What The Hell Is Life? And How Do We Search For It?

[@BIGREDDOG09]

Listening to people talk about things I don't yet understand has been the pillar of my learning since my 20's so I refuse to feel stupid right now. :)

[@infinitemonkey917]

I found this easy to follow. Try PBS Spacetime if you don't mind feeling stupid.

[@urduib]

It´s never stupid trying to learn complex things. You are here for knowledge, and that makes you awesome in my eye´s 🎄

[@OlliGarch]

There is never a dumb question. Keep on learning. ✌️✌️✌️❤️❤️❤️

[@councilofgiants1031]

Much agreed. 'Immersion'. Like you... I didn't know how to speak Spanish. I moved to Mexico. I knew nothing of astronomy. I read books, went to seminars, I watched documentaries, I purchased Dr. Filippenko's 96 lectures long series on The Great Courses website (It's on sale @ $40.00 USD at the moment). Most of these things are available on KZbin free of charge. I found Feynman lectures and interviews, Jim Al-Kahlili docs/interviews, Sean Carroll, Janna Levin, Kip Thorn, Fraser Cain, etc... The list of science communicators and scientists goes on. It's amazing what you can find on KZbin. [wink-wink, nudge-nudge] Immersion is the key for me. After a while stuff starts to stick. Good luck. :o)

[@fritzelly7309]

This has been one of my most favourite interviews you've done - absolutely riveting interview

[@0The0Web0]

I second that - really great interview and discussions 👌

[@mattwuk]

When you can just watch a man speak and know he's brilliant, here we are with Dr Chris Impey

[@mattwuk]

Would I like to meet him and have a conversation? Nope, I'm not informed enough, but I love listening to this I'm just a regular nerd, props to Fraser for having a conversation for us.

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

Dr. Angela Collier's has a video about "why life will never be silicon based." She compares carbon & silicon the atomic level, how they form bonds, how they differ, etc. It's well worth a look.

[@frasercain]

Yeah, that was a very interesting video. She's terrific.

[@douglaswilkinson5700]

@frasercain Yes, she is. Her sense of humor is "wicked" as the British say.

[@ncdave4life]

​@@douglaswilkinson5700, "wicked humor" is a charitable spin on supercilious.

[@HendrickHulst]

The almost inevitable likelihood that "biological" or even any chemical form of life must inherently be carbon based should be obvious if one looks at the available evidence. The fact that any plausible resource of available materials of sufficient complexity to initiate an early form of life could only be the naturally existing carbon based complex molecules. As they can be observed to exist in samples collected from comets, asteroids, found on meteorites on earth, have been detected by radio astronomy in interstellar molecular dust clouds that will coalesce into solar systems and planets, etc. Nowhere have similar such complex silicon molecules have been found to exist anywhere in space, planets or other space objects. So by a process of elimination as far as life is concerned, Carbon rules.

[@jackd42o]

"..my liver cells are not very robust" You're tellin me brother

[@trignals]

@16:31 such a charismatic interviewee 😂. Maybe it's a regional accent in the US but there's a definitive Mathew McConaughey vibe. Also great input on an excellent topic. A late contender for the most enjoyable interview of the year so far!

[@HE-pu3nt]

🎶 It's life Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it. 🎶 It's life Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, It's not as we know it Jim. 🎶 Star Trekking across the universe, only going forward 'cos we can't find reverse. 😂🤣🥳🍾🥂🍷🥴🇬🇧♥️ Merry Christmas folks.

[@samcardoza708]

Thanks for interviewing Dr. Impey! I took his class on the history and philosophy of astronomy on coursera and loved it, so I was super stoked to see him pop up on your channel 🙂

[@samedwards6683]

Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative interview. Great job. Keep it up.

[@shahab_shawn_siahpoosh]

Very interesting talk. When two science educators/communicators talk, I absolutely love it. You never know where the conversation is going but no matter what it is fascinating

[@DataSmithy]

Frasier, you've done it again. This is a gem of a conversation. it just Sparkles with interesting ideas.

[@billionsandbillionsofstars]

Thank you Fraser for asking my question.❤

[@njm3211]

This was an amazing interview. For me, it was the most interesting ever. Dr. Impey is a brilliant scientist.

[@bbartky]

Fraser, I'm older than dirt and this is one of the best interviews on the possibilities and implications of extraterrestrial life that I've ever seen. 👏 Please brink Dr. Impey back for a folow-up interview.

