Searching for the origins of life... and our future (BBC News)

November 8, 2011

By Karen Weintraub Cambridge, Massachusetts
November 8, 2011

Hollywood is wrong about aliens. They don't have oddly shaped
heads, bulging eyes or even an eery green hue. Dimitar Sasselov is
pretty convinced of that.

He's not even sure we'll know them when we see them. Prof
Sasselov, an astrophysicist, thinks that if life exists elsewhere - and
he believes it does - it will likely be based on different building
blocks than ours, and so may not even be recognizable as life.

A project he's heading at Harvard University, called the Origins of
Life, is trying to imagine what life would be like if it were based on
different chemicals, conditions and history than we have on Earth…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15618759