On the cusp of 2012, I’ve invited 11 of the greater Houston area’s top minds to contemplate the world’s end. Lightheartedly I’ve asked them, before the Mayan apocalypse, for the one burning question that they’d like to see answered before the cataclysm. A new entry in the 11 for ’12 series will be published each morning during the holidays.
Today’s question comes from Adam Kuspa, vice president for research at Baylor College of Medicine.
Before The End in 2012, I would want to know whether there is life beyond our solar system.
More specifically, I would want to know the percentage of earthlike planets in the Universe that harbor life. I realize that my question assumes that only the low-energy chemistry that constitutes life on Earth is compatible with what we would call life, but I am okay with this limitation. If the percentage is very low, say that life exists on one in every one billion earthlike planets, I would be thrilled to know there is even one other planet that harbors life.
Of course, it would be much more interesting if the percentage is high, say 1 in 1,000 Earths. If that were the case, I would want to know about the general characteristics of the metabolism and reproduction of life forms on 100 such planets. How are resources assimilated and converted into characteristic structures or into useful forms of work, such as movement? Are there commonalities in metabolic networks? How is adaptation to the environment achieved over short times spans, and across generations?
Perhaps most important, I would want to know how information is transferred to offspring. Information transfer is critical because it allows useful developments to be passed on without the need for them to be reinvented every generation.
At this point you are probably thinking I am asking for answers to all sorts of questions and I was to be given the answer to only one question! Allow me to defend my unfair play. The first part of this short essay was a way to introduce the real answer that I am after, which to me is the greatest unanswered question.
As planets cool and organic chemicals accumulate, is their organization into autocatalytic, self-perpetuating life forms inevitable?
Does life just happen?