Life as Slime
This article concludes Issue 06. Watch our Behind-the-Scenes interview with the author on YouTube. By Thomas Moynihan In 1832, Ferdinand von Ritgen, a German physician, puzzled over how the first generation of humans birthed themselves. He pictured their embryos sprouting spontaneously “without procreating parents preceding them,” like fungal growths emerging from the ground. By Ritgen’s day, it was understood that life on Earth had predated humanity’s debut for eons and that living creatures