Is Life Inevitable [rebroadcast]

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2022

⏱️ 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 Originally aired May 13, 2019 Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:53.2	That's Tech Crunch Daily Crunch,
0:55.3	Wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, I'm going to bring this to a boil.
1:14.0	And I'm just boiling now and I'm going to add some salt and some ammonia and iron tablets and now imagine if after I heat this kind of oddball soup a fish appeared and popped out. I mean that would be extraordinary
1:36.7	and belied belief. But how less remarkable is it that biology appeared from the early Earth's chemical stew 3.6 billion years ago.
1:47.0	I mean that atoms organized into simple, then complex molecules and eventually non-living matter became living matter.
1:55.0	I mean we're acquainted with the end result I mean that's you but when we wind the clock
1:59.1	back we hit the limits of our understanding about the first life.
2:03.0	How did it arise?
2:04.4	And how did its chemical building blocks take shape anyhow?
2:08.2	Well, to find out, scientists are running chemical experiments in their own kitchens in conditions a tad more
	...

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