The Great Debate - What is Life?

how would you design life I mean I don't know if any of you here want to just do one more crack at this and then we'll move on to something else but Chris the question I asked before why don't you have to define it if you're going some to some other planet to look for it how do you know what you're looking for I don't think we need to define it in order to be able to find it I think as Lee said we can recognize it by the molecules it leaves behind we don't need a definition and I don't think a definition will be forthcoming and you might take the view that we'll only get a good definition when we have more than one example on which to study so I think the whole debate about a definition is a is a is a mistake let's just go out and look for him all right so so Roger so why did you call this thing with his life Lawrence well well because it's a good question but I think in fact it could change for example let me throw in a completely different direction when computers become conscious which they will my Mac is far closer than the PC the will we call them light and I think we and no object if we don't I suspect yeah all right so I think the definition of life is a floating is it is a is a moving target all right so Paul I asked you before the break speak to this notion as well yeah that people have actually written papers suggesting that there might be life as we don't know it actually lurking around on the planet we just even don't realize that yeah that was the idea I was trying to develop that we can't be sure that all life on earth is the same life and after all what we want is a second sample of life and earth is a great place to start looking because it's cheap to look here Martin Mars is another good place to look but it's expensive to get there and there's a problem also because as Chris alluded to the Earth and Mars trade rocks so we have two Mars rocks right here at Arizona State University so we know that material is swapped between these planets and it seems very likely that microbes can hitch a ride in that material the rocks incidentally get off Mars by bit because Mars gets hit from time to time by an asteroid or a comet with enough force to splatter rocks around the solar system so we know that there's a traffic of material between the two it seems very likely if you have life on one you're getting on the other so we may go to all the expense of going to Mars find this life there but oh it just turns out to be another branch on the same tree of life as us so it doesn't you you might find a different form of life on Mars but you might find it on earth as well that's my point can i address you said a definition of life I have had a step but the definition of life because for me the most important thing is about the information processing capabilities because I know of nothing other than life or the products of life like computers that process what we might call semantic or contextual information so that that to me seems to get closest to the heart of what is really weird about life so does anybody here want to speak to the notion of artificial life I'm thinking about Chris Langton now or Tom Ray's tiara and so on life within do you want to talk about it loans the life in the computer artificial life you mean that's artificial life you mean computer life what I just said computer life I mean I think it will share many characteristics I I think the difference is but I don't expect to be long I mean Craig has said for a long time the difference I mean he's doing software that makes its own hardware and the difference with computer software is it doesn't do it yet but once I think computers become self-aware and once they can actually create the hardware that they'll certainly become the dominant forms of intelligent life on the planet I suspect and then in fact biology will have to incorporate that in order to keep up but that's a that's in the future ten or twenty years at least and but but I would I just want you know so I think that it's hard to know I don't know what Craig wants to add to it but I I would also say I guess because of what Paul said that the big it would be a bigger surprise and you talked about looking for life on Mars but if you have bigger surprise to go to Mars and find it wasn't our cousins just because the planets have polluted each other and it would be very eating stuff from Earth it's gone there although it's harder and stuff from there has come here so if life can easily survive the voyage which microbial life can it be amazing to discover life on Mars that wasn't our cousin I think so does anybody have a perspective on the directed panspermia hypothesis that Francis Crick and as the oil did I mean where did where did life begin on earth I mean did it come from somewhere else too right what's the general opinion at this point Richard do you have a thought on that well I think that Francis Crick and Leslie Ogle's directed panspermia was largely tongue-in-cheek but I think they they wanted him to make the point that if indeed as at the time was thought the origin of life on this planet was a very difficult problem then you could as it were spread the problem out by saying it could happen any anywhere else I mean directed panspermia in case anyone doesn't doesn't notice the idea that a civilization elsewhere in the universe tried to propagate its form of life and put its form of