EARTHRISE: it was the photo that defined a generation's relationship with our planet. Taken by the Apollo 8 crew in lunar orbit on Christmas Eve 1968, the vision of a blue, cloud-speckled planet shimmering into view in a hostile darkness brought home to us how lonely our planet is. Only inside Earth's fragile blue bubble do atoms come together, bit by bit, to form the molecular basis of a chemical wonder: life.
Or so we thought. Gazing in the other direction, we have recently begun to see things that challenge this view of Earth as a lonely bubble. Not life itself, to be sure, but abundant evidence of the complex carbon chemistry that creates it – small hydrocarbons, sugars, alcohols and even, perhaps, the odd amino acid. That could alter our world view just as fundamentally as Earthrise did. "It completely changes your perspective of what's happening on Earth ...
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