Gary Ruvkun won the Nobel for Medicine in 2024. Has the highest award in science ever been awarded to a more handsome man? No. The answer is no.

But we're not profiling the Jewish Ruvkun because of his heartthrob looks or because of his discovery of MicroRNA. We're profiling him because he gives us hope... for aliens.

Ruvkun, together with other scientific cohorts, proposes that life didn't necessarily start on Earth; it came to Earth from elsewhere. He argues for the possibility of DNA-based life "across the galaxy". It's based on the discovery that Earth had "pretty complicated bacteria" soon after it cooled... Oh, right, bacteria. Alien bacteria. That's what Ruvkun contends is out there.

Still, there is a small leap from alien bacteria to alien men with giant green heads... None of them would be as handsome as Ruvkun, of course.