[@LucasFehr]

Thanks Fraser! I love these interviews. ⭐️

[@ncdave4life]

27:50 Great point, Fraser. One of the really wonderful things about Earth is that its gravity is strong enough to hold its atmosphere, but not *_quite_* too strong to prevent *_us_* from escaping it. That's why "super Earths" would be not so wonderful.

[@davidwhiteford4936]

Outstanding guest!

[@chris-terrell-liveactive]

Really fascinating interview, thank you. Good to start breaking the conceptual shells of anthropo- and techno-centrism. Listening to these discussions when driving long journeys has helped me arrive feeling refreshed and optimistic.

[@ulfpe]

One thing, regardless of chemistry is time. We have a certan life span that decides our way of life, travel through space and communicate. A life form with a different life span and even structure could behave very differently and we might not know what we are lokking at

[@anthonyalfredyorke1621]

Thanks Fraser for another fabulous interview, have a wonderful Christmas and New year peace and love to your family. PEACE AND LOVE TO EVERYONE AND HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL ❤❤.

[@Threedog1963]

I remember when methane was discovered on Mars, the reports said it could be an indication of life since methane breaks down quickly. Was the methane source ever explained?

[@joshjones6072]

@Threedog1963 As far as I remember it wasn't explained. Methane seemed to occur seasonally. It might have been something related to solar heating, but the methane itself wasn't explained.

[@Dam-a-fence]

18:44. I think this feeling I'm feeling right now is what I feel when moments like this happen. I'm no specialist and that makes me ever so happy. Talking about what came first, the chicken or the egg. For all intents and purposes. Everything came first, then it segmented. Seeking to comprehend the total, as one of the parts, is folly. You never will. Why seek to? Right now is what matters, you physicists should be able to parse the matter from that pun. Tomorrow's a mystery and today is a gift. Take it. Don't use it to wax philosophical about what came after light separated everything. That's a waste of time which no one, including everything, is making more of.

[@JohnMcGuire-y4b]

Great episode, and what a wonderfully understated and wise man Chris Impey is.

[@brianbrandt25]

At 4:50, when I was at the university of Minnesota, they were synthesizing proteins from RNA made 6 "mrs", base pairs, that coded for dozens of artificial amino acids and the 20 natural ones. Astounding

[@HendrickHulst]

I think you mean peptides not proteins. A 6 mer for multimer "not mrs" could only code for 3 amino acids and even then there is no biological system ribosomes etc, that would be able to synthesize a peptide that short. For that short a peptide one would use chemical synthesis as in the classical Merrifield resin method..

[@HansMilling]

Great interview, this is an interesting discussion and the day we find life in the universe and are also sure it didn’t originate from Earth, will change the earth forever. The likelihood of this happening is however very, very slim in my opinion. The chance that life within reach of telescopes evolved two places at the relative same timespan is so infinitesimal that I don’t think we will be that lucky.

[@jewymchoser]

Amayzing guest!

[@Threedog1963]

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” ― Arthur C. Clarke

[@virutech32]

33:04 I think this is a silky take cuz even if you aren't consuming energy at a fast pace(ignoring population growth entirely) you would still grow by harvesting resources for storage. If you use less energy than the sun provides then you still build a dyson swarm to disassemble the sun via starlifting to a point where its power output matches your consumption. Regardless of how efficient you are the sun(and all the other stars) will keep uselessly wasting energy into the void

[@davesatxify]

even a second or third? time through this brilliant man is interesting to listen to

[@RandomUser311]

Did you record the localized audio tracks on this video or is this a new KZbin feature? Was surprised the video was in German and sound like AI in until I found the option to switch to the original track.

[@ericv738]

Loved this convo! Thanks y'all 🙏

[@muleskinnerfilms6719]

Excellent as always

[@deltalima6703]

If it moves its life. -my cat

[@ncdave4life]

Cats' assumption that "If it moves, it's prey" is not so different from the government view: "If it moves, tax it." _"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."_ Reagan

[@j7ndominica051]

Large genomes might be similar to bloated software, where many portions of code are never actually used. You could corrupt them and have no effect. Like today, when a programmer includes a library because he needs one procedure out of it, but not the rest. Maybe the switch to multicellular worked as a development reset.

