Four vertical kilometres of ice: but it us what’s underneath this ice that has turned this remote piece of Antarctica into one of the most hottest pieces of real-estate in the world. For beneath their feet lies a vast mysterious lake. No-one has ever seen it. And for a long time no-one knew it existed. But the most enticing prospect of all is what scientists might find living down there. Horizon: The Lost World of Lake Vostok, BBC 2000
The massive ceiling of ice would create a place of absolute dark and intense cold. Crushed by immense pressure. A strange and hostile other-world here on Earth. It was a stunning discovery. Scientists were tantalised. ibid.
If anything has survived in Lake Vostok, it will be microbes. They are the magicians of survival. ibid.
The Russians began drilling these cores twenty-five years ago ... There was a problem. Drilling is a dirty job ... If the drill entered the lake, the purest body of water on Earth would have its first oil slick. ibid.
NASA have come up with an ingenious alternative: they could melt their way down. ibid.
It was the first time scientists had found compelling evidence for liquid water outside our own planet. Liquid water is the single most important requisite for life. So finding an ocean on Europa presented NASA with the extraordinary possibility that Europa could be home to extraterrestrial life. This is what NASA had always dreamt of. But exploring this alien world in search of life seemed an impossible task. NASA had worked out that the ice on Europa is many kilometres thick. And developing clean technology to penetrate it would pose a completely new challenge. And then they heard about Lake Vostok. ibid.
Other than light, what else could fuel life? A clue came from underneath a rubbish dump in Romania. Here cave scientists stumbled across a biological treasure trove ... It was like a bubble trapped in rock until it was broken into. Nothing from the surface had got into it perhaps for millions of years. What they had found was a world as dark and isolated as Lake Vostok ... But these creatures were unlike anything he had seen before ... The cave was completely cut off from the surface. Nothing could get through; the scum was a thick microbial mat. This was the base of the food chain. But what were the microbes living on? ... In the absence of sunlight they were using hydrogen sulphide as their energy source. ibid.
For many biologists there seemed to be only one possible solution: there may have been a severe ice-age but not a fully fledged snowball that covered all the oceans because life-forms that should have died out are still with us. Horizon: Snowball Earth, BBC 2001
The ice becomes clean and transparent. Because of this transparency life-giving sunlight would have been reaching down into the snowball seas. McKay realised that even at its height there would have been havens around the snowball’s equator where the ice is thin enough for photo-synthetic life to cling on below. ibid.
It may just be that the snowball saga was the biggest force for the development of life the world has ever seen. ibid.
Mars seems an unlikely place to look for life. It’s far too cold for water. Temperatures can be minus 100°. And there’s virtually no atmosphere ... But it seems that Mars was once far more hospitable. Horizon: Life on Mars, BBC 2001
Pathfinder confirmed that the vast Martian channels had been carved by enormous floods. So what does this mean for the chances of finding life? Some of these floods seemed quite recent ... The floods on Mars were thousands of times bigger than anything on Earth today. Where did the water go? ibid.
At the end of the Permian era 95% of all life died. It was the biggest traverse in the forward march of evolution ever recorded. Yet up to recently relatively nothing was known about this extraordinary event ... 250,000 million years ago hundreds of thousands of square miles of Siberia caught fire ... It started with the Siberian Traps. Horizon: The Day the Earth Nearly Died, BBC 2002
An ancient life-form with ancient viruses – this discovery convinced Professor Young that viruses are much older than we’ve previously thought. Viruses have been infecting life from the moment it first emerged. And they’re a huge driving evolutionary force. They have helped determine what has lived and what has died. Horizon: Why Do Viruses Kill? BBC 2010
It’s a hot and humid July in 2001. And something very strange has happened on planet Earth. Here is southern India many villages are the focus of a possible alien invasion. It starts with rain. Red rain. The local people were horrified. Horizon: We are the Aliens? 2006 re downfall of red rain southern India 2001
The particles weren’t dust at all. They were alive. But what was this mysterious life-form? There was only one way to find out: take a look at the DNA. The results came back: there was no DNA. It was life but not as we know it. ibid.
