Constraining prebiotic chemistry, Tim Lyons, University of California, Riverside

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Tim Lyons
Distinguished Professor of Biogeochemistry, Director of the Alternative Earths Astrobiology Center, University of California, Riverside
Member, Virtual Planetary Laboratory, University of Washington
Honorary Professor, University of St. Andrews
"Constraining prebiotic chemistry through a better understanding of Earth’s earliest environments"
Any search for present or past life beyond Earth should consider the initial processes and related environmental controls that might have led to its start. As on Earth, such an understanding lies well beyond how simple organic molecules become the more complex biomolecules of life, because it must also include the key environmental factors that permitted, modulated, and most critically facilitated the prebiotic pathways to life’s emergence. Moreover, we ask how habitability, defined in part by the presence of liquid water, was sustained so that life could persist and evolve to the point of shaping its own environment. Researchers have successfully explored many chapters of Earth’s coevolving environments and biosphere spanning the last few billion years through lenses of sophisticated analytical and computational techniques, and the findings have profoundly impacted the search for life beyond Earth. Yet life’s very beginnings during the first hundreds of millions of years of our planet’s history remain largely unknown. This talk will center on one key point: that the earliest steps on the path to life’s emergence on Earth were tied intimately to the evolving chemical and physical conditions of our earliest environments. Yet, a rigorous interdisciplinary understanding of that relationship has not been explored adequately. Studies of the emergence of life require a mix that expands the traditional platform of prebiotic chemistry to include geochemists, atmospheric chemists, geologists and geophysicists, and planetary scientists, among others. This talk will outline the emerging targets and strategies in this pursuit, including efforts within the framework of NASA’s Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments Research Coordination Network.
The Origins of Life Speaker Series explores the conditions and circumstances that led to the diversity of life on Earth. The interdisciplinary series will connect the formation of planets, the evolution of early Earth, and the complex chemistry and delivery of the fundamental organic molecules that serve as the building blocks of early life, and how they can establish complex, self-replicating systems of cells and genetic material.
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About the University of Chicago Physical Sciences Division
The Physical Sciences Division (PSD) at the University of Chicago has a rich history of advancing and defining new fields of discovery in the physical and mathematical sciences, and this tradition of innovation continues today. Our inquiry and impact spans from the edge of the observable universe to human-computer interaction, from biophysical materials science to the geologic record of seawater composition, from gravitational waves to geometric flows, and beyond.
The division includes the academic departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Chemistry, Computer Science, Geophysical Sciences, Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics. In addition, PSD is home to a number of interdisciplinary research institutes and centers, including the Enrico Fermi Institute, the James Franck Institute, and the Kavli Center for Cosmological Physics.
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@FarnhamJ07 3 жыл бұрын

Excellent series. It's a shame KZbin's algorithms haven't recommended it more; only managed stumble on here looking for an old video Jack Szostak did! Many thanks for it.