[@globalclimate4744]

Life and the respond ability to recognize it. How soon does consciousness arise ? Its frequency of communication? Such a wonderful universe...multiverse to enthuse. Tnx for the updates. Salute

[@rRekko]

Guy is right about the primitive and inneficient energy consumption, and the worst one is ourselves, our own human bodies spend most of it's calories into heating and cooling our internal temperature. But i wonder whether people in those fields would agree humanity should transcend if it wants to survive space travel in order to get away from the inevitable event of our sun exploding.

[@moosekeeto]

There's a video on KZbin about a single-cell creature dying that comes to mind that gave me some (possibly) interesting perspective on what life is. It's called "This Ciliate Is About To Die" by Journey to the Microcosmos.

[@spacekiwikit]

What if each one of us, increases order in some way thus decreasing our local entropy, would we be creating a techno signature? Or a potential for life to profit of it? Is each local decrease in entropy automatically a form of consumable energy? Which leads to the ultimate question: who benefits if I clean my room?

[@JoelSapp]

I would like to test how many Earths could produce life without a moon to allow it to not be tidally locked to their star. While we think Venus does not have plates like earth and might have not had water, seems like it being tidally locked makes complex like difficult

[@freedonnadd71]

Thanks Fraser! So Fascinating! No you have me wanting to go play No Mans Sky again LOL😊

[@picksalot1]

Maybe searching for a local decrease in Entropy that can't be explained by natural physical processes would be an effective way to search for unknown forms of life. All known forms of like decrease Entropy locally, indicating that life may be impossible without decreasing Entropy, though the methods of decreasing Entropy could be quite varied.

[@frasercain]

I like these kinds of non-specific ways of searching for life. Something is decreasing the entropy in a region and it's worth investigating further.

[@OlliGarch]

I’ve been saying the same thing for years. Life can evolve from way different things than humans. Just look at the Mariana trench. The organisms there need no sun and live near volcanic activity etc. I’m laments terming here because I’m no scientist but when I saw what they found at that trench it made me believe life doesn’t have to be like us humans. Just my opinion. Thanks for the guest.

[@NiklasHolsti]

The outward and inward ways in which the life in the deep ocean differs from humans are trivial compared to the fundamental ways in we are similar or the same (DNA etc.) As far as we know, all life on Earth is "life as we know it".

[@DataSmithy]

If we ever discover an alternate life form based on something like silicone for example, it will no longer be life as we do not know it. it will then be life as we know it.

[@javaman4584]

Sometimes I think we don't take the term "alien" seriously. Humans often can't get along with other humans, even family members. Extraterrestrials could be so different from us that we would have no desire to interact with them at all. Ridley Scott made that point in 1979.

[@frasercain]

It depends. In theory, an advanced civilization would probably need to coordinate with various members, which means they probably have a concept of what could happen when interacting with other species of greater or lower power than themselves.

[@mattwuk]

To test for life 'conservatively' is proper, we are just starting out. It's the only life we know.

[@KeithLeeman]

Great conversation. Thank you

[@phdnk]

27:50 Super-Earth exoplanets most likely have more iron and more geological activity. Thus atmospheric oxygenation on these planets is postponed untill all iron is oxidised in the sea and on land. This maeans tha Archean and Proterosoic eras would last longer on super-earths and multicellular life would have to wait untill sufficient atmospheric oxygen pressure is accumulated so that mineral skeletons and collagen bodies can be build. Thus super-earth retard complex life development by billions of years.

[@benellison5668]

Why would there US legislation about nonhuman intelligence if we needed to keep looking for life among the stars. Flexibility of thought would entertain that it has already visited us

[@vgamedude9811]

Saying were not a highly evolved species is in of itself an anthropacentric value judgement

[@galaxia4709]

I have 1 place to watch videos and I'm not going to all kind of places in different directions to watch a video. Your new people do great work for you but that doesn't mean they're right with every proposal they do and this is just an old commercial manipulation while you don't need that and can just say come join are great community on patreon with people just as curious as you, and more and more people will come (you already have 1000s) but please don't lure people with tricks to patreon while ruining the experience on YT. And also I want to say it's very friendly of you to let people join your patreon for free.

[@hive_indicator318]

All of the videos there are actually hosted on KZbin, to my knowledge. Patreon definitely doesn't do video hosting

[@GEMINDIGO]

Obviously life doesn't just suddenly switch "on" at some random stage in the evolutionary process.All is life,just with varying degrees of complexity.A crystal,a plant,an animal,a human all have a degree of consciousness.