life into the nosecone of a rocket and shot it off and it happened to land here the universe is an awfully big place and it and the chance of a rocket happening to hit one planet rather than just whizzing by all of them is is pretty low I don't think they ever thought it was a serious I think was I think it's kind of tongue-in-cheek to make a point Chris but I think Richards right the directed panspermia maybe was tongue-in-cheek but the notion that life could be ejected like Lawrence was saying by natural processes in spread which is just called regular panspermia is getting more serious attention now because as we study early life it's looking more and more like life appears very early in Earth history at a very complete and complex level already it's it seems like Athena springing from the head of Zeus fully formed it's really quite a mystery and it for some people to think well maybe it didn't develop here it came here and landed here and that's why we get this impression of incredible development and complexity so early is as Britney Fox here anyway okay so she sent a question in on the on the Facebook Twitter or origins project website I think this probably goes to Craig but other people might want to comment as well ethically speaking do you believe that life should be created in the laboratory laboratory and more importantly do you believe that life can in fact be created in laboratory setting that's easy yes I you know in fact there's a there's an interesting being Darwin's birthday there's an interesting quote his book about that it would be much more interesting I don't I have to paraphrase it because I didn't bring it with me much more interesting to study man-made variations of species than what occurs naturally something to that extent because what he was finding I guess in England was pretty boring but Craig you've got a long way to go before you make all of life from scratch you can make the genome part that's the easy part but all the other stuff it's going to take a while isn't it well it wasn't so easy actually easy with hindsight yeah well I mean it remains to be seen I think the I mean we have to cheat to some extent because if we put the components in that can read the DNA make the proteins a ribosome is one of the most complex structures we have and so just starting what the ribosome is sort of like building a new Ferrari and buying the engine from somebody else but sooner or later these simple information systems will get read I mean it is important that we're discussing this at the at the break as what how much information transfers with the cell obviously in terms of our species quite a bit transfers with the cell the the mitochondria the mitochondrial DNA is always just a maternal lineage I think microbes are a lot simpler and I think we will be able to totally create cellular systems from non cellular systems and from synthetic molecules and synthetic DNA that's still a very long way from creating life from scratch I could Craig do you know and from your work whether what the what the minimum do we yet know what the minimal configuration is to make life you mean the minimal gene set the minimum gene set we're whittling down on it but there won't be a minimal gene set that will be multiple ones because I'm not so sanguine as some of my colleagues here that there's only one life form on this planet we have a lot of different types of metabolism different organisms I wouldn't call you the same life-form as the one we have that lives in pH 12 base that would dissolve your skin if we drop you in it oh I've got the same genetic it will have a common anything well you don't have the same nettie code in fact the micro plasmas use a different genetic code and little bit not working in yourself so there are a lot of variations on but you know but you're not saying it belongs to a different tree of life from me I well I think the Tree of Life is an artifact of some early scientific studies that aren't really holding up so the tree you know there may be a bush of life Wow yes ah oh I don't like that word written but that's only I can see that yeah yeah so there's not a tree of life and in fact from our deep sequencing of organisms in the ocean out of now we have about 60 million different unique gene sets we found twelve that look like a very very deep branching perhaps fourth domain of life that obviously is extremely rare that it only shows up out of those few sequences but it's still DNA based but you know the diversity we have in the DNA world I'm not so saying what in wedding ready to throw out the DNA world I think we're going to maybe like Richard were saying what we're going to find the same molecules and the same base systems wherever we look you in fact had a comment you wanted to make a grid today well it's rather moved on but I mean I was just gonna say I can't imagine why anyone should think it was an ethical problem I could see why they might think it was a problem of expediency you might you might fear that it would you know escape and overrun the world or something but but ethical problem I can't see well but I'm now intrigued by Craig saying little I I'm intrigued at Craigs saying that the Tree of Life is a fiction I mean the DNA code of all creatures that have ever been looked at is all but identical and surely that means that they're all related doesn't it alright let me give you a specific question here this is from