The Hitchhiking Microbe’s Guide to the Galaxy
4/15/202626 min
Can microbes travel through space on meteorites? It’s an idea called “lithopanspermia,” and to work out if it’s even feasible, some researchers decided to shoot microbes — with a gun.
Guests: K.T. Ramesh, professor of science and engineering at Johns Hopkins University; Lily Zhao, mechanical engineer at Johns Hopkins University
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsBertie Pinkerton· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Breaking news. The world is a mess and it seems like it's just getting worse. So how do you find a way to move forward?
Speaker 10:09
Being hopeful acknowledges and embraces that things are difficult and asks, "Where can we go from here?"
Bertie Pinkerton· Host0:15
Why our future depends on our ability to hope. That's this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes wherever you get your podcasts.
K.T. Ramesh· Guest0:24
[upbeat music] I think if you're interested in life, you're always interested in basic questions about life. [water sloshes] Where it comes from and what it can do.
Bertie Pinkerton· Host0:44
K.T. Ramesh studies a lot of things.
K.T. Ramesh· Guest0:48
I'm a professor of mechanical engineering and material science and earth and planetary sciences. At any given time I'm not quite sure what I do, but one of those three.
Bertie Pinkerton· Host0:58
But in the last few years, he's also been exploring questions of life, and specifically this kind of old idea that has a, a name that's somehow both technical and salacious at the same time, this thing called lithopanspermia.
K.T. Ramesh· Guest1:12
So a good way to think about it is to just break that word up into three parts, right? So litho, stone. So this is basically about rocks. Pan, everything. Spermia, seeds. So the general idea is the idea of being able to seed life throughout