I'm a science journalist and host of Cosmic Controversy (brucedorminey.podbean.com) as well as author of 'Distant Wanderers: the Search for Planets Beyond the Solar System.' I primarily cover aerospace and astronomy.
shoulder looking off into the distance, wearing a aluminum hardhat with a LED light attached looking at the camera while in a dark coal mine.For all the handwringing over the amount of carbon wreaking havoc on our global climate, Earth is remarkably carbon poor.
Ironically, the most carbon-rich bodies in the solar system are not the Sun or the planets, but smaller bodies such as comets and asteroids, leftover planetary building blocks that have escaped collisions with planets or ejection from solar orbits for more than 4 billion years, Snow and Brownlee write.
And despite its relative rarity here on Earth, carbon’s ability to bond with elements to form a nearly infinite number of compounds is likely why we are here to talk about it. But could life in our solar system have gone a different way and be based on an element like silicon, instead of carbon?
Don Brownlee Earth Sun The Sixth Element: How Carbon Shapes Our World
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