somebody called Gus Hallward a filmmaker who sent something onto the website I think if we could fully understand the origins of life consciousness etc etc do you believe that that type of discovery would help strip away some of the enamel of religious and metaphysics or do you think that like the Big Bang and other complex cosmological concepts of which we now have a deep understanding it would simply fly over the heads of the masses and possibly further the gap between science and religion that sounds like a Dawkins question yeah well it obviously ought to have the effect that the questioner says whether it actually would I rather inclined to be pessimistic as he as he is I suspect that that it wouldn't no matter how fully you prove something those people who are indoctrinated from childhood in their religion would never ever give it up sadly yeah I think let me expand on and I think we're already hearing I think we already both of us are probably I don't know if you ever been by been to the Pontifical Academy in the Vatican and and and for meetings and they're already preparing to discover life elsewhere and incorporate it in Catholic theology I think and so I think that the I'm serious because it's going to happen and and and and and they've learned the hard way and so I think I think it's very it's very dip it will chip for a lot of people will confront their notions but I think it's I agree with with Richard completely that I think it's unlikely that that alone is going to is going to strip people of beliefs that that they already have based on on well I won't go on do you have trouble convincing people Chris that that given all the issues that there are on the planet and given the fact that we know so little about all forms of life on this planet that we should still be lurching off in search of life in other directions well I think it's I think it is important to answer the question why should we search for life on other worlds and that's what I opened with and I think it's important to have that question both for us as scientists but also to answer the general public why should we be spending a lot of money to search for life on Mars and again I go back to the fundamental scientific importance that might be derived by having a second biochemistry i side with richard on this and not with craig venter though i think there is only one type of life on earth one and if we had to that would be a lot more was anyone we know about yeah there's only one we know pause right there's only one we know and I'm all with Paul if we can find two right here on earth that's good but I want to go to Mars anyway so while I'm there I'm happy to look for life there so so here's a question from somebody do you believe ammonia boo asu student do you believe in future they could be life on Mars or any other planet in our solar system there could be in the future for sure yeah I think Mars will inevitably be a biological world it may be a biological world and populated by organisms with a Martian genome or failing that it will be a biological world populated by organisms with an earth genome earth will share its genome it will be the gift from Earth so this is the cover of the current skeptic magazine and the main story is the origin of life this is New Scientist just to 250 days ago there's a long piece in here on chemical creation of life so the life factory inanimate matter that can evolve before our eyes could point to exotic new life-forms why did you choose this this particular subject I mean it seems to be quite part of lonesome well it's well I try to may some of the ideas with my introduction that point is that it it's hard to imagine anything it touches us more deeply a question an origins question that that that is more direct than the origin of life on Earth and our own origins and and also because as we're learning at the meeting we're having now they're tremendous developments that are potentially not only changing our picture of our understanding of the origin of life but likely to do it in the near future and I and I generally think it's that fortune favors the prepared mind and these kind of discussions are very important because if we're going if they're going to create life in the laboratory it's really important for people to understand the potential and what to worry about and what not to worry about and and so and finally because well I was going to say it later but I'll say it now I think the the true value of science and art and literature is to chain is to change our picture of our place in the cosmos that's why that's what makes being human worth being human and and that unifying aspect of trying to understand the origin of life really will ultimately change our understanding of ourselves so it seemed to me a profound issue and it was also a fun one yeah so that was the I interrupted you there you had some other question users yeah I was gonna I was going to disagree with Paul I in fact I'll make him a bet right now yes um I'll hold good and you and I don't trust Chris to hold Richard I trust to hold it but uh the I I suspect in not only in a decade that we won't find a second job but what I said was if it's there okay if there is a second problem either if we could find it in ten years okay and oh it may not be there ya know I was going to say that in the next century which is good because neither of us are collected right we won't find