[@ncdave4life]

Free oxygen is the signature of carbon-based life. That's how we can hope to detect exoplanets with life: by looking for atmospheres with substantial amounts of free oxygen. If you find an atmosphere with a lot of free oxygen in it, you’ve found the fingerprint of carbon-based life. Oxygen is very reactive, so on dead planets, like Mars and Venus, the oxygen in the atmosphere ends up tied up in molecules like CO2, H2SO4, etc. Only on a planet with growing plants can you find large amounts of O2 in the air. Unfortunately, we cannot detect O2 spectrographically. However, O2 + solar UV radiation creates O3 (ozone), and it can be detected spectrographically. So to find planets with life, we look for planets with ozone in the atmosphere.

[@NiklasHolsti]

There was carbon-based life on Earth /before/ there was free oxygen. Free oxygen is not a /necessary/ signature of carbon-based life. Moreover, the carbon-oxygen pair is not the only conceivable pairing of oxygen with a combustible element, so the life producing free oxygen may, conceivably, not be carbon-based.

[@ncdave4life]

​@@NiklasHolsti, of course if it's life that produces the free oxygen, there must have been life before there was free oxygen. But it is hard to imagine how a planet could have a lot of free oxygen in the atmosphere without having life. I agree that if there's *_not much_* life on a planet, there won't be much of whatever biosignature you're looking for, either, and that includes oxygen. A small amount of struggling moss or algae would be difficult to detect.

[@NiklasHolsti]

@@ncdave4life My first point is that a planet can have lots of life (carbon-based or not) even if it has no free oxygen. It is probably not inevitable that life evolves oxygen-producing organisms. Second point is that free oxygen can conceivably (but I would defer to chemists) result from life not based on carbon, but on some other element that can take part in an oxidation-reduction cycle.

[@ncdave4life]

​@@NiklasHolsti, I don't think you could have lots of carbon-based life without also getting a lot of free oxygen. If I'm wrong then that life would have to be *_VERY_* different from life on Earth.

[@NiklasHolsti]

@@ncdave4life There is lots of anaerobic life on Earth, although most of it is microscopic and not usually visible to us. The ability to make use of the energy in sunlight no doubt allows life to develop further both in quality and quantity, but I don't think that this ability necessarily requires liberating oxygen into an oxygen-rich atmosphere as in the photosynthesis mechanism of Earth life.

[@NickSandM]

0:20 just imagine something you cant imagine EZ

[@charcoal386]

Gravity waves are ling period. Could you put much info on them? How fast do they travel?

[@MrMelonMonkey]

as far as ive understood it from issac arthurs videos, they are travelling at the speed of light. and encoding information on/in them that doesnt get swallowed by noise would require us to move gigantic (truly unfathomable large) masses extraordinarily quickly since we dont have any other means to manipulate spacetime in that way currently. just think about that the "antennae" of the LIGO are really long and we could only read out the final dance of two colliding supermassive blackholes from the noise. so its not really practical from our current standpoint.

[@charcoal386]

@MrMelonMonkey what a great answer. Thank you

[@richbrant8534]

I have been thinking about life that could evolve with static electricity. If life could use oxygen to live, I could only imagine some sort of cells that animate and have some sort of thought.

[@pathfollower]

I wish you would interview Dr. James Tour concerning origin of life. Biology from chemistry. There is virtually no clue as to how life could come from nonlife. No clue how to overcome the statistical odds against these molecules and assemblies if molecules forming.

[@frasercain]

Just watch Professor Dave’s conversations with him

[@pathfollower]

@frasercain I would recommend you watch "Professor Dave misrepresents James Tour." A phd. candidate at Rice University, who used to have Professor Dave's opinion of Dr. Tour (mostly from stuff he had heard from Dave). But he then attended a lecture of Dr. Tour's and even got to ask some tough questions. Don't let someone else's bias and vehement attacks stop you from assessing yourself. Professor Dave makes a lot of accusations about what James Tour is presenting with no quotes to back up that he ever said anything like that. James Tour as never given a "God in the gaps" argument in speaking on origin of life. He does talk of the massive misrepresentation of how much fundamental understanding we actually have of how life would develope from chemistry to biology. I feel as far as scientific chops, Professor Dave has little to no comparison to Dr. Tour's incredible career. Last I heard he had well over 600 peer reviewed papers, of which one was retracted as soon as Dr. Tour found out a grad student could not duplicate the experimental results that the paper was founded on. He has lectured at every major university, filed numerous patents, started numerous companies. He and his Grad students have developed a method of creating graphene at $30 a ton from trash instead of $20k a kilo. He was just inducted into the National academy of engineers. He is legit.

