Building Blocks of Everything, Everywhere

One of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time came with the invention of the spectroscope by Joseph Von Fraunhofer in 1814.  It enabled us to look out at the universe and realize that the same basic building blocks that made you and I and all other life, were the same things that make up everything else in the cosmos.  The tiny atoms in our bodies all started out at the center of a massive star billions of years ago.  So naturally, when we talk about the odds of life forming elsewhere, we have to include a study of where...