any evidence for a second generate and the reason being twofold one at this meeting I've got I've become more and more convinced that maybe the mechanisms that have led to life have a reason it's not just random that DNA and RNA have the structure they do and including the set of amino acids they do for a real chemical and thermodynamic reason so I'm beginning to think that it may have been driven in that direction but the other argument is that you know evolution says that successful forms rule out other forms and the kind of life we know has been pretty successful and I suspect it'd be pretty hard to find a niche as far as we could tell that even in the kind of life that you're talking about that lives in acid levels that would dissolve us is from the same tree of life and life seems to have occupied every niche on the planet it could have the kind of life that we have and therefore I suspect that even if there was another life form it would have been crowded out by now those yeah but now I need us agree with that Darwin said it would have been eaten by us yeah us but by it but not if you only if it's tasty easy and so if it's got radically different biochemistry it's you know under on the Left right is a very good example of that they could peacefully coexist but but they're you're right that life as we know it is spread into a wide geographical and parameter space but it doesn't fill it out totally and this idea that you couldn't you know one form has to eliminate the other the Archaea and the bacteria have coexisted peacefully for what two and half billion years three billion I don't know you know great now half hour back to the branch five point five million trees yeah three point five but it won't provide billion oldest fight and you know in many ways they're in competition for resources and it's true that if you look at the distribution of microorganism some are present in large abundance and others and small abundance but they can this remains a stable distribution I see no reason why one would have to squeeze the other out let me ask you a practical question a fun to talk about this it's great that all the research is going on in terms of practical applications of this this kind of thinking I'm thinking more along the lines of what you're doing Craig now in terms of synthetic organisms I mean could you speak to the environmental impact of those sort of things well part of what's driving it is other than these basic questions is trying to find some alternative chemistry's that will allow us to live on this planet a little bit longer so we're we're trying to see if we can use carbon dioxide as the the main starting ingredient for all future food and fuel it is now for food but it's a very inefficient process through plants and photosynthesis versus scaling that up through deliberate genetic engineering and so if we can use co2 and make hydrocarbons that can go into the Exxon Mobil refineries instead of taking that carbon out of the ground we can eventually start to shift that equilibrium but we have some real practical problems in the example I give is I was born in 1946 and there's now over three people on the planet for everybody that existed the year I was born that we wouldn't have needed the size Opera auditorium sixty-four years ago and in 30 years or less there's going to be just shy of 10 billion people we can't provide food fuel medicine clean water very efficiently for the close to seven billion people we have now so we need some new solutions and people have been looking at naturally occurring organisms people are studying algae for almost a century now thinking it would provide these solutions but algae don't exist naturally to produce these incredibly high concentrations of the specific molecules that are needed but it's not hard in the laboratory to change things a millionfold synthetically and actually design organisms and design the future of plants to do what we want them to do so I think they're more than just a few practical purposes it's our whole basic existence will depend on these and other types of scientific breakthroughs yeah Lee Lee Hartwell in terms that I mean your primary focus is on is on cancer and so on but but in that you're looking at the commonalities the the conservation of information from organisms from yeast to humans and so on they did watch you what you learnt in doing doing the research give you a different perspective on this question of what is life I'm a perspective of what question on the perspective of life and it's its value well we all value life but with respect to the question of the origin I find it just that the more we learn about cells the more complex they seem they're just incredibly complex things and to you know go from what we can see today to try to reason where it came from I think is really impossible said you had any thoughts on where your work is how impacts this particular discussion no I don't have anything to say about this particular discussion well I do research Touche not tonight let me let me jump in for a second and say that I mean in fact actually it's not Syd should have something to say because we have just in his talk today he was talking about how trying to understand RNA actually made allow us to treat diseases in a in a new way by using RNA to cleave and destroy certain diseases and I think and I was surprised that Lee did didn't pick up on that that not only the