INTERVIEW: Professor Naila Chaouche on Thirst For Knowledge talk 'Life on Mars'

Radio One 91FM Dunedin

INTERVIEW: Professor Naila Chaouche on Thirst For Knowledge talk 'Life on Mars' by Zac Hoffman on Radio One 91FM DunedinCorrections from professor Naila Chaouche: At 10min49 when I said “A comet is basically a big bowl of ice and dust, and that dust is organic matter”, I should have said “the dust is composed of minerals and an important fraction of organic matter”. At 3min45, when talking about Panspermia, I was referring to pseudo-panspermia which is one of the many variations of Panspermia hypotheses. Pseudo-panspermia is the hypothesis that the organic matter brought from space by impact of comets or meteorites could have contributed to the emergence of Life on Earth, as opposed to Panspermia which is the idea that bacterial life could have been brought from space through these small bodies. To date, no biological activity has been detected on meteorites that fall on Earth, nor on comets/asteroids in space.