Caroline Smith on meteorites and potential ancient life on Mars

Caroline Smith on meteorites and potential ancient life on Mars

From The Life Scientific by BBC Radio 4

November 25, 2025 · 28 min

About this episode

Caroline Smith discusses her passion for meteorites and the search for ancient life on Mars.

Caroline Smith is passionate about space rocks, whether they’re samples collected from the surface of asteroids and the Moon and hopefully Mars one day soon, or meteorites, those alien rock fragments that have survived their fiery descents through our atmosphere to land here on Earth. She is Head of Collections and Principal Curator of Meteorites at the Natural History Museum, home to one of the finest meteorite collections in the world. Her interest in rocks began while wandering the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, as a child, picking up the ones that caught her eye and bashing them with a hammer, hoping to find treasure inside, whether it’s gold, diamonds or dinosaur fossils. Her work today, studying rocks that have landed here on Earth or those still out there in space, is no less ambitious. She analyses their chemical composition looking for tantalising clues that might reveal how our Solar System formed, and potentially the presence of the chemical building blocks necessary for life itself. Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Beth Eastwood Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem BBC Studios Production

People in this episode

Host: Jim Al-Khalili

Guest: Caroline Smith

Topics covered

  • meteorites
  • Mars
  • ancient life
  • space exploration
  • chemical composition
  • Natural History Museum

Keywords

  • meteorites
  • Mars
  • space rocks
  • chemical composition
  • Natural History Museum
  • ancient life
  • Solar System

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Natural History Museum, BBC Studios

Places: Rocky Mountains, Mars, Earth

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