away that varnish uh to make. their art for the original lighter. colored uh Earth underneath it uh but I. mean I've seen these things in person. I've driven by it and I just I didn't. know what it was I just figured it was. dark rock or something right um but it's. called desert varnish and scientists. have been fascinated for a long long. time uh one reason is because it grows. about the pace of a width of a human. hair every. Millennium uh and because that happens. so slowly um they were like well this is.

just a geological process that's going. on maybe the the Sun hitting it um some. sort of chemical reaction takes place um. but they found that that's it's actually. a living thing right they don't know. there's no geochemical process that. accounts for it there's no biological. process that accounts for it they just. don't know um it's largely manganese in. nature but the problem is it's not. drawing manganese out of the Rock like a. lot of these rocks don't have any. manganese or have such Trace Amounts.

that it certainly wouldn't account for. this desert varnish so they just don't. know how this stuff is growing or what. it is but it's probably the greatest. Contender right now for a shadow. organism um from what I can tell like. like they're like well then it must be a. geochemical process we just don't. understand and it's like maybe what. you're calling geochemical is actually. life in a different manner yeah I I. guess there just said this Theory uh. that it's alive that it's biochemical.

yeah there was also one that was like we. found it everybody we found the shadow. organism and um it went downhill from. there back in 2010 yeah that was uh gfag. g-1 uh that is a bacterium that was. found in Mono Lake. California and they were like well this. bacterium is really weird because it. doesn't it's not sort of playing by the. rules that we understand um because if. you if you're going to be a living thing. uh to make DNA and RNA you need.

phosphorus and it doesn't look like this. thing is using phosphorus it looks like. it's using arsenic which would be a huge. huge find um and so they thought GFA J-1. you're you're the dude and everyone was. really hot on this idea and then they. did follow-up experiments and very sadly. found out that it used very very very. small amounts of. phosphorus and it just wasn't instantly. uh evident so they were like all right. just another extremophile that's that we.

understand yeah now we know cool that's. another benefit of it like we're finding. stuff because we're out looking for. shadow life we're finding other life. still too so that's I mean it's not like. they're like another extreme ofile. that's never been seen in in the history. of humanity Just Junk it that's an. interesting way that you pronounce that. I've been in my head pronouncing it Gage. Uno. [Laughter].

so uh okay let's let's move. on let's move on to life with the why. Chuck because I think that that's um. that's a good next place to start yeah. there's a guy well here's the idea is. that like hey maybe there is just we. should just accept the idea that l i f. isn't all we think it is and maybe it's. broader than that and maybe or maybe we. just need another definition. Lyfe and I think that was put forward by.

an astrobiologist named Stuart uh. Barlett not Bartlett just. Bartlett and he said well maybe that is. uh the the Lyfe definition is just any. system and this is a quote any system. that fulfills all four processes of the. living State namely dissipation Auto uh. catalysis catalysis either one catalysis. homeostasis and learning yeah so just to. get into it real quick um dissipation.

means that it dissipates energy or. something like waste byproducts like. heat uh that's a big one or else it'll. overheat and die or it will never um. poop out its food and will'll die from. that that's it's just a really easily. overlooked component of some an organism. that can keep going um also uh it needs. to be able to make more copies of itself. that's that Auto cusis catalysis. autocatalysis sure um that's uh that's.

important because what it's doing is um. it's creating a process that creates. another version of itself and also a. product that triggers that process over. again so it can just keep going um it. also has to be able to maintain. homeostasis so it can't just go totally. Haywire any time you know somebody. nearby coughs and then uh lastly it's. got to be able to recordation about the. environment like this is how you keep.

from going haywire um when somebody. coughs and it can be encoded in some way. shape or form so it can be passed on to. the replicants of itself yeah that's. life with a why and I think that's the. exactly the kind of broadened uh. definition that we need and the other. thing about life with the why that. includes life with an eye like Life as. we know it and just saying life with an. eye is so much less clunky Than Life as. we know it um and it's it falls under a.

