Hacking Darwin, by Jamie Metzl Sourcebooks hide caption

Physicist Stephen Hawking on Oct. 10, 1979, in Princeton, New Jersey. Santi Visalli/Getty Images hide caption

Neil deGrasse Tyson attends Film Independent at LACMA presents StarTalk — A Conversation with Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, on June 5 in Los Angeles. Araya Diaz/Getty Images hide caption

Natalie Portman plays Lena in Alex Garland's Annihilation, a fantasy sci-fi drama based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer. Paramount Pictures hide caption

This image, taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows the supernova remnant SNR 0509-68.7, also known as N103B. It is located 160,000 light-years from Earth in a neighboring galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Space Telescope Science Institute/NASA, ESA and Y.-H. Chu (Academia Sinica, Taipei) hide caption

The SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from launch pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Joe Raedle/Getty Images hide caption

What scientists believe to be our oldest ancestor, the single-celled organism named LUCA, likely lived in extreme conditions where magma met water — in a setting similar to this one from Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Danita Delimont/Getty Images/Gallo Images hide caption