
Mario Livio
Journalist at Freelance
Astrophysicist Author: The Golden Ratio, Brilliant Blunders, Galileo & the Science Deniers 🌏 Is Earth Exceptional? w/Jack Szostak @mariolivio.bsky.social
Articles
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Feb 28, 2025 |
freakonomics.com | Steven D. Levitt |Mario Livio |Jack Szostak |Owen Flanagan
I’m sure you’re familiar with Darwin’s theory of evolution, which explains how simple life forms evolved over billions of years into complex life forms. But what evolution doesn’t tell us about at all is how those simple life forms came into being in the first place. How did we go from non-life to life? And that is the question that keeps today’s guest, Jack Szostak, up at night. SZOSTAK: Life everywhere has cells, right? So there had to be a first cell.
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Jan 15, 2025 |
nautil.us | Mario Livio |Jack Szostak
In their attempts to pin down the meaning of “life,” scientists and philosophers have offered dozens of definitions. Lately, researchers more or less agree that, for something to be alive, it has to be able to reproduce and evolve by natural selection. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now .
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Sep 16, 2024 |
scientificamerican.com | Mario Livio |Jack Szostak
Two of the most intriguing questions in science are: How did life on Earth begin? and Is there life elsewhere in the universe? Given the enormous interest in these questions, you might expect that the basic concepts would be settled by now. But in fact, many ideas about crucial aspects of life are plagued with uncertainties and misconceptions. Before we can even crudely estimate the likelihood of life beyond Earth, we need to know a lot more about how life on Earth got started.
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Sep 10, 2024 |
nextbigideaclub.com | Elsa C. Richardson |Stephan Meier |Mario Livio
Mario Livio is an astrophysicist who worked for 24 years with the Hubble Space Telescope. He is a bestselling author of seven previous books, including The Golden Ratio and Brilliant Blunders. Jack Szostak is a professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago, leading the Center for the Origin of Life. He shared the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Below, co-authors Mario and Jack share five key insights from their new book, Is Earth Exceptional?: The Quest for Cosmic Life.
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Aug 2, 2024 |
wsj.com | Mario Livio
Is the electron a wave or a particle? Are the orbits of electrons in atoms similar to planetary orbits? What is the nature of light? Such were the questions that physicists were struggling with in the early part of the 20th century when the new field of quantum mechanics introduced a dramatic revolution in scientific thinking. The philosophical metamorphosis involved theoretical, empirical and systematic issues—and brought a new perspective on the nature of reality itself.
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SN 1994D was a Type Ia supernova event in the outskirts of the galaxy NGC 4526. The supernova is seen as the point of light at the bottom left of this @NASAHubble image. https://t.co/pdeklrrduU

Today is May 23. #OTD in 1707 naturalist Carolus Linnaeus was born. The first to frame principles for defining natural genera and species of organisms and to create a uniform system for naming them. https://t.co/2mk3yiWQ2l

This @ESO image shows the intricate structure of part of the Seagull Nebula, known more formally as IC 2177. These wisps of gas and dust are known as Sharpless 2-296. https://t.co/B1vwOVz8aF