Details

Intro: So what is out there? It's absolutely unknown. And still, I mean, we have no evidence that there is something out there. It's extremely possible. It's a possibility, but we have no idea of what and how it would appear. AskDifferent, the podcast by the Einstein Foundation with Nancy Fischer.

Nancy Fischer: And I want to start with a little crash course, astronomy for Dummies kind of. This is planet earth we're living on, we are part of the solar system, including the sun and seven other planets. And the solar system is part of our galaxy, the Milky Way, with hundreds of billions of stars. And if we zoom out further, we can see besides our galaxy, Milky Way, there are probably hundreds of billions of more galaxies in this massive thing called universe. So, you can decide for yourself if there could be other life than ours in this universe. And I would say, probably there is. Today we want to add some facts to this old question of mankind. And Riccardo Urso will help us. He is an Italian researcher, he studied chemistry in Catania. And today, he lives and works in Berlin, as a part of the research group Elsässer Lab for Experimental Biophysics and Space Sciences at the Freie Universität Berlin. And Riccardo Urso is an Einstein International Postdoctoral Fellow. And I'm very happy that he can join us today. Welcome to this episode of AskDifferent. Hello, Riccardo.

Riccardo Urso: Thank you. Hello, Nancy. Nice to meet you.

Fischer: So, if I think of life in space, there is immediately probably the most known cliché, the little green guy with baggy eyes flying around in his spaceship. What do you imagine if you think of life in space? What's in your head?

Urso: Yeah, that's extremely tough to imagine something without, you know, keeping in mind who we are. And I mean, we are on the Earth. And the only example of life we know is the life we see on our planet. So, it's extremely hard to imagine something very different from that. And that's why, I mean, mentioning the little green men, they're actually pictured as little green men, right. But I honestly wouldn't know what aliens would look like. And this is also because life is strongly connected to the conditions that we find on planets. And the conditions on Earth are the ones we live every day are the conditions that made us evolve as we are. So, life is strongly connected and dependent on the conditions on planets. And if we don't know the conditions of planets, we cannot say what life looks like. 

What we are looking for is, and what I can imagine of being something that we can achieve in the near future, is to find very simple living organisms, maybe like bacteria, that we know to be present everywhere on Earth, literally everywhere. And so it might be, you know, not as nice as meeting the monsters that we see on movies, aliens, for example. But can you imagine how amazing it would be and what shock maybe it will be for our society to know that we are not alone in the universe. That's going to be such a big thing for the humankind, you know, it was extremely tough to be first picture to, you know, the first picture of the Earth at the center of the universe and then discovered that oh, wait, we are not actually the center of anything. We orbit around a star and the star itself orbits around the galaxy. And so, it's going to be amazing to even find the simplest bacteria out there.

Fischer: If we speak of life, what are we actually talking about, scientifically spoken? What's the definition for you?

Urso: Yeah, that's not easy. Philosophers are debating about it, I mean, what is the question, what are we looking for, what is life. There are several definitions and all of them I would say deal with a system that is capable of reproduction, that can adapt to the environmental conditions and that can self-sustain, that can eat something and that can transform energy. This is what we say and what we think life could be based on. But again, this is a definition that depends on life as we know it and always people are asking me what if life is something else, something that we don't see. But the point is that, you know, at that point we couldn't even find it. So, we need a definition at that might be wrong. And that will, for sure, change in time. But we need a definition for something to look for.

Fischer: Very interesting that there's no real definition for what life is somewhere else except on our planet is. But let's stay in this kind of abstract way of thinking. Under which conditions could life exist on other planets?

Urso: We don't really know what we know, if we look at the only example of life we have, the life on Earth, we find life everywhere in the toughest conditions in the highest and lowest temperatures possible. We also find bacteria or organisms that can live in the presence of ionizing radiation and survive much better than what we will do. What we will look for depends, again, on the environment of the planet. And it's actually going to be a surprise, I think that there are people studying our life can adapt to extreme conditions. By taking, for example, these bacteria living in extreme environments on Earth and trying to understand if they could survive, for example, in the typical condition of Mars. But what is out there, it's absolutely unknown. And still, I mean, we have no evidence that there is something out there, it's extremely possible, it's a possibility, but we have no idea of what and how it would appear.

