Dr. Sara Seager

Our DNA and RNA cannot survive in the clouds.

You know, there's this really well-known experiment.

People can Google it, sugar in concentrated sulfuric acid.

If you put sugar in concentrated sulfuric acid, wow, it turns black instantly.

It gets really hot.

And then this kind of snake of dried out carbon starts growing, like above the edges of the container that you mixed everything in.

So our DNA has sugar.

Our DNA cannot survive.

But what I set out to do with my team is to come up with a DNA-like molecule.

So not our DNA, but swapping out parts.

Because I want to convince you, Ira, and the listeners and everybody that there may not be this kind of swapped out DNA, but it could be another kind just to prove that complex information carrying molecules could be stable and concentrated in sulfuric acid.

Well, I'm really pleased to tell you that we have a milestone in this direction.

And thanks to my colleague, Anoush Petkowski, we have come up with a molecule that already existed.

It's not called DNA.

It's called PNA.

which stands for peptide nucleic acid, and it's a synthetic molecule people use here on Earth.

And PNA, we have shown that a single strand of PNA is stable at room temperature in concentrated sulfuric acid, actually up to about 50 degrees Celsius.

Well, it's tricky, right?

Because if there are aliens out there and they want to find life on Earth, what are they going to look for?

There are so many variants that could be possible.