[@0The0Web0]

​@@pathfollowersure... and dozens of groundbraking publications on his origin of life rsearch in peer reviewed journals, right? 😆

[@pathfollower]

@0The0Web0 He is not one of those using $million of research dollars to study origin of life. His work has actually accomplished much. But his PHD was in prebiotic Chemistry, he works in molecular engineering and he is aptly qualified to call BS on the papers he does read. What especially irks him is the continual claim "we are almost there, to figure all this out!" When it is immensely obvious they are in fact farther and farther away because of new discoveries in the complexities of life. Dr. Douglas Axe recieved his phd at caltech and did 14 years postdoc at Cambridge studying probabilities of genetic mutations leading to viable proteins and the variable forms of life we see. The math doesn't math. One over 10⁷⁷ for a mutation that leads to a viable protein with a peptide chain 150 long. That requires more time than not just earth but than anyone is saying the universe has had. And that's for a super simple protein. Most proteins have around 400+ amino acids.

[@pathfollower]

@0The0Web0 unfortunately my replies keep getting deleted.

[@StudlyMcDude]

It makes me feel even more special thinking mankind could be the Pinnacle of evolution .

[@Michiganmayor420]

@@StudlyMcDude that scares me if we are :(

[@thedidhedied7975]

Pretty sure thats Crabs 😆. Or maybe octopus, jellyfish, cockroaches, fruit flies or maybe a worm of some kind. I dunno, aren't all current lifeforms the Pinnacle of Evolution just for the mere reason we exist right now? Time will tell which ones go extinct

[@thedidhedied7975]

I bet the true pinnacle turns out to be a bacteria or archaea

[@bbartky]

@@thedidhedied7975 Right. As Dr. Impey said, one way to make a biologist mad is to say that a bacterium is simple. 😂 We're just one of countless branches on the tree of life, not the pinnacle.

[@HendrickHulst]

Seriously, are you kidding. Just look around and say that again seriously!

[@Sq7Arno]

Life is the universe playing with itself.

[@10aDowningStreet]

Wonder if the DR's nickname is Chimpey 🤔

[@Psatas611]

What abut life when you don’t have eyes ??

[@themacunion105]

water is the solvent of life.

[@JacquesMare]

If I were an alien listening to two humans looking for ways to find life on extraterrestrial planets, when that species are currently actively causing one of the major extinctions on its own planet...... I'd freek tf out..... What other reason could they possibly have than to look for more victims to exterminate...... 😱😱😱😱😱

[@gustavderkits8433]

Nitrous oxide? Or nitric oxide?

[@dougant6728]

Hope we don’t find it. I go to sleep searching. Okay I really do

[@nikolasthomas2910]

Life as we don’t know it is little green guys with big heads

[@charlespage8112]

Here's some food for the "beast".

[@alexsmith2526]

life -let us take FIRE for instance - it grows it eats it reproduces it dies so is fire alive ?also OXYGEN is important as it combines with minerals etc as oxdisation how many oxides exist ??

[@ncdave4life]

18:20 the reason you can't imagine a way to get the first cell is that you're excluding Intelligent Design. That exclusion is not based on evidence, it's based on bias.

[@NiklasHolsti]

Bah. Invoking Intelligent Design is just another way of saying "I can't imagine any natural way". Intelligent Design was originally thought up to explain the specialised and complex morphology of multi-cellular organisms like animals and plants. Darwin and his successors have shown it to be unnecessary for that purpose, so now it has been driven back to the last remaining dark mouse-hole -- the origin of cells, and of living chemistry before that. Several scientists have imagined ways to form cells, and pre-cell living chemistry, and made experiments in the area. One problem is that the origin of life on Earth may have been a very improbable event; we cannot compute how improbable, because Earth is the only place we know where life exists, and of course we will then also exist here, however improbable it was.