larger umbrella so it's a broader. definition that includes Life as we know. it but also potentially includes uh. members of The Shadow biosphere as. well yeah and what this potentially. means is if there is life with a Y uh. here or elsewhere that means uh that. kind of anything is possible it it. doesn't mean that um hey there's. intelligent life out there but it. doesn't mean there's not I mean it would. certainly kind of Interest that idea in. a in a very real way if we found that.

there is a different kind of life we. just never understood before um here or. elsewhere uh there's a astrophysicist. named Paul Davies really smart guy. obviously uh who has done a lot of uh. scholarship work about intelligent life. uh elsewhere and he talks about timing a. lot like you know Earth happened the way. it did and this kind of like what we. touched on earlier Earth happened the. way it did because of the timing of it. all uh we've been around for about four. and a half billion years and we won't be.

around in about a billion years like the. the Earth will be scorched basically uh. by the sun and it was just sort of. cosmic luck that everything evolves when. it did uh as it did uh because there's a. kind of a short window in the grand. scheme of things between between when uh. something starts happening and being. able to get to the point where you have. like intelligent life like human beings. uh and the Planet being scorched or. being blasted Away by a large rock yeah.

so Paul Davy's argument kind of suggests. that life is probably um pretty rare if. not singular like the only we we do know. that life emerged once in the entire. universe that led to us and all Life as. we know it but that's it we don't know. that life emerged anywhere else any. other time including on Earth and that's. one of the things that would make. detecting a shadow biosphere so amazing. is it would it would essentially. immediately say the universe is teaming.

with life if life developed two. different ways on the same planet that s. strongly suggests that not only is there. life elsewhere in the universe but that. biology is as immutable a cosmic or. universal law as physics or chemistry. right that if you have even just the a. few components put together um that that. gives rise to life biolog is going to. take over and life will arise that's.

ultimately the most exciting thing that. gets scientists jazzed about looking for. the shadow biosphere is what the. implications it will have about us. sharing life elsewhere in the universe. yeah totally pretty cool stuff huh yeah. I like it Chuck I'm glad that we did. this thanks for doing it with me it was. fun we got through it yeah we did um. well since we got through it everybody. that means it's time for listener. ma uh I'm going to just read this one.

from Joel because it's kind of just a. fun little little Diddy uh hey guys I. guess it's not a diddy it's a story. first off I want to say thanks for all. the work you do uh to create a enjoyable. and informative listening experience. I've been a casual listener since 2018. and your show has positively redirected. the course of my day uh or staved off. boredom through Long Winter nights uh. because I live on Salt Spring Island BC. off the coast of Vancouver Island and. work at a golf course there uh today I. was mowing the fairways on a wet and.

dreary morning I put on the Manson. murderers podcast and relax into my work. partway through Dennis Wilson came into. the story and Chuck mentioned his solo. album uh I think it's called Pacific. Ocean Blue maybe I don't know I think so. great record uh feeling a little low I. decided to pause the podcast and listen. to the full album I listened to all the. songs as I continued my mool lines truly. a wonderfully enjoyable album uh thank. you for that Excursion into the music.

once the album finished I uh listen to. the mower for a few minutes and then. resume the podcast and the first words I. hear are Chuck saying eventually they. leave Dennis Wilson's house and I. chuckled as I genuinely felt I had just. been in his house myself neat uh anyway. short little story for me thank you for. the years of entertainment keep up the. great work that is from. Joel uh and Joel sent a picture of that. Fairway mode while listening to Pacific. Ocean Blue and Joel it has a beautiful.

golf course and I would love to play it. one day oh very nice yeah you're you're. a golfer I forget that sometimes I am. I'm not very good but I enjoy putting. the phone away for 5 hours and walking. around with my buddies in the sunshine. very nice uh well thanks a lot Joel much. appreciated we love stories like that. and if you want to be like Joel send us. an email send it off to stuff podcast at. iheartradio.com. [Music]. stuff you should know is a production of. iHeart radio for more podcasts myart.

radio visit the iHeart Radio app Apple. podcasts or wherever you listen to your. favorite shows. [Music].