This Thanksgiving, Let’s Talk About Science

Is there intelligent life out there? Is there intelligent life at your Thanksgiving dinner table? Hard to say. Planetary scientists at NASA are focused on a more elemental question: Are conditions ripe for life on other bodies in our solar system? Even if your guests have not heard of Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon, which is considered one of the best candidate’s for finding life, they can surely engage with the question, “What is life?” NASA’s working definition of life, coined by a group of biologists in 1992, is “a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.”

When all else fails and you need to change the subject, talk about animals. Here are a few starting points:

• Trainers at the San Diego Zoo like to pair cheetahs and dogs to help socialize the cats, which are naturally skittish. Some scientists say we have a lot to learn from inter-species animal friendships.
• Pigeons have recently been trained to identify breast cancer tumors, but the jobs of radiologists are probably safe.
• What’s the most plentiful vertebrate on our planet? Probably a fish called the bristlemouth. Scientists believe there are trillions of them glowing in the darkness of the ocean’s middle depths.
• The genes of elephants have special properties that make them better than humans at fighting cancer.

Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic are preparing to attempt a complicated undertaking: transplanting a uterus into a woman who does not have one, who will then attempt to get pregnant and give birth. The surgery has been done successfully in Sweden, but the American attempt will differ because the uterus will come from a deceased organ donor.

This may not be polite conversation at every Thanksgiving dinner table. But if you’ve got the kind of family who lets it all hang out, they’ll probably find this story pretty interesting. And no, men are unlikely to carry babies if this works.

When the present seems too difficult to discuss with the people around you, focusing on ancient history may be the best path. Fortunately for you, there has been some big news in archaeology this year:

• A Kazakh archaeology enthusiast discovered unusual shapes that appeared in his country’s territory on Google Earth. The oldest of these earthworks appears to have been created more than 8,000 years ago.
• Stonehenge’s secrets are being revealed with the use of new technology. One new theory suggests that ancient Britons visited the site to honor their ancestors after partying at a nearby location.
• The fate of the Roanoke island colonists has long been something of a spooky mystery in American history. Some researchers say that they have located an inland site where some of the colonists may have fled.
• A warrior’s grave filled with “lots of bling,” discovered at Pylos, Greece, could help explain the origins of the culture that ultimately rose to become the classical Greek culture.

How low should your blood pressure go? A large federal study this year found that people who got their systolic blood pressure below 120 had much lower death rates and fewer heart attacks and strokes than people who aimed for 140. Someone in your family is likely to find this information very interesting and Gina Kolata explained what you need to know about this study’s results.

A group of entrepreneurs wanted to make money from solar power, but that didn’t work out. So they took their technological know-how and decided to make diamonds by adding layers of carbon atoms to an initial slice of natural diamond. And now they say they can make them at a quality and cost that will be just as good and affordable as the stones on the rings worn by any of your fellow diners.