Urability, Origins of Life, and Limits of Phenotype - Dr. Bruce Damer, Biota Institute DSci #179

Dr. Bruce Damer is an astrobiologist, computer scientist, and
director of the BIOTA Institute at UC Santa Cruz with a
compelling theory for the origin of life on Earth. Damer and his
colleagues have proposed that life didn't begin at the bottom of
the ocean, or at a hydrothermal vent, or in the irradiated clouds
of the early Earth. They propose the formation of the earliest
cells out in the open, at the margins of vernal hot spring pools
filled with amino acids, minerals, and proto-nucleotides carried
to Earth by a constant shower of organic-rich micrometeorites. We
talk about the hardest questions on Earth, why hydrothermal vents
are a dead end, why origin of life researchers don't throw hot
coffee at each other any more, and how figuring out where we came
from might let us keep going for long enough to reach the stars.
Check out Bruce's work at the Biota Institute: https://biota.org/
(00:00:00) Go! (00:00:17) Who is Bruce Damer? (00:03:08) Why is
Origins of Life Research So Contentious? (00:06:53) Picture of
the Origin (00:26:36) Precursors for Life (00:41:53) Hydrothermal
Vents Won't Cut It (00:52:08) Experimental Details (01:03:19) How
Far on Phenotype Alone? (01:12:20) Thermodynamics of Life
(01:20:07) What Drives the Reaction to Complexity? (01:26:26)
Chirality Doesn't Matter? (01:30:47) Panspermia Isn't Science?
Really? (01:51:23) Virus Piece of the Puzzle (02:17:27)
Evaporation Cycling (02:41:15) Closing Thoughts Support the
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studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking
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did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of
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