Blog
Neanderthals – what happened to them?
We have long been fascinated by the Neanderthals and for good reason. All of us, outside of sub-Saharan Africa, are a bit Neanderthal. This is because we carry a small fraction of the Neanderthal genome acquired long ago when our ancestors left Africa. A relatively small group of our ancestors […]
First and forever a microbial world
They are so small, we rarely give them a thought and yet they are out there in numbers too enormous for us to comprehend. In fact, they are estimated to constitute no less than half of the total mass of all life on Earth. So, when you next look out […]
Origin of life
How did life first came about? Our planet started out as a molten magma ball too hot for life, but the oldest fossils indicate that it was established soon after Earth had cooled sufficiently to be covered by oceans of water suitable for life. Evolutionary theory allows us to understand […]
Deep Time/Big History
From stardust to life … Where did you come from? Like many questions, the answer depends on the timeframe. At the one, most recent extreme is the seemingly straightforward response that you came from your mother, grown in the space of nine months from one of her eggs fertilized by […]
Is there anybody out there?
Planets and Exoplanets Earth could be considered rarefied if it belongs to a small, esoteric and exclusive group of planets that are rocky, orbit within the habitable zone of their stars and support life. NASA’s Kepler space observatory has now confirmed the existence of at least 2000 planets beyond our […]
