Let’s say someone offers you a lot of money to pour a vial of acid on your face. They won’t tell you what kind, but they will reassure you that it’s a “weak acid.” Should you do it?

Vultures live on a diet of rotting meat that would result in severe food-poisoning and death in most other creatures. How they do it is a mystery, but a recent investigation suggests these opportunistic feeders have evolved an extreme stomach to help them cope with their rather severe dietary habits.

In 1953, chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey created life. They filled flasks with water and gases from Earth’s primordial atmosphere and, with a jolt of electricity, created amino acids, the building blocks of all life on this planet. Last year, a former student of Miller’s discovered the remnants of the…