The 2008 Astrobiology Science Conference is over.
There were six plenary sessions and six parallel topical sessions with typically 8-9 sessions each. Plus townhall meetings, public events and receptions.
I made it to only five topical sessions, including the two I was co-chair of and the one my ex-student co-chaired. I missed the icy moons session this morning, I hear the Enceladus talks were awesome.
This morning's plenary session featured talks by Bains on Weird Life and Benner on experimental biogenesis.
Bains gave a very nice presentation on non-carbon/water based options, over the full range of temperatures and pressures.
There are some interesting options out there, I particularly like the "low complexity" options at low temperatures and moderate pressures, the sulphur ocean life seems less likely.
Benner made an interesting case for the RNA world and how current experiments are bracketing abiotic chemistry and synthetic life and squeezing in on The Answer.
I suspect we are two or three steps away from closing the loop and being able to fill out each step from synthesis of sugars, peptides and nucleotides; formation of biopolymers; autocatalytic RNA; and encapsulation and reproduction with metabolism.
Key ingredients seem to be lined up now, and I think "we" are very close to figuring each step put.
That would be very, very interesting.
I went to the genomics topical session in the afternoon, couldn't stay for the whole time, but heard some interesting talks on autocatalysis and selection of short chain RNA, and molecular timing of evolutionary branches and the timing of the major evolutionary events.
The case for the animal phylae branching substantially before the Cambrian explosion sounds very convincing, although I remain worried about the use of min/max barriers on the timing events - forcing non-negative errors is an invitation to bias, as astronomy learned the hard way, several times.
Interesting. My brain hurts.
The afternoon plenary on exoplanets was a lot lighter, since I had heard the talks several times before.
Message is simple: give us a moderately large amount of money and we will find planets, identify those that may have liquid water on the surface and carbon life, and we can, we think, get biosignatures if alien life is in some cases even moderately similar to ours.
It will take well over ten billion dollars, and more than a decade, but not much more.
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