college london, nick lane mclean. it's really great to have you with us and our program have all the big questions. so if you can clarify some things for us, right from, from what i understand energy contained in molecules is pretty much the reason for life on earth. so energy can be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred, right? so does this really mean that energy that i consist of? we can tracy back to where life started. maybe even further big bank. in principle, i suppose you could, but nobody would have a brain big enough to do that. is really the flow of energy, which is the important thing. so the way is moving from place to place and through us continuously. so we are eating and breathing all the time and we're changing our molecules of time. so the, an easy way to think of it is like

a stream slowing down a hill side and the, the, the molecules in the stream. and anyone moving to another st molecules. but the stream itself is more or less as we are a person in that sense. sustained by discontinuous flow. okay? so in that sense what happens to my energy flow and molecules that energy consists of one site die? what happens with energy? well, you just break down, transferred anywhere, right? it's not, it's not transferred into another single being linked with you. it's transferred into the whole fabric nature is transferred into the worms and the bacteria that eat you up. if you're buried. if you're converted into most of the c o 2, if you're burned, then, then you will be turned into pumps. right? so, cinnamon, powerfully speaking, it will be like spreading ashes and the ocean stops. yes. okay. we,

you said the live forums can generate energy. and do you think that viruses can't do that? but then i look at viruses and they're new viruses every day and they mutate. so i wonder, i mean, if they're not living, how can they it will. well, i think living and it's not that we can generate energy. we can converse, energy that's in the environment into energy that is useful for us. and that helps us to live, to do everything that we're doing them relating to move around to think, to build new muscles, whatever it might be. that all costs energy, which we take from the environment by eating food and burning that food in auction . the way that viruses get around that is they, they are parasitic. they simply sabotaged our own systems of conversing that energy into things made copies of themselves. so in that sense,

we are very similar to viruses, we are simply, we'll, we'll parasitic to you, but they're not living organisms. or, if you asked 2 different biologists, that question, you get 2 different dances. we can't define life. there is no definition of life. and so we can define if a virus is alive or dead. and the reason is because life is really a continuum from non living things to living things. and a virus is in the gray area too. but it, it makes copies of itself. it evolves and changes over time in that sense it, it seems alive. we're okay with a fair m that all live organisms generate energy. what would that make sun? i mean, a sun life in that sense? no, we're not generating energy. we're feeding off energy this in the environment that's flowing. so the sun is using

a continuous flow are feeding really on that on that source of energy. but how come we can't just state of the sun's energy and harness it like plans to, for instance we, we can't do that. in fact, it will be virtually impossible for an animal to do that because the amount of energy that plants gets by converting sunlight directly into the kind of fuel that we need to live would not be enough to really take a step. pants are stuck to the spot and the good reasons about they have an enormous surface area the symmetry or whatever it may be, which is capturing the sun's light and converting it into organic molecules. but if we were to, there are actually some animals that have eaten the chloroplasts, which do the photos imposition plans. and they, they get the tiny amount of energy from that because they, they don't have enough surface area to capture the sun. and the process is so slow that he's not capable of allow you to run around and chase of the things and behave

like an animal. since charles darwin and the building where having this sharon is named after him, this sas 11 nurse appeared in a small pong, created from rainfall. you are saying, life appeared from the higher thermal event on. the bottom of an ocean is wrong. this is a strange thing about darwin dough and was a visionary scientist. and he was right about something very important, which was very natural selection. he was wrong about all kinds of details. he was completely wrong about how genes work, for example, on the origin of life. well he, he wrote a short paragraph in a letter to a friend of his that was never published, where he imagined that life might have started in a warm on land. no,

i'm said that it's far too soon for science to be thinking about these questions. so it's very easy. i think a lot of our small, really just people like to see go in as equivalent to being a profit from that. or if you can show that darwin was wrong about one thing that he must be somehow wrong about everything though it was. the scientist and scientists are wrong almost by definition about a great deal. but science as a discipline can become more correct over time. as we realize mistakes as we begin to correct the mistakes we begin to approximate on the true. so no one scientist is ever right about everything. okay, so let's assume that you write about the head with thermal vents and the beginning of our origins on the bottom of the ocean. there are a number of astrobiology and they're saying that similar events in the frozen seas of the moon of jupiter and saturn can be found. what does that tell us?

do you think wise could have emerged there one day past miss possible? i'd like to think it's possible. i certainly think it's worth going to these places to find out. it's also, of course worth going to places where i personally don't think life would have forms like quite because. well, i don't think life would form on title, which is another thing moves when you think we should go there. i think we should go there because i might be wrong. because if life did stop, then it would follow completely different principles to the principles that i talk about. what any scientist should want to know is the truth in the end. so i personally think that the moon and fellow, this is the most plausible place to find life in our own solar system. what do you make of the theory that live came on earth from space i think is unlikely. i certainly call rude it out. it's in

