Göttingen 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

EP: Fachverband Extraterrestrische Physik

EP 9: Exoplanets and Astrobiology

EP 9.7: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 2. April 2025, 18:00–18:15, ZHG005

Extraterretrial life? — •Karin Moelling — Institute of Medical Microbiology (IMM), Gloriatr 30, 8006 Zürich

Life on Earth is the only one we now of. Could there be life on one of the stars or exoplanets in the Universe? The main elements for life on Earth are "CHNOPS", which are universal and can give rise to nucleic acids, lipids and aminoacids, the essential macromolecules of terrestrial life. Life is characteized by repliction and evolution in response to environmental conditions.The simplest biomolecule for life om Earth is RNA,ribozymes or viroids. Also all metabolic processes in all species are very similar,and suggest a single origin, based on water, carbon and oxygen - are they also biomarkers for extraterrestrial life? On Earth life created its own living conditions, such as cyanobacteria which produced the toxic oxygen, now a biomarker of life. However, unaerobia live without oxygen. In meteorites 80 AA can be detected while we are only using 20. Our genetic code would not allow coding for them. Could there be different metabolism, genetic codes, biomarkers which lead to other forms of life. Could they be designed by alphaFold and AI, which may help us find unknown forms of life? Extremophiles and unique Earth properties will be discussed.

Keywords: Origin of life; Cyanobacteria; RNA; viruses; extremophiles