I suspect the economy of the world will depend on the kind of software hacking that's done with DNA in the future just as the present economy depends on the ones and zeroes and in silicon and but I suspect at the same time is the economy that that our health in the future is going to be dramatically affected our ability to fight disease and treat diseases by exactly these questions of the research that's being done by many of the people at this day boy so it was it was a clever last question what I was trying to get at was that a read somewhere where I read your Nobel Prize speech and so on that working with yeast and then seeing how similar mechanisms translated and so on and so forth gave you this wonderful sense of the connectedness of things if you like oh well that is trying to force Louisiana - yes no that's certainly what what is is I think you know surprising really maybe it shouldn't be but I think it was was the fact that the the fundamental chemistry of life and the fundamental you know thousands of functions that different cell types have are very very similar to one another there are extremes but for the most part all for example eukaryotic cells the animals things like that they function in very very similar ways and so you can take this Tinkertoy set or set of legos that arose you know at the dawn of certainly eukaryotic life and much of it before and and and make all kinds of things out of it and and so what that means is that we can study you know study things in any system and learn things about ourselves and and that's pretty fascinating yeah the the possibility of alternative microbial life on earth Paul we did that but but how serious do you think well I'm relying on people like Craig to find it you know because he's going out trawling the planet if anyone is set up to look for something seriously weird it's got to be his outfit you could going to take on this challenge but we're only sequencing DNA and RNA I know right so you've got to keep your eyes it you know maybe you should say we've done because I I find it fascinating we don't your little sailboat not that little but it's just amazing with what onesearch is how much how many new life-forms have been covered I don't know if it's clear to people yeah we've lost count basically because there's so much diversity in the oceans but what we haven't published yet as we've been sampling very deep in the earth down to bethe 120 degree Celsius barrier and how many kilometres is that well you can go down depending where you are mile to two miles you put the miles well it and so it's it's not real deep but there's more life underneath the surface of the earth than there is in the oceans they're certainly equivalent the same densities but the organisms are very different and there's in the ocean we find this tremendous diversity probably largely due to UV radiation and deep in the earth that we don't find same clouds of diversity around the same organisms in fact they getting a sample from Colorado about a mile deep an organism was co-host of being identical to one from a volcano in Italy so maybe without UV radiation without all these things that drive mutations life is a lot more stable so we have we haven't looked for non DNA non RNA life but when you're isolating cellular life there is nothing that shows up that's not in that category well happened how would you know because we do sauce holding down to the single cell level and you never see when you test for DNA we can sequence a genome from a single bacterial cell ah yeah but do you see if you tried to sequence one even that had a different genetic code you wouldn't make any progress would you you move on to the next but this is like trying to prove there's no God no no no no it's not the real question so for example you can stain for DNA okay Richard back in the argue but I'm trying to put a research project in agency you can stain for the DNA's all right but you can't stay in for no delia up but if you see a you know population of microorganisms and only a third of them a staining for DNA you think well what are the other two that they all have DNA all the ones you've looked at separately maybe there's some invisible ones that were not and I'm not taking this seriously you don't see them because the way you see them is by staining your DNA but we sort them down to single cells and the cell sorter and we can grow them from single cells right under the genome you can grow them in a standard cell culture but if they were radically alternative organisms they wouldn't grow and so you throw them away it's self selecting if you go looking for a you will find out you won't find B I want you to look for B I'm going to think that you're not going to find anything in the next 10 years well no if you don't put your heart in it let me let me ask let me ask a question to everyone here I want to hear the answer too I'm gonna ask it so I don't have to answer it do you think in your lifetime and that varies that we will know the origin of life on earth what the step by which a non life became life on earth do you think will answer that question why your life start with Richard may be angled down I'm increasingly optimistic having attended the day's conference that you organized Lawrence I I had hitherto thought of it as a rather remote possibility but things seem to be really moving in an exciting exciting way so far as I can understand it