Cole Mathis
@colemathis.bsky.social
Assistant Professor @ASUBiodesign & @ASU_SCAS Origins of Life, Complex Systems, Life Detection, Molecular Assembly. Co-Founder @39alpharesearch & @oolen_org
All the incredible Python tooling written in Rust is a trap to convert Python programmers to Rust.
Just remember Venus. The team behind the 2020 phosphine biosignatures claim did way more due diligence to rigorously rule out abiotic sources of phosphine than Madhusudhan et al. have done for DMS on K2-18b. And yet... it wasn't enough. Because planets are complicated.
DMS has also been found in the interstellar medium and lab studies have shown that it can be produced by striking atmospheric gases with light. Are comets or interstellar material likely sources of DMS on K2-18b? No. But that's not the point: these findings show that DMS is not unique to life.
DMS is not unique to life, despite how some media coverage of this finding has been presenting it. We know it can form in nature in very dead places. Like comets, as I reported last year for @science.org: www.science.org/content/arti...
What is a presumed sign of life doing on a dead comet?
Touted as a “biosignature” on an alien planet, dimethyl sulfide also seems to arise in banal ways
science.org
Here are some key references in the "no, actually not a Hycean world" camp: arxiv.org/pdf/2401.05864 - magma ocean, not water ocean arxiv.org/abs/2401.11082 - gas dwarf mini-Neptune arxiv.org/abs/2501.18477 - comprehensive re-analysis of the 2023 data disputing several key findings
It's the 2nd time in 5 years that a stinky gas has us crying alien. In 2020 it was phosphine on Venus. Today it's DMS on K2-18b. I asked 10 experts about the discovery. Here's what they had to say: 🧪🔭 #exoplanets #planetsci shorturl.at/sjkK4
Is there really alien life on this exoplanet? We asked 10 experts.
A team of astronomers claims to have sniffed out a “biosignature” in the atmosphere of a distant planet called K2-18b. But not everyone agrees that it signals life.
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First and foremost, finding life on an exoplanet on the basis of atmospheric gases is... fraught, to say the least. To quote @colemathis.bsky.social: a telescope is not a life detector. More on this in my 2024 story on biosignatures pessimism in @quantamagazine.bsky.social: shorturl.at/Vul1i
Doubts Grow About the Biosignature Approach to Alien-Hunting | Quanta Magazine
Recent controversies bode ill for the effort to detect life on other planets by analyzing the gases in their atmospheres.
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Excited to announce that @preinerin.bsky.social, @colemathis.bsky.social and I were awarded an @hfspo.bsky.social research grant! 🎉 If you are an experimentalist interested in studying protein histories as a graduate student in the Longo Lab ELSI, please get in touch.
Petition to start calling organic molecules the building blocks of space stuff instead of the building blocks of life Asteroid Bennu contains loads of organic compounds including the 5 nucleobases of DNA/RNA and amino acids: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed
Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist.
nature.com
Friendly reminder that Dutch Books can't be used to define probabilities in practice unless one has access to a handy oracle that is not only rational and coherent but also can elicit an arbitrary number of decisions exactly, instantaneously, and without cost.
One of the strangest aspects of social media is the way it fragments experiences because of algorithmic personalization. @bsky.app could y'all explore this by generating an option to experience someone else's feed for a period of time?
1. Imagine we land a space probe on one of Jupiters’ moons, take up a sample of material, and find it is full of organic molecules. How can we tell whether those molecules are just randomly assembled goo or the outcome of some evolutionary process taking place there? 🧪
So exciting to see our teams' work on assembly theory out today in Nature led with @leecronin.bsky.social and in collaboration w/ friends at Santa Fe Institute www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Biking to work is probably one of the best routines in life.
Manuscript SUBMITTED. I'll likely never do a review at this scale ever again. Time for a dram.
It's so awesome seeing friends and great scientists get the recognition you know they deserve!
No One is Talking About This by @tricialockwood.bsky.social is a gift, in part because it is basically impossible to talk about it on social media without owning yourself. Just read it. (Also thanks Abby of Walden Pond Books, solid rec)
The 2024 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (by Andrew Spaeth, me) has 94 tenure-track positions and 4 teaching positions: bit.ly/facultychemjobs2024 facultychemjobs chemjobs
Few things are better than getting into a flow state with programming.
When it comes down to it, nothing can be produced abiotically in the laboratory.
I'm finally working on a project I've been curious about for a very long time (~10 years )and it's as exciting and stimulating as I could have ever hoped. It's really giving me fuel to continue sciencing!
Drinking bourbon and listening to the Avett Brothers is about as patriotic as I get.* Except when I'm explaining to Europeans that it's not a joint if there's tobacco in it.