Week 8, Life in the universe

• Lecture 4.01: Introduction to life
• Lecture 4.02: Photosynthesis
• Lecture 4.03: Water
• Lecture 4.04: Alternative energy sources
• Lecture 4.05: History of life on Earth
• Lecture 4.06: Mars -- the Viking experiment
• Lecture 4.07: Mars -- Microbial hitchhikers
• Lecture 4.08: Mars -- methane?
• Lecture 4.09: Mars -- Methane !! (?!)
• Lecture 4.10: Mars -- a habitable environment

Additional Reading

Lecure 4.01: Introduction to life

• There are many interesting musings (some useful, some less so) about "What is life?". Try here for what I think of as a very balanced approach.
• An interesting in depth discussion from Carl Sagan is here
• A smorgasbord of opinions is here

Lecture 4.02: Photosynthesis

• There is much much much to learn about photosynthesis. A good start is Wikipedia, though, as often happens, the article jumps into detail before the basics. Skip down some and read about the basics.
• From there go to cellular respiration and from there, go crazy

Lecture water 4.03: Water

• Read up on polar molecules and how they hydrogen bond
• A nice little article on the properties of water

Lecture 4.04: Alternative energy sources

• Archaea are a fascinating group of microbes. You can start here and read about methanogens (which are only one of many types of archaea!)
• Chemosynthesis, in general, is covered here

Lecture 4.05: The history of life

• This Wikipedia article on the history of the Earth is actually quite nice (though, like many Wikipedia articles, it occasionally takes a single paper which says something controversial and cites it as the gospel truth).

Lecture 4.06: Viking

• A nice discussion of the details of the Viking experiments
• And a modern update
• And, of course, wikipedia

Lecture 4.08: Methane on Mars

• The original paper
• It's seasonal!

Lecture 4.09: Habitable on Mars

• The Grotzinger article
• Chemistry of the stuff; Google scholar is your friend