"Astronomer Dimitar Sasselov discusses his book *The Life of Super-Earths: How the Hunt for Alien Worlds and Artificial Cells Will Revolutionize Life on Our Planet*. In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus fomented a revolution when he debunked the geocentric view of the universe, proving instead that our planet wasn't central to the universe. Just as earth is not the center of things, could it be that the life on it is not unique to our planet? *The Life of Super-Earths* is a tour of current efforts to search for other planets that may hold the key to this answer. Sasselov, the founding director of Harvard University's Origins of Life Initiative, shows how the search for 'super-Earths''rocky planets like our own that orbit other stars'may provide the key to answering essential questions about the origins of life here and elsewhere. That is, if the answers to those questions are not found on Earth first. As Sasselov and other astronomers have uncovered planets with mixes of elements different from our own, chemists have begun working out the heretofore unseen biochemistries that those planets could support. That knowledge is feeding directly into synthetic biology'the effort to build wholly novel forms of life'making it likely that we will first discover truly 'alien' life forms in an earthly lab, rather than on a remote planet thousands of light years away. This unprecedented convergence of pioneering efforts in astronomy and biology provide the opportunity for transformation in our understanding of life and its place in the cosmos."
