First Signs of Life

I had wondered for a while what astronomical discovery would encourage Fred to take the step from life emerging on a comet out of interstellar prebiotics to fully-fledged microbial life distributed throughout interstellar space. He had now been expounding the former thesis for nearly two years with conviction and much eloquence, and had he stayed with that our fortunes may have turned out differently. Our position of 1977 was after all the standard point of view of the scientific community in 2004, and we may now have been more openly acknowledged as its pioneers…