Word: liquidation
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...science today is offering an elaborately conditioned answer about where extraterrestrial life might possibly be. Two American astronomers have found a planet or two outside our solar system whereon conditions exist (liquid water the temperature of hot tea, for example) that may be hospitable to life...
...only do these still unnamed planets triple the number of worlds known to orbit stars like the sun--the only other example having been found just four months ago--but they have an even more profound significance. Both of them are temperate enough to allow water to exist in liquid form. And whatever else is necessary for life as we know it, say biologists, liquid water is an absolute prerequisite...
...assuming the existence of Earthlike planets, few astronomers doubt they are out there. If other solar systems do contain Earthlike worlds, says NASA exobiologist Michael Meyer, at least some should fall into the "habitable zone"--the region, governed by a planet's distance from its star, where water is liquid rather than solid or gaseous. "The good news," he says, "is that if our solar system is typical, there's a 50% chance that a planet will be in the right zone...
That is crucial, observes David Des Marais, a NASA biogeochemist. Liquid water is an ideal medium in which carbon-based organic chemicals can dissolve and react with one another in myriad ways. Why carbon, necessarily? Because, says Des Marais, "it is such a versatile chemical. It makes so many different and complex compounds. And it's the fourth most abundant element in the universe." Carbon compounds literally litter the cosmos, drifting through interstellar space in giant molecular clouds and making up a significant percentage, by mass, of comets and asteroids. Some scientists are convinced that the basic building blocks...
...brief fling with one-cell life that could have left fossil evidence behind. Some even hold out the hope that microorganisms are still surviving somewhere under the Martian surface. Attention is also turning to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons; its icy white surface could conceal oceans of liquid water, and perhaps some sorts of living organism. Both possibilities are likely targets of future NASA investigation...