Astrobiology and the Origins of Life. Finding Life Beyond Earth. PBS Airdate: October 19, 2011 NARRATOR: Is Earth the only planet of its kind in the universe, or is there somewhere else like this out there?
Is there life beyond Earth? The search for alien life is one of humankind's greatest technological challenges. And scientists are seeking new ways to find answers. JIM GREEN (Director, Planetary Science Division, NASA): We're pushing the boundary of information of where life can exist, past the earth and out into the solar system. NARRATOR: Leading the search are sophisticated telescopes that scan the sky and an armada of robotic probes exploring the outer reaches of our solar system, all revealing the planets, moons, asteroids and comets like never before.
AMY MAINZER: We can go places and see things that there's no other way we could've ever seen. JIM GREEN: The pace of discovery, just in the last couple of years, is just mindboggling. NARRATOR: Finding Life Beyond Earth, up now on NOVA. NARRATOR: But what exactly is this liquid? Are We Still Evolving? Inquiry: AN OCCASIONAL COLUMN By Peter Tyson Posted 12.14.09 NOVA The answer depends—and doesn't—on which humans you ask.
"There has been no biological change in humans in 40,000 or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we've built with the same body and brain. " —Stephen Jay Gould I was surprised when I read these words from one of the 20th century’s leading thinkers on evolutionary theory. I've got blue eyes and light skin, traits thought to have first arisen many thousands of years after we humans left our ancestral homeland of Africa around 50,000 years ago. In short, could we really be exactly the same as we were when the ancestors of all of us first spread out from the African continent with their simple stone tools and hunter-gatherer lifestyles? Enlarge Photo credit: (clockwise, from top left) © Özgür Donmaz/iStockphoto; © Peeter Viisimaa/iStockphoto; © Rhoberazzi/iStockphoto; © Robert Dodge/iStockphoto Simple question, complicated answer, as I found out.
Sources. Creation–evolution controversy. The creation–evolution controversy (also termed the creation vs. evolution debate or the origins debate) involves a recurring cultural, political, and theological dispute about the origins of the Earth, of humanity, and of other life.[1] This debate rages most publicly in the United States of America, but to a lesser extent also proceeds in Europe and elsewhere,[2] often portrayed as part of a culture war.[3] Christian fundamentalists dispute the evidence of common descent of humans and other animals as demonstrated in modern palaeontology, and those who defend the conclusions of modern evolutionary biology, geology, cosmology, and other related fields.
They argue for the Abrahamic religions' accounts of creation, framing it as reputable science ("creation science"). The debate is sometimes portrayed as being between science and religion, but as the United States National Academy of Sciences states: History[edit] [edit] Creationism in theology[edit] Origin of Life 1. Life Came From Other Planets. Myth of the Organic Soup & Abiogenesis. Facts Of Evolution (Cassiopeia Project) Breaking the Illusion of Limitation. Evolution of Life On Other Planets: Even the Gods Have Gods.