[@ncdave4life]

​@@NiklasHolsti, most people's beliefs are much more strongly influenced by what they *_want_* to believe, and what they think *_"their tribe"_* believes, than by evidence. if you can't see evidence for Intelligent Design it's because you don't *_want_* to see it, and if you don't want to see it that's probably because "your tribe" mostly rejects it. For another example, consider the many scientists who (rightly) scoff at homeopathic medicine, yet unquestioningly accept homeopathic climatology. The two doctrines are equally irrational. The reason one is rejected and the other accepted is that those scientists know "their tribe" rejects the former but accepts the latter. The issue isn't intellectual, it is emotional. Humans have strong emotional incentives to conform their own beliefs to the beliefs of their tribe, tor tribal cohesion. If you understand evolutionary biology, then the reason for that emotional drive should be obvious.

[@stevenlafavor9823]

@@ncdave4life the exclusion of "intelligent design" isn't based on a bias, it's based on the total lack of evidence to support such a ridiculous assumption!

[@ncdave4life]

​@@stevenlafavor9823, I'm always struck by the irony when I hear an adamant atheist insist on a purely _material_ universe, while ignoring the contradiction posed by the *single most central fact of their own existence:* the inhabiting of their own particular body with their own _immaterial_ consciousness.

[@virutech32]

28:25 They would not need rockets to get off their planet. Launch Loops can work on just about any gravity planet and there's nothing stopping us from from sensing high-grav construction robots.

[@TimGGleason]

I wonder if a thick atmosphere on such a planet would make that harder than here too

[@virutech32]

@TimGGleason Sort of yes and no. Marginally harder only because you do need to make the ranping up sections a bit taller, but they are such a tiny fraction of the overall length of a LL, especially on a superearth, that it makes next to no difference

[@lolmao500]

Life is suffering

[@alexisdespland4939]

at what speeed dosethe earth rotate howdidwe figure it out when and whodiscovered it how many times faster the the average oder jet is it.

[@riaanbreedt5490]

you would find your life mean a lot more if people were more focused on reading the bible and learning it and by following and be obedient to our God almighty in the name of Jesus amen. why searching for life ? or are they looking for the bloody ET from another dimension or planet instead of wasting time on that people already have what they need but are oblivious about the fact they need God and not some distant explanation of what life means but get to know yourself and know you can not live without God your creator

[@frasercain]

There are plenty of people who are religious and also interested in the question of whether we're alone in the Universe. Is that not a fascinating question to you?

[@jacob_90s]

I can't remember where I read it, but one of my favorite definitions is that life is a chemical reaction that does not stop.

[@BrodieMelts]

Would you say Data from Startreck is life?

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

When you are called "data" you are not life

[@jimmyjames5960]

​@doncarlodivargas5497 good thing he said "Data" 🙄

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

@@jimmyjames5960 - it smells of something artificial from a long distance

[@PetraKann]

Data is actually played by an actor named Brent Spiner. If you remove Brent's make-up and star trek uniform he could easily pass as an ordinary human being walking down the street. Likewise the Enterprise is not a real space ship, it's the product of the props department at Paramount Studios in Hollywood as well as computer graphics animation technology.

[@JamesCairney]

​@@PetraKann are you seriously trying to tell us that Data isn't real! You have shattered my dreams! How will I ever recover from this? I thought star trek was a reality TV from the future! So spot isn't real either? Tell me it isn't so!

[@daverobert7927]

Question - Is there Satellites being designed to fit in SpaceX Starship

[@NiklasHolsti]

Certainly. At least the StarLink version 2 satellites which are too large for Falcon 9. Astronomers are also eager to launch large telescopes without having to scrunch-fold them to fit the launcher, as they had to do with the JWST.

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

Ok, we can ask, what the heck is life, but, if it doesn't evolve, it will just be some goo, not very interesting, if we find life we can't eat, it's not very interesting, if that life doesn't eat us we should appreciate it but still not so interesting, life developed in to intelligent beings we can forget, so, the only types of life that will be of interest for us is life similar to what we find here on earth

[@tygical]

bacteria can eat things

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

@tygical - yes, they can eat us, and we can eat them, and they evolve, perhaps they inherit the earth one day so they are very interesting

[@lubricustheslippery5028]

The more common definitions of life is that it evolves or has evolved and have metabolism so it eats. It still an possibility that it could occur in ways we never have though of and in scales so far off from us that we would have an hard time recognize it.

