Bruce Damer on The Origin of Life
Kaleidoscope hosting a salon on the modern understanding of the origins of life! We'll be having the polymath, UCSC researcher, and designer Bruce Damer speaking on the subject, with Q&A, dinner, and freeform discussion to follow.
Origins science has been making leaps and bounds over the last few years, especially with greater synthesis across disciplines, and the introduction of tools from complexity and systems theory. We've learned (e.g., as in Eric Smith's work) how the basic metabolic cycle common to all of life stems directly from the boundary conditions put in place by our geologically active planet and sun. Life as we know it isn't necessary inevitable, but the basic metabolic cycle might be.
In 2015, Bruce Damer introduced and published on the Coupled Phases model of life, providing an end-to-end model from individual little molecule solutes all the way to cell division, complete with tangible evidence, and testable hypotheses. We'll learn about this model, and more recent consequences of that work, like on exobiology research on Mars!
Schedule:
3-4 : Pre-gaming by watching a video of Eric Smith's lecture introducing The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth (2015)
430-530 : Two presentations by Bruce Damer on The Origin of Life, and The Future of Life in the Cosmos
(2015 video 1hour) New Theories on the Origin of Life with Eric Smith of Earth-Life Science Institute in Tokyo and the Santa Fe Institute • New Theories on the Origin of Life wi...