Arlin P. S. Crotts Radical Hypothesis Lecture by Sara Walker, Arizona State
What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science. The definitions we have now all fall short. None help us understand how life originates from planetary chemistry, nor do they account for the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might be like. One approach has been to ask whether our current theories of physics are up-to-task. This was the approach adopted by the quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger in his famous series of lectures addressing the topic “What is Life?”, which he delivered in 1943. But, what Schrödinger ultimately argued was that while life can be shown to be consistent with the known laws of physics, it also cannot be explained by them. In this talk I briefly review motivations for why our current theories of physics are not suited to solving the problem of life and why solving the origin of life may require radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. I discuss one promising new approach, Assembly Theory, useful for identifying and classifying “life” in terms of universal physics. If proven, the theory should apply not just to biological life on Earth but to any instance of life in the universe, even life as no one yet knows it. I discuss the foundations of the theory, what insights it provides into the origins of biochemistry, and how we might experimentally explore the origins of alien life in the lab with large scale experiments.
Cookies will be available, starting at 3:45.
Host: David Kipping