Fischer: You just mentioned the planet Mars, so which planets do have living conditions similar to planet Earth? Do we know that already,

Urso: So, we are looking for planets like the Earth, and we find planets like or let's say not like, but that might show conditions similar to the Earth around other stars. We actually look for those planets because they are most likely they could host life, that might be similar to life that our planet hosts. And the requisites for life, the life we know, is water. So, what we look for around other stars, are planets, that have a temperature that can host liquid water on the surface. Talking about the solar system, water is actually present in many planets and moons also, but mostly in the frozen phase. So as solid as rock and that kind of water cannot be of any help for life. What we also look for is liquid water, we might advance some liquid water in the interior of Mars. And what we know is that there are satellite moons of Jupiter that host oceans beneath an icy surface. And that's actually where space scientists are looking for life. For example, in these environments, we imagine that this liquid water might host chemical reactions that gave birth to maybe very simple life. And then the question is how to detect this life beneath the crust of ice that is kilometres thick.

Fischer: You are saying this as if it would be so easy to go in front of the door and look for these planets, but it's such a hard task in everyday life I imagine to look water on other planets, billions of kilometres away. So how do we have to imagine your working conditions to work on this big question of mankind in everyday life in your lab? How are you doing that?

Urso: Yeah. So, what we actually do is trying to understand how the building blocks of life can form in space. So, we do not look for life itself, we look for those compounds, those molecules, those groups of atoms, of particles that might have been the building blocks of life on Earth. We know that life is based on big molecules like the RNA or the DNA. And we, for example, are looking at trying to understand if the bricks of DNA and RNA can form in space. And why do we do that? Because if these bricks can form in space, and if they for example, can form while the sun formats, while the earth formats, then we know that the Sun and the Earth form as other stars and other planets are forming. And this means that also the chemistry leading to the building blocks of life takes place in the same way. So, these molecular bricks of life could form also on other planets around other stars. And then the question is, if they can form in space, can our can they be delivered on planetary surfaces, and then, you know, find their environment to react and then chemistry taking place and bringing into more complex molecules and maybe to life. 

So, what we deal with is actually understanding where, how, and how much of these molecules can form at the very beginning of the star formation process. And one example that you mentioned, and I mentioned, that's where there is water, we know that water is on the earth, and we are basically made of water, the water that we drink, actually, and that our bodies made of format at the beginning of the solar system in space. So, thanks to a process that happened 5 billion years ago, life is now impossible on our planet. So, this is a very simple example. Now, life is based, of course, on water, but on many other molecules that are extremely important, for example molecules containing carbon. So, looking for these pieces in space, looking for these molecules in space, we might try to understand how complex our reach is the chemistry around stars, and if we find molecules that we consider building blocks of life around those stars, well, then we might have some elements to say that life is possible. Also, somewhere else in the universe.

Fischer: I also read you work in planetary simulation chambers to simulate space, because of course, you cannot go to space every day for your daily work. Can you take us there? Can you describe to us how it looks like these chambers.

Urso: So, it's maybe less fascinating than what you can imagine. They are basically boxes of stainless steel, where we try to recreate the main conditions of space. In space, there is no atmosphere. So, there is vacuum, there is strong ionizing radiation emitted by the Sun or the stars. And it's cold, we are used to the temperature here on Earth and space, the temperature is way lower, it's just a few degrees above zero. And anyway, in these conditions, chemistry can happen. In planets, it depends on the planet, we're talking about Mars, for example, has an average temperature of minus 90 degrees. And we can just simulate this temperature in our planetary simulation facility, as well as the radiation that needs the soil of Mars and possibly the living beings on the soil of Mars. Till we don't have any proof of their existence, we also want to understand if they could survive in the condition of our planet. And we can do that with our facility, as well as studying the atmosphere of other planets. So reproduce the condition of atmospheres that could host life beyond the solar system.

