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Carl Sagan Discusses Origins of Life What would be considered a star-studded cast in the world of chemistry converged on the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall October 22 to rename the structure after the late pioneering U.C. Berkeley chemist, George C. Pimentel, who taught thousands of students in the hall. Nearly 1,000 turned out at the dedication to hear the Pimentel Lecture, given by renowned astronomer and author Carl Sagan, who interacted with Pimentel while working on the Mariner missions to Mars. Preceding Sagan's lecture, Professor Kenneth Pitzer, Pimentel's research director, spoke about Pimentel as a promising young scientist, while Professor Bradley Moore, Pimentel's graduate student and colleague, discussed his early achievements. "George was really the quintessential teacher-scholar," Moore said. Jan Coonrod, Pimentel's daughter, told the audience about Pimentel's unique personality and love for life. Vice Chancellor Carol Christ then performed the official dedication, saying that Pimentel, "in his life and in his career, epitomizes the ideal that Berkeley strives for." Sagan's lecture, "Organic Chemistry in the Outer Solar System: Clues to the Origin of Life," blended Pimentel's achievements in chemistry with Sagan's own interests. Sagan pointed out the use of Pimentel's infrared spectrometer as a key piece of analytical apparatus on the Mariner mission. Although his initial observations of the Martian atmosphere were in error, Pimentel's approach "has borne fruit repeatedly," Sagan said. Profiling the use of infrared spectrometry in the discovery of organic chemistry in the solar system, Sagan recalled "George's sense that in space there ought to be lots of organic chemistry," adding that this has been confirmed with next-generation infrared spectrometers. "Jovian planets and those beyond are loaded with organic chemistry," he said. Recently, Pimentel's technique was used to confirm the existence of organic material coming off Halley's Comet. Sagan then focused on the chemistry of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. He and his colleagues managed to roughly reproduce the atmospheric conditions on Titan, deriving a substance that resembled the murky material observed on the surface of the planet. "It is fair to claim that we bottled the haze of Titan," Sagan said. The haze, which left a "tarry, brownish solid" residual, had a spectrum that essentially matched measurements of Titan's spectrum. When analyzed, it was found to contain one percent amino acids and detectable amounts of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. "It is clearly loaded with great stuff," Sagan said, referring to the fact that such material suggests the possibility of life. However, Sagan pointed out, Titan is essentially a frozen planet. Taking into account the heat generated by asteroid impacts, Sagan and his colleagues calculated that an average point on Titan has seen liquid water for about 1000 years in the last 4.5 billion years. "Whether 1000 years is enough for the origin of life is very much an unknown question," said Sagan. Nevertheless, Sagan said it is "at least very plausible that there is an organic chemistry accumulating on the surface of Titan that may be relevant to the origin of life." Noting that the European Space Agency's mission to Saturn will carry a spectrometer not much different in principle from Pimentel's, Sagan concluded: "George Pimentel's legacy will be in the Saturn system in the year 2004 and I think we can safely predict that in the entire future of spacecraft exploration of the solar system, George's legacy will live on."

If Carl Sagan was required to make it as a research scientist he would have ended up with a bottle of rum in some skid row.
As for life emerging from organic molecular structures, we have yet to see anyone lay out anyting that even closely resembles a "honest" portrayed scenario. And least we forget, the earth very unique placement within the sun's orbit, the tilt of the earth, it's rotation, all contribute to a very very find line between the possibilities of life existing, verse no probablility of any living organisms existing let along thriving. Quite frankly I do not like tax dollars going toward such idiotic ventures as seeking life where it cannot exists. It just seems to me that to many supposed scientist are still living in the 50's when guys like Stanley Miller managed to create some very basic organic molecular structures with very tightly controlled conditions, cold traps and the like to gather what simply turned into goo afterwards. Living systems are extremely complex. The biochemistry of life is so wonderouse it should make us all lay on our faces in humbleness. To think any scientist would actually think a carbon based life form could form and thrive on Titans moon is to me utterly ridiculous. And I am not trying to be rude to anyone that believes otherwise. Could an Silicon based CPU just come into existence from raw materials? Think hard about it.
All the knowledge, and different fields of science that go into creating a integrated circuit. I know I designed them, and understand the processing involved. I tell you even the most simple form of living organism, is far more complex then anything mankind has ever attempted to build. Just to think it all just evolved is just nonesense. The simplest cell requires to many mechanisms to be fully functional in order for it to exist, and if the any particular function say some protein synthesis loop is interupted because something prevents a particular enzyme from doing it's thing the cell will die. So how on earth could the cell ever come to be if the enzymes, exact correct rna/dna and other protein molecules, and the large number of intellegent chemical reactions that must all be in place and working correctly where not already in place and functioning properly?