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Cosmos Episode 2: One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue

Hail Professor Sagan the Biologist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was extraordinary to see Sagan turn into the world's best teacher of biology as he talked about the origin and evolution of life on planet Earth.

The ease with which complex organic molecules can form in the atmosphere of the early planet Earth is sobering. One inevitably wonders about how can the same process not have been repeated elsewhere on other planets.

The complexity of the DNA molecule is rather perplexing to understand of course but one then it's difficult to grasp the expanse of millions of years and billions.

The self-replicating nature of biological molecules is fundamentally astonishing and the complexity of a single cell is truly mind boggling.

It will definitely help to find life elsewhere on other planets ... even the simplest sort of life forms as that will deprovincialize biology as Sagan put it. Hence, the continued search for life on Mars.

We have to develop the technologies in the future to go explore planets around other stars too in the nearby regions of our galaxy and look for life there. One wonders which will happen first.

Whether we will go to other planets around other stars and discover microbial life forms or whether some of our radio detection equipment will detect evidence of advanced extraterrestrial life elsewhere in the cosmos. Either of which will be plenty exciting but alas perhaps neither of these is destined to occur in my lifetime.

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