so yes I think that I think it will sit I think it's quite possible that the question is as you said how long are we going to live as individuals and I don't expect to live that long but I think it's it's very hard to make predictions about the future as Yogi Berra said but perhaps in 20 years we might understand something about the real origin of life I know you want to go down this sequence but I have another question for you which maybe we can come to after you leave speaks now go ahead I don't have anything to say on this well ok while we go why don't we go why don't we go through an astronaut so no I want to ask you the question oh you want to ask me a question yes well before you change the topic you know I disagree we're not going to know the origin of life on this planet we're generating hypotheses and the only way to test those is to see if we can recreate those conditions and that origin on another planet or witness that it did take place you know there's some things we can do in science in terms of proving certain things about life we discover guessing what happened 4.2 billion years ago or 3.5 billion years ago we can come up with a lot of good guesses there's been a lot of good guess floating around it it's impossible to prove it I have to really disagree there in the sense that because I think it's part of the problem partly of science and religion too is that people have the wrong impression with Sciences that science tells a story and it's a story like any other story but it make but the difference is it's a story that makes prediction so you can you can make you can try and guess what happened in the past but they're sometimes based on those guesses that you can make predictions about things you haven't measured yet say if life formed this way then I can do this experiment in the lab and observe something I haven't yet seen and if I doing that enough and if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and all my predictions are consistent with what I see then I can say that I'm not posting I'm predicting no but then Paul would say you didn't look for the other but Frank I think I agree I unlike Lee I don't disagree with anything you said what would in terms of your last few statements you're absolutely right about things you said but I think it's possible again from material we heard earlier today and what I know other scientists are doing who are interested in this topic that we might have some information put it that way about the origin of whatever we call the origin of life 20 years from now or something something like that I certainly want to agree with that yeah I certainly won't say anything with certainty there is another question Lawrence which I would like to ask you which has nothing to do with what we were just talking about you were talking about the future of computers and that they will have consciousness which I don't understand at all I don't understand what you mean by consciousness but we don't have to talk about that right now and knowing that you're a very erudite person and that you've probably read some of Isaac Asimov of course yeah yeah shouldn't we make sure that the Three Laws of Robotics are opposed on our computers Oh actually I don't uh it always amazes me and I'll bring in Star Trek because I'm contractually obliged a bit to to UM that we have this perception that somehow alien life via computer life is always a threat and that in fact that that our future isn't isn't isn't their future and so it the part of the problem of the as Masri laws is the assumption that doing away with humans is a bad thing and and it's not at all clear me that that's a bad thing in the long term that because I doubt in I doubt two hundred years from now that what that being human will will have that much resemblance to what being human is now and no matter what whether we're computers get get get get intelligent or not I suspect with what we'll be able to do in genetics that the definition of exams same thing you could say the same thing about Benjamin Franklin that he would have had no idea of what our life is like today but I think that's part but he didn't have the technology and we don't have to acknowledge Oh captain franklin would understand what life is today even though he wouldn't recognize it easily and we will understand what life is like two hundred years now even though it might be difficult oh yeah but it but being so may be very different than what it may have very little resemblance to what what being human is today and I'm will and that doesn't seem to it's not a good thing or a bad thing it just seems to me that what's possible is going to happen and there's no sense trying to avoid it well I don't understand what you mean by what is possible and on what we can or cannot recognize I but we will talk about this later do do any of you have any of you had any sympathy at all for the the Gaia hypothesis that Jim Lovelock and Lynn Margulis put out some years ago the notion of the the the the earth itself or the biosphere at least being a living organism none no notion I didn't think you would look nobody subscribes to that's all no Richard Holmes with me in you can ask he's much he's much more eloquent than I I know in the weak sense life has changed earth I mean as I said oxygen exists in the atmosphere only because of life so life is intimately connected and after if we learned at our meeting today into