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Lately, space hasn’t felt so far, far away. Maybe that’s because it’s landing headlines on Earth.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin sent an all-female crew into orbit, to mixed reactions. Elon Musk has floated the idea of a Mars colony in the not-too-distant future.
And last month, scientists said that they discovered the strongest indication yet of life on a planet 120 light-years away. The topic was ripe for Carl Zimmer, who has written for the Science section of The New York Times for over 20 years. His beat is life — even if that life might exist somewhere else in our universe.
Mr. Zimmer has covered dire wolves that were brought back to life and rainforests where early humans thrived, and he has written 15 books, including one on parasites (one parasite even bears his name).
“I am the only journalist I know that has a tapeworm named after them,” he said in a recent interview. “If there are others out there, I’d love to meet them.”
Mr. Zimmer discussed the recent extraterrestrial events that have made headlines, what excites him about the subject and, yes, the parasite. This conversation has been edited and condensed.
Does covering space feel different than reporting on other topics?
When I report on space, I primarily report on astrobiology, which is the biology of life beyond Earth. That’s kind of weird, because we don’t know if there is any life beyond Earth yet. It’s a science that doesn’t quite have a subject yet.
A lot of the time I’m writing about people’s ideas of what might exist elsewhere; people who do experiments or look for life on Earth that is particularly strange and gives them ideas.
When scientists said they found a possible signature of life on a distant planet, one called it a “revolutionary moment.” Was that your reaction?
They did not announce that they had discovered life — they announced that they had found a potential biosignature, and there’s a big difference. Basically, what they found was a particular color in the atmosphere of this planet, K2-18b, that is produced by a molecule called dimethyl sulfide. We only know about dimethyl sulfide on Earth as the product of life.
The scientist who was presenting the results was emphasizing that he hoped that reporters would be careful about how we covered it, because he was not announcing the discovery of life. He was announcing the discovery of a potential signal of dimethyl sulfide. I got hold of the paper, and I started sharing it with a group of experts, confidentially, and talked to them about what they thought. I would say that the consensus was that it was an exciting and intriguing result, but it would require a lot more research to see if the result actually means that there’s life on this planet.
What are you looking out for as you think about space?
I would love it if there was another look at K2-18b that was happening next month, but that’s not how these things work. There are lots of other astronomers who want to point the telescope at other things. They want to learn about the origin of galaxies, and so they want to be pointing the telescope billions of light-years away. The people who run the James Webb Space Telescope have to evaluate all the requests and fill up their calendar.
We’re going to just have to hang tight. It’s going to be a few years before there are probes to other planets and moons in this solar system that might shed some light on whether there’s life closer to home.
With entrepreneurs launching celebrities into space and talking about Mars colonies, do you think space exploration will change?
What people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are interested in is people going into space or another planet. But the search for life on other worlds is not something that depends on astronauts. No one had to go into space in order to get the James Webb Space Telescope to where it is now. NASA has a bigger, better space telescope pretty much all built and ready to go. But there are reports that the Trump administration wants to cut a lot of the NASA science budget, and in particular, ground that space telescope. So we won’t see the next chapter in the search for life if that telescope stays on the ground.
I have to ask — you have a tapeworm named after you?
I published a book called “Parasite Rex.” My goal was to rehabilitate the reputation of parasites. Instead of being freeloaders, parasites are the most successful life form on Earth, and some of their adaptations are quite mind-blowing in the way that they can manipulate the behavior of their hosts. It seems like pure science fiction.
Over the years, a number of people have come to me and said, When I read your book, I realized that you could actually study parasites.
A graduate student at the University of Connecticut, Carrie Fyler, was working on a dissertation, and she had several totally new species of tapeworms she was describing. You have to name them, so she thought it would be nice to name one in my honor, which is very kind of her. And it’s a beautiful tapeworm.
Emmett Lindner writes about breaking and trending news. He has written about international protests, climate change and social media influencers.
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