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

@lubricustheslippery5028 - something we do not recognise? So, how do something we do not even recognise as life exist in the first place? And when it comes to intelligent life we must assume it would have qualities close to us and have had a more or less similar history, and a result of evolutionary principles

[@hive_indicator318]

Not interesting to you doesn't mean it's objectively not interesting

[@CJ_Ludwig501]

How many definitions of life are there? Correct answer: How many biologists are there?

[@Cornpopjohnson]

First comment. First like.

[@MelindaGreen]

It's interesting that Chris' definition of life specifies that it must be chemical in nature. Given our sample-of-one, it's clear that chemistry is incredibly rich and powerful, but does that mean we shouldn't even consider other possible forms? For example magnetic loops and knots within stars and magnetars. Even restricting ourselves to chemistry, maybe there is life on Earth based on crystal growth that is too slow for us to even recognize as life. We know that life doesn't need to be chemical, because we've already seen it evolve in computer simulations. So I have a new question I hope you will use to challenge future researchers: If you had unlimited resources to search for alien life, but explicitly not chemistry-based, where might you look?

[@BryanM61]

Non-natural organization.

[@daveulmer]

Information and DNA are just carriers of Knowledge. Life requires both Knowledge and Understanding. Understanding always requires energy to operate and is the software that makes life possible.

[@paulwilson6511]

RNA by itself though, can carry out many of the functions that a cell needs. RNA performs the tasks that proteins later took over. So, the RNA which is not that hard to see self-assembling was the main factor in the beginning and then DNA, which is also a natural self-assembling factor from RNA, followed on after. RNA and DNA are just such remarkable molecules that it really has to be backbone of all life everywhere. No other molecules get this big and do anything like DNA and RNA can.

[@HendrickHulst]

Another speculative life in the Universe conversation with an astronomer/astrophysicist that is lacking in any biological expertise. Statements like gravitational waves are easily created being made by him with such a lack of accuracy makes me doubt his credibility. Please next time interview someone with experimental expertise in research involving prebiotic chemistry and less digressions into pseudo-economic extraterrestrial theories. Nothing to see here.

[@CJ_Ludwig501]

Constructive positive criticism works much better than being a jerk

[@linkgunther1618]

Sounds like you're looking for a specific point of view, and only listening to the people you want to hear is why the internet, and consequently the world, is so divisive and negative. How about next time you keep an open mind, or just stop watching. The world is lucky to have Fraser; not even someone like Fraser, but Fraser specifically. He has been doing this sort of thing for decades, and if he is taking the time to interview someone, there is something worth hearing.

[@bb5979]

“Im not looking for it so that must mean it isnt there and is unimportant” -mainstream science

[@HendrickHulst]

@@CJ_Ludwig501 Oh touched an adolatrous nerve did I. Get yourself a broad scientific education then go back and listen critically to this ramble.

[@HendrickHulst]

These individuals have every right to speculate on any subject they want but their expertise, if any, is not in biology or any aspect of metabolic pathways or gene function or structure. Might as well get some lawyers or politicians have a similar discussion on the subject manner much as is popular with the masses now a day.@@linkgunther1618

[@roderickbeck8859]

Without economic growth you will not have technological progress. Indeed, technological progress itself almost always results in economic growth. I felt the two participants are simply not very sophisticated regarding these issues. The great civilizations were always periods of economic growth extending from the Classical era of Athens through the Renaissance and Enlightenment up to the Modern Era.

[@robwalker4548]

We don’t know that. This is a view we are telling ourselves about economic growth to justify many actions we do as individuals, businesses and as nations. Longterm our views of economic growth could just be an example of a death spiral that escalates our species into extinction. We have no record of how intelligent life on other worlds might have evolved and developed technologies in a different way than us. I suspect most life that does develop technologies are likely short lived species with very few lasting on long time scales. This too is speculative on my part without information from multiple worlds with intelligent species as proof. In other words if we only believe in the paradigms we create with heuristics we convince ourselves are uniquely universal then our eyes are closed to what is possible.

[@roderickbeck8859]

@@robwalker4548 Wrong, grasshopper. The consenus is that a good part of economic growth is due to technological progress. In economics technological progress means new or better products and services or lower costs of producing them in terms of real resources such as labor, raw material amd capital inputs.

[@removechan10298]

life is ontropy

[@TheLastStarfighter77]

I'm pretty sure you meant - Entropy .

[@removechan10298]

@@TheLastStarfighter77 no, ontropy.

[@JohnMcGuire-y4b]

Great episode, and what a wonderfully understated and wise man Chris Impey is.