geology is intimately connected with life we've learned that that that the geological features of the earth in fact dramatic no doubt dramatically affected the way life evolved so there's an intimate connection between life and the planet but some kind of cosmic new-age thing I'm not a big fan of though oh I want to defend the Lovelock here for a minute his real insight was that the cycling of the light elements on earth carbon and nitrogen sulphur and phosphorus were dominated and really controlled by biology and he derived that insight when NASA asked him to be part of the search for life on Mars he looked at Mars and saw a planet in which the elements were not cycled by biological systems and he said the big difference between Earth and Mars is on earth the light elements are under biological control and on Mars they're not and that is a very important concept for how to search for life and it now effectively that's how we will search for life around planets around other stars because of this effect that life will have in altering the environment creating for example oxygen and that oxygen on earth is the shear is the simplest and most straightforward manifestation of Lovelock's idea now it has evolved into this quasi-mystical mother earth sort of thing but I think the root of it is solid science and it's got to do with the fact that when life is present on a world it takes over the whole world and it is in command of the cycling of the white elements and I think that's operationally a very important concept when we look at other with it but but I mean that's what Lawrence Morris said that that it nobody doubts that the presence of life on a planet changes the conditions on that planet what Lovelock said was that the earth is a living system which actually regulates itself for its own good I mean that's a very much more radical thing Lovelock in itself never said this but John Maynard Smith told a wonderful story of how he was at a conference where there was a and one of those philosophical ecologists his name was goldsmith you know who I mean Roger who Samuel goes are Teddy Teddy Teddy goes yes I admit um and they were discussing whether it was discussing the theory that a meteorite had hit the earth and destroyed the dinosaurs and in a major major catastrophe and Teddy Goldsmith said impossible Gaia would never have permitted it anything could be taken too far yeah so but you're you're there's an extract from some of your writings in this compendium I've been talking about it's the universal Darwinism thing and it since we are on separate the twelve and Darwin's birthday and you would you just sort of explain so that you actually think this principle is absolutely universal right I cannot and should I conjectured that if there is life anywhere else in the universe however weird and however alien and however strange it may be the one thing I would put my shirt on is that it will be Darwinian life are you going to hold this better strongman I'll agree with him that it will evolve but the question I would put back is is Darwinian evolution the only way right to evolve now that's a question not a state yeah it's it's a very good question it's certainly the only way that's ever been proposed that would work now there may be other ways that haven't been for but the only other sort of candidate would be Lamarckian evolution and that in principle couldn't work even if the fact supported it well on that Darwinian note I am indeed directive that we should bring it to a close and thank the panelists very much well want to thank the planet so I do want to I want to thank everyone for and and all of you for coming and I do want to just say that this event is part of a continuing series and there's three there's three events I wanted to let you know about in the future ones related to event Paul is organizing which is related to this it's about life in this and other universes I think and it's life's distant life's destiny this is about Lord Martin Reese who's among any other things that astronomer royale is going to be talking April 14th here associated with the alien thing we talked about Lucy Hawking is here and she's coordinating with Paul a contest for high schools for students to suggest what they would say in response to a message from aliens that we receive in SETI's to give Paul advice and we hope to announce the winner of that contest at the next origin event which will be as I've announced before a major four-day festival of science and culture April 8th to 11th involving theater music film and dance with some rather spectacular events so I'm not going to go into them here but look out for them and I think the reason I want to end with that is that that the questions we've talked about as I say are not just scientific ones they're cultural ones and in my opinion they're ones we should all be asking and be prepared to answer but thank you very much for coming and thanks to the panelists you

Channel: TheScienceFoundation

Views: 493,014

Rating: 4.7626672 out of 5

Keywords: Richard Dawkins, J Craig Venter, Sydney Altman, Lee Hartwell, Paul Davies, Chris McKay, Lawrence Krauss, Roger Bingham

Id: xIHMnD2FDeY

Length: 41min 59sec (2519 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/adamimos1]

Can someone explain to me what Venter meant when he said he didn't agree with the concept of a tree of life?

[u/unseenagitator]

SCIENCE TEAM GOOOOOO