{"id":1639,"date":"2009-06-18T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2009-06-18T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=1639"},"modified":"2009-06-18T08:00:27","modified_gmt":"2009-06-18T12:00:27","slug":"the-medea-hypothesis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/the-medea-hypothesis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Medea Hypothesis"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Toxic<\/a>

Toxic gases and mass extinctions mean Earth isn't always life friendly (Image: Sarah Howell)<\/p><\/div>\n

This week’s New Scientist leads with an interesting piece that is critical of the well-known “Gaia hypothesis” & proposes that life may not be a self-correcting positive feed back system at all. Below the opening paragraphs, or read full article<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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17 June 2009 \t\t\t \t\t \t\t by \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tPeter Ward<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

THE twin Viking landers that defied the odds to land on Mars in 1976 and 1977 had one primary goal: to find life. To the disappointment of nearly all concerned, the data they sent back was a sharp dash of cold water. The Martian surface was harsh and antibiotic and there was no sign of life.<\/p>\n

To two NASA scientists, James Lovelock<\/a> and Dian Hitchcock, this came as no surprise – in fact, they would have been amazed to see any evidence of life on Mars. A decade before Viking, Lovelock and Hitchcock, both atmospheric scientists, had used observations of the Martian atmosphere to deduce that there could be no life on the planet.<\/p>\n

From their research arose one of the most influential, ground-breaking scientific ideas of the 20th century – the Gaia hypothesis, named after the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth, a nurturing “mother” of life. But is it correct? New scientific findings suggest that the nature of life on Earth is not at all like Gaia. If we were to choose a mythical mother figure to characterise the biosphere, it would more accurately be Medea, the murderous wife of Jason of the Argonauts. She was a sorceress, a princess – and a killer of her own children.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s New Scientist leads with an interesting piece that is critical of the well-known “Gaia hypothesis” & proposes that life may not be a self-correcting positive feed back system at all. Below the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1716,337,521,552],"class_list":["post-1639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-gaia-hypothesis","tag-medea-hypothesis","tag-new-scientist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}