Is Life Inevitable? (Rebroadcast)

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2020

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A new theory about life’s origins updates Darwin’s warm little pond. Scientists say they’ve created the building blocks of biology in steaming hot springs. Meanwhile, we visit a NASA lab where scientists simulate deep-sea vent chemistry to produce the type of environment that might spawn life. Which site is best suited for producing biology from chemistry? Find out how the conditions of the early Earth were different from today, how meteors seeded Earth with organics, and a provocative idea that life arose as an inevitable consequence of matter shape-shifting to dissipate heat. Could physics be the driving force behind life’s emergence? Guests: Caleb Scharf – Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University, New York Laurie Barge – Research scientist in astrobiology at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Bruce Damer – Research scientist in biomolecular engineering, University of California, Jeremy England – Physicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:32.3	Get ready to geek out. The Wired Science Podcast explores all the
0:36.8	latest and greatest in science, everything from strange diseases and
0:40.6	biological breakthroughs to interesting tech and mysteries in outer space.
0:45.0	Listen to Wired Science today wherever you get your podcasts.
0:49.0	That's Wired Science wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, I'm going to bring this to a boil.
1:07.0	I'm going to bring this to a boil. And I've got this boiling now.
1:12.0	I'm going to add some salt, add some ammonia and some of my iron tablets.
1:20.0	And now, imagine if after I heat this kind of oddball soup, a fish appeared and popped out.
1:28.0	I mean, that would be extraordinary and lie belief.
1:31.3	But how less remarkable is it that biology appeared from the early Earth's chemical
1:36.0	stew 3.6 billion years ago. I mean that atoms organized into the simple, then complex molecules and eventually non-living matter became
1:46.2	living matter. I mean, we're acquainted with the end result. I mean, that's you. But when we
1:50.9	wind the clock back, we hit the limits of our understanding about the first life.
	...

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