A Geochemical History of Life on Earth: 1. In the beginning
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2021
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How did this continuous chemical reaction that we call "life" first begin? And why did the hellish conditions of the early Earth provide the perfect birthplace? Justin Rowlatt speaks to two scientists with rival theories about the origin of life, both trying to recreate it in their labs - John Sutherland of Cambridge University, and Nick Lane of University College London. Plus the Natural History Museum's Sara Russell shows Justin a rock that is older than the Earth itself - the Winchcombe meteorite.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Justin Rollat and welcome to a geochemical history of life on earth here on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:11.0 | Why geochemical? Because we humans are recklessly undertaking a |
| 0:16.2 | giant experiment with our planet's chemistry. This series asks what the history of |
| 0:21.7 | life on Earth tells us about how serious the impact is |
| 0:25.5 | likely to be. This really is the greatest story ever told, a battle for survival against fire ice poisonous gases and |
| 0:36.0 | meteor impacts but above all it's a story of how our planet's chemistry has shaped evolution |
| 0:42.0 | and how evolution in turn has transformed our planet's chemistry. I'm on a boat in the middle of the North Sea at the world's biggest offshore wind farm. |
| 1:05.5 | The rows of huge turbines here are part of the central project of the 21st century. Humanity's attempt to find alternatives to |
| 1:15.8 | fossil fuels. Now we all know why we've got to do this. It's basic chemistry. |
| 1:20.8 | When we burn fossil fuels we pollute our atmosphere with carbon |
| 1:24.3 | oxide which dangerously warms our planet. But our misadventure with fossil fuels is |
| 1:30.2 | nothing new in Earth's history. Life has always tried to hack into new energy sources, |
| 1:36.5 | often with disastrous consequences. And to understand why we have to begin by asking the most fundamental question of all. |
| 1:47.0 | Great, so I mean if you had to define life what would you say life is? What is life? |
| 1:54.4 | Well, I avoid trying to define life. I think it's actually... |
| 1:58.0 | Meet Nick Lane, professor of evolutionary biochemistry at University College London. |
| 2:03.7 | It's the first question anyone asks is how do you define life? |
| 2:06.7 | We'll get to know Nick properly later in the program, but right now listen to the definition of life I eventually winkled out of him. |
| 2:15.0 | Life is a continuous chemical reaction. |
| 2:18.0 | You are a continuous chemical reaction. You are breathing, you're burning food all the time and that is powering absolutely everything |
| 2:24.4 | that's going on in all of yourselves all the time. The question to me is what is life |
| 2:29.3 | doing and what is doing is making more of itself by converting the environment into itself, by growing, in a word, |
... |
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