The discovery of DNA in the red rain cells has been corroborated by another lab. Yet this recent finding has done nothing to dent Chandra’s unshakable belief that the red rain is extraterrestrial. He believes that all life in the cosmos will probably share various types of DNA. ibid.
Extremophiles are far tougher than anyone had thought possible. Life can live just about anywhere. ibid.
Life has even been found living in a place more extreme than frozen penguin-do: happily making home in the heart of a nuclear reactor. ibid.
In 2001 a new NASA probe was launched. Called Odyssey it was sent to Mars to carry out the most detailed analysis ever of the planet’s surface. What it has discovered may be about to answer one of the great questions, and solve one of Astronomy’s biggest mysteries: Are we alone in the universe or is there life on Mars? Horizon: Life on Mars, BBC 2003
This is why Mars has so obsessed scientists: if life has arisen independently on the planet just next to us, then the chances must be that life will be everywhere. In which case we are not alone. ibid.
The idea of life on Mars was first popularised by an American astronomer called Percival Lowell in the 1890s. He claimed he could see evidence of a civilisation of Mars. The lines criss-crossing its surface he believed were not geological accidents but canals linking Martian cities. ibid.
In July 1965 reality intruded: Mariner 4 became the first probe to fly by Mars and photograph it. At last the world would see what the land of the little green men really looked like. ibid.
Mars may look dry but there are signs of water there. ibid.
They’ve discovered [on Earth] that bacteria can survive in the permafrost for far longer than anyone had thought possible. ibid.
Plants grown on Mars may be very different from those on Earth. The lower gravity on Mars – one third of that on Earth – means that plants and animals may grow taller and thinner. ibid.
Around the world there are a group of highly intelligent and highly trained scientists that share a surprising belief: for these scientists the vastness of our universe can mean only one thing: the existence of life. Horizon: Are We Alone in the Universe? BBC 2008
Back in 1960 Frank Drake went about creating an equation that would answer the big question once and for all. ibid.
Gliese 581c: the smallest and most-Earth-like exoplanet ever discovered. ibid.
On 7th April 2001 NASA launched Odyssey carrying [William] Boynton’s device. And this time everything went according to plan. Once in Mars’ orbit the instrument was deployed. And the gamma-ray detector could get to work. The data was radioed back from Odyssey to NASA to the University of Tucson and finally to Boynton’s desk. As the data came through, a picture started to build. It could only mean one thing: there is water-ice on Mars today. And there is masses of it ... But the question of whether life was actually remained unanswered. Mars: A Horizon Guide, BBC 2009
Our species is just a tiny twig on this massive tree of life. Dr Alice Roberts, Horizon: Are We Still Evolving? BBC 2011
On Earth whenever there is water, there is life. The Final Frontier: A Horizon Guide to the Universe, BBC 2012
Over billions of years the natural world has evolved exquisite beauty and complexity. But just recently we’ve started to do something remarkable: we’ve found a way to take life and radically redesign it. Horizon: Playing God, BBC 2012
Can this power be abused? ibid.
Dr Craig Venter had created something unique: a completely synthetic life-form. ibid.
Life can be programmed like a machine and that the components can be simply ordered online from a standardised tool kit. ibid.
This is synthetic biology at full tilt. ibid.
This technology has breath-taking potential. ibid.
The oceans define the Earth. They are crucial to life … We’ve recently discovered oceans all over the Solar System, and they’re very similar to our own. Now scientists are going on an epic journey in search of new life in places that never seemed possible. Horizon: Oceans of the Solar System, BBC 2016
Four and a half billion years ago the Martian ocean covered nineteen per cent of the planet and was as deep as the Mediterranean. ibid.
In Ganymede’s ocean there’s more water than the whole of the Earth. But it lies under a hundred and fifty kilometres of ice. ibid.