Nancy Fischer: The one thing is the work in the lab, you were also just describing and these very cold steel chambers. The other thing is, for example, NASA is doing that they're sending missions to the Mars to find out amongst which conditions molecules can survive there. Do you also do that, send samples to space?

Urso: First of all, our laboratory work is related to what happens in space missions and astronomical observations. So, we try to reproduce what actually space missions tell us about the condition of space. And we are also sending actual symbols in space in the next years. Specifically on board of the International Space Station, there will be those molecules for example, that we consider building blocks of life that will be exposed to the radiation of the Sun. On the Earth radiation is filtered by the atmosphere. So, to achieve the real emission of particles of the sun, we have to go beyond the atmosphere, and we use the International Space Station to expose amino acids or sugar nuclear bases, the molecule that make life as we know it to understand if they can survive the conditions in space.

Fischer: So you're gonna do send these things there in some years. That's what I understood. Was it correct?

Urso: Yeah, exactly. The samples will be produced here in, in Berlin or in laboratories of our partners, and then we'll fly to the International Space Station, they will spend about one year up there, and then they will come back to give us the possibility to analyse the samples. And we will have not only this building blocks of life, but also living organisms that will be exposed to the radiation of the sun. And we will take photographs of them from time to time and to understand what happens to these little living forms.

Fischer: It's very long and very complex process. So, I thought when I prepared this interview, I thought of people selling food or constructing cars for living, your job is to search for life and all with a little bit more complex than only life. But for that in the universe, which is such a big task. How satisfying is this for you? If you leave your lab every day, and you still didn't find anything?

Urso: Yeah, I have to say that, you know, when I started my career, I was, I mean, as a child, I was always fascinated by space science. And then I have to say that being a daily activity, what do you actually deal with, it's not anymore. Well, let's now look for life, it's mostly the everyday life in laboratory, and is extremely challenging. And on the other hand, even as small results mean a lot to us, if we are able to interpret something that is observed within space, we can prove not only that our experiment is working, but also that the processes that we simulate in the laboratory and that we can start in much higher detail than what can be possible in space are actually happening. And those processes might be at the basis of the formation of the building blocks of life. So, I have to say that it's not frustrating. And from time to time, we have confirmation that what we're doing is right, for example, when complex molecules that, again, might be building blocks of life, are found in meteorites. That are objects that fall on the Earth, and that formated when the earth were still forming. And in, in these stones, we find molecules like amino acids or nuclear bases. So these molecules that are part of proteins and of DNA. So when we find this kind of data, and we can analyse this kind of data in our lab it is extremely rewarding and totally worth it.

Fischer: You just said you were already fascinated by space as a child. Do you remember what was your fascination back then was it like, I want to be an astronaut and go on a spaceship? How was that? You remember?

Urso: That was it. I mean, I think as many children my dream was becoming an astronaut. And I was also fascinated by astrophysics, by science in general. I was very curious, I wanted to understand how, you know the small details, I mean, I remember I was the nightmare of my parents, because I would open all the toys, you know, unscrew everything because I was curious. And I wanted to understand how things were made off. And it's a little bit like that still now, I want to understand the small details of how matter is formed, the matter that forms our planet, but also ourselves.

Fischer: The question that I'm asking many researchers in many fields, but the answer can always be helpful for everyone: What is the most fascinating thing about your job, even though the work is so complex, the way you just described it?

Urso: Trying to deal with such a big question, if life can be possible elsewhere in the universe is maybe one of the strongest motivations. And I have to say that we as scientists, we really go into details of what we do. And that connects to what I was saying before, you know, we run the experiments, we're looking for a specific thing, but then what we actually do, not only what I do, but what the community is trying to do is to answer such a big question that is there since the human kind and the possibility that might with my activity, I could contribute only to a very small, you know, detail and in trying to move science forward in the direction of answering the question if we are alone a strong, enormous motivation.

