“We’re All Martians, Scientist Claims,” The Telegraph wrote recently. Similar articles showed up in newspapers and on Web sites around the world.
by Carl Zimmer for the The New York Times
The scientist who inspired all the headlines is a chemist named Steven Benner. Headlines notwithstanding, Dr. Benner is not a wild-eyed U.F.O. advocate claiming to have seen Little Green Men. Instead, he is one of the world’s leading experts on the origin of life.
“Steve is one of the master organic chemists tackling this problem,” said Robert M. Hazen, a mineralogist at the Carnegie Institution and the author of “ The Story of Earth"