Do We Need New Laws of Physics to Explain the Origins of Life? Brian Keating & Lee Cronin

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 30 August 2024

⏱️ 159 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Do we need new laws of physics to explain the origins of life? I had an amazing discussion about this with the one and only Lee Cronin on Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal. We talked about life, consciousness, physics, chemistry, assembly theory, the Drake equation, and more! Lee Cronin is a chemist and the Regius Chair of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on synthetic life forms, the self-assembly of molecules, and the origin of life. He’s also a leading expert in the field of digital chemistry, pushing the boundaries of chemistry using advanced robotics and AI. Curt Jaimungal is the host of the popular podcast and YouTube channel "Theories of Everything," known for exploring theoretical physics, consciousness, Ai, and God in a technically rigorous manner. Tune in! — Key Takeaways: 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:43 My opening statements 00:04:07 Lee’s opening statements 00:09:26 Why defining "life" is difficult 00:19:50 Disagreements on the origin of life 00:31:51 Is the definition of entropy wrong? 00:50:45 Order that doesn’t involve entropy 00:56:22 Abundance of life in the universe 01:10:36 An answer to the Fermi Paradox 01:19:17 Assembly theory explained 01:36:32 Searching for UFOs 01:50:14 Lee's gripes against the Galileo Project and Avi Loeb 02:08:27 Audience questions 02:15:39 Should UAP data be given to scientists? 02:25:56 Do we need new laws for life? — Additional resources: ➡️ Follow Lee Cronin: ✖️ Twitter: https://x.com/leecronin/ 💻 Website: https://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/ ➡️ Check out Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal: 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w 💻 Website: https://www.curtjaimungal.org/ — ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/ 🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast — Into the Impossible with Brian Keating is a podcast dedicated to all those who want to explore the universe within and beyond the known. Make sure to follow/subscribe so you never miss an episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We can debate about things that we know for sure aren't alive and we can debate about things that we could all say are alive.
0:07.0	There may be a deep and maybe unassailable interplay between the notion of the conscious being that's defining life
0:16.5	and the order and structure by which he or she ascribes that feature to be indicative of a biological process.
0:24.0	Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0:35.0	Open the pod bay doors.
0:39.0	How about you both start with your opening statements, Brian, you can go first.
0:42.8	Okay, well, first of all, I'm wishing that this will be a nice clean toe-to-to-to-toe battle, that we won't
0:51.3	resort to any bloodshed like our last confrontation with now.
0:55.2	Alee has been on my channel. He's a gracious gentleman. I enjoyed having him on.
1:00.0	I refer people to to check out that conversation. He's given a TED Talk that was surely
1:06.1	inspirational that came out 10 years ago on my 40th birthday, so you guys can do some
1:10.7	quick math. And League hasn't changed a bit.
1:14.0	I've got some gray beard hairs as you can see.
1:17.2	But the reason I suggest, Kurt said,
1:20.6	you can have any guest to have a theolocution which is appropriate for
1:25.5	gods like us in in man form and I said there's no one I want to go toe to toe with
1:31.7	more than my good friend Lee Cronin because I have tremendous respect for his intellect for his character for the fact that he's an experimentalist he's a chemist
1:41.3	chemist not a physicist but he's okay, some of my best friends are chemists, and he does experimental work. And that's very rare,
1:49.9	as you know, you have theories in your name of your podcast. We hear a lot more from the theorists. We hear from Michio Kaku from our buddy Eric Weinstein, from our buddies, you know, Brian Green and all the like, but we rarely get to hear from experimentalists.
2:03.4	So one of the niches I like to hopefully fill in is to bring an experimentalist standpoint
2:09.7	to it, which is first and foremost driven by evidence. And I'm hoping that today if Lee agrees that will kind of take a tour through what we know about the universe, what we know we don't know about the universe, specifically restricted to life, which is Lee's domain much more than
2:24.3	mine, but I want to bring an experimental observational astrophysics perspective to things,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Brian Keating, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Brian Keating and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.