Fischer: How big are the chances, what do you think in your career that you will find and some of the building blocks of life one day in the next, let's say, 40 years, what do you think?

Urso: So, about the building blocks of life, we've been lucky enough to find some of them, then the fact that they are building blocks of life, as we know it doesn't mean that they could easily bring to life. But what I always try to keep in mind is that I don't, you know, I am just part of it. The nice thing of science is that we all move together, we are a community, there is not the single scientist that makes the difference. And all together, we move in achieving something that is way bigger than what the genius could do working alone. And we can do that also thanks to the facilities that are available right now with the space missions. And there are so many people behind this research that talking about the achievement, the achievements of a single person would be just, you know, reducing it to something extremely simple.

Fischer: You started your career of researching in Italy, in Catania, you went to Paris, now you're in Berlin. What's different here speaking about working environment?

Urso: It's nice, because when I left my country, I was afraid, you know, I mean, you have to face different cultures and colleagues with different preparations. And now after almost five years I'm abroad, I can just say that, you know, in the end we are all the same. There might be differences in the way we behave and in our tradition, of course, but it's an experience that, let's say, makes me understand that science goes beyond what are the cliched stereotypes and the scientific methods are the same everywhere. So, by a scientific point of view, I would say it gave me a lot working here in Berlin, at the Department of Physics in France at the French space, the French space agency, in terms of opportunity and to expand my network. And the nice thing is also that you know, it's scientific environment where I am forced to meet physicists, astronomers, biologists, geologists working in planetary science, so it's extremely enriching and doing it abroad, doing it in different countries, is such a blessing something that will, you know, I will keep forever and my personal baggage.

Fischer: If there is maybe a child or let's say more realistic, a teenager listening to us that has the dream to become an astronaut and work on space topics, somehow, what would you suggest him or her?

Urso: To keep believing it! It might be tough. You know, this scientific career is not easy, there is a lot of math, physics, and from time to time, you're really, you know, saying, okay, I cannot make it. But if you really believe in what you're doing, if you really want to do that, there are no obstacles, there is nothing that can stop you and you just have to push and keep going. So just believe in yourself, work on your self-confidence and expand, you know, just go leave your comfort zone, do activities that make you feel alive. And don't be afraid of math. And don't be afraid of physics. Because at the end, this is just our way of interpreting nature, and it's nothing you can be afraid of. So just follow your dreams and don't be afraid of, you know, of anything.

Fischer: What are the activities that are keeping you alive?

Urso: My main hobby is music, I play the guitar, and I do quite some sports. So that's what it's gonna happen after, you know, when I leave the lab usually I just go running or do some physical activity.

Fischer: I have one last question. So, we were speaking about that many kids have as their dream is to become an astronaut and fly to space. Is that actually a wish of yours to go to Mars to go to one of these hidden planets one day?

Urso: Of course! Of course it is. It would be extremely, extremely exciting, you know, and I mean, yeah, of course. I would love it and it's just, you know, being in contact with something that we consider to be so far away and be in contact with space. It's just a dream. And, yeah, I mean, I look forward to that. It's gonna happen, it's gonna happen.

Fischer: Keep on beleaving! That's what we learned from this session. We spoke about the building blocks of life and space and life in space with Riccardo Urso, Italian chemists looking for life in the universe. And last but not least, and Einstein International Postdoctoral Fellow that works for the Elsässer Lab for Experimental Biophysics and Space Sciences at the Freie Universität Berlin. Riccardo, thank you so much for your time today. This was another episode of AskDifferent, the Einstein foundation podcast. My name is Nancy Fischer. And you can find this and all the other episodes on a regular basis at Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other platforms. Thanks for your interest, no matter on which galaxy you listen to us.

AskDifferent, the Podcast by the Einstein Foundation.