a strange way irrelevant because we'll never know how life started on that. we call it a historical question. we can't know what the answer actually was, because we don't have a time machine. we can get about 4000000000 years. even if we did have a time machine allowed us to go back for billing is we would arrive, where should we go? should we go to the bottom of the ocean? should we go to a warm pond? and how long should we wait until we see life cruelly out of something? so we'll ever know how life started. what we can know is how, in principle kinda stero planet, just a wet rocky planet with no life on it. what are the driving forces that turn it into a living planet? full of life? what, what, what are the materials that are needed? what kind of energy flow is needed? we can understand those things. and so we can understand why it is that life started on, i think intellectually, we can understand that. and by that same criteria, we should be able to say, well,

life wouldn't have started in these places for those reasons. now if life was delivered from space to, we don't know where it came from when it came from what the conditions where it tells us nothing about the principles that govern the origin of life. it only says, well, historically, it was like that which is an accident. i was thinking recently to the nasa planter research sure jim bell. and he was actually proving he's the point that there was life on mars millions of years ago because there was evidence of liquid water and the climate was works as a biologist do think it's possible. he's absolutely as possible. it would be, i would say, surprising and disappointing if we never found any trace of life on mars. i think it would be quite surprising if we found life still on mas, surprising, surprising. now, it wouldn't, it wouldn't astonish me. plainly,

there's nothing on the surface. if we dig down a few meters, it may be that we find things that would almost certainly be virtually dormant. we can tell from the atmosphere of mars at the moment that there's almost no, it's called the secret librium. but in the, in the earth's atmosphere we have gases like me say mixing with oxygen, which if, if it was just left alone, if they weren't being continually produced by, by bacteria, then they would react with oxygen. and you wouldn't see these gases as a reactive co existing together in the atmosphere. we seal on mas, there are occasionally tiny little traces of me thing, probably produced by geological processes. so, if they're still life on mars, it must be virtually dormant. and very little of it. but when they were oceans and they were oceans for 3 and a half a 1000000 years ago, the conditions was really just right. it would be disappointing if life hadn't

started. do you think if there was life when marsh or any other planet for that matter that we would know at this point a live forms would resemble anything like us here on earth. depends on what you mean by resemble. so i wouldn't lend probably in animals if you think about the history of life on earth than the animals of periods quite abruptly about 550000000 years ago. and life started 4000 movies years ago. so. so for more than 3 quarters of the, of the history of the climate when there was like around, there weren't even any animals. very easy to imagine that the planet may just stay bacteria forever is much easier to imagine than it is to imagine. that, that would be a kind of convergent evolution meeting to animals, leading humans on other planets as well. and if you just think about animals,

you know, an octopus from a human are very different kinds of beings. so the idea that we would get humans, some people think we would, but i personally don't, i think we would see cells. i think we would see a life made of calvin so. so in that sense, i think it will be similar, but in the structure of animals, i don't think it would be very nic. we're going to take a short break right now when we're back. we'll continue talking to nick lane, evolutionary biochemist, and best selling arthur talking about the origins of life. stay with this.

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and we're back with mclean, evolutionary biochemist. snake going back to what we're saying right now. story from simple single cell organism bacteria here are nurse yes. how can you use lin at some point but period started to develop. right. and then it transformed itself into more complicated form and then others just stayed the same bacteria like you're saying here on earth. are mac terry developed into animals into humans and probably on other planets? it just said material. i mean, well backed area stays in the issue for somewhat curious to become us and others to just stay with tyria. most bacteria who stays bacteria and her state bacteria 4000000 years. they really haven't changed very much. we can see fossil

bacteria in the fossil records from 3 and a half, 4000000000 years ago. this is a very strange thing about complex life. if we think about plants and animals, but also single cell, things like that, we all have these big complication. cells that have essentially all the same machinery in them. we, if you look at the plant cell or a mushroom cell down to microscope one of our cells, most people couldn't tell the difference. they really different to about period, very similar to each other. so plant cells, habits are last as well. it does focus into this, but apart from that, almost everything else is the same. and so it becomes a very interesting question. why is it the plan switch routed to the spot, photo synthesize to make their own organic matter an anomaly which runs around and each plan. so other animals on a fungus which dissolves things and absorbs the nutrients. they all have exactly

the same structure of cell. now, this is strange because you might think that if these are adapted to a way of life, then they should all look different to each other, but they will look the same as each other. and so there's a, there's a kind of an interesting problem of the heart of biology, which is why is that the case? given that we're all playing the related, we'll share the same structure. then the only arose once i say you can say, well maybe it arose on millions of occasions and we just don't see any evidence for that. but we've looked hard and we can't find any evidence for multiple origins of complex life. so if you take it at face value, you may say, well, it's really rare, it's very unusual for complex life to evolve. when he does, you got all of these curious properties. now, i think and not everybody agrees with me, but i think the reason is what's called a symbiosis, but really, why i want to get inside another one. and,

and that leads to all kinds of conflicts and resolutions of those conflicts and getting along together. and that's changed, really the whole playing field and it changed how selection worked. basically, symbiosis, one fell getting into another. if we simplified and break down might be possible reason why things are different, but made of the same. so right. why for instance, i don't know. some bacteria resistance to things and others aren't like for instance, their impact period that can survive in acidic pool. so yellowstone, but we'll know what happens to humans, god forbid falls inside. you know what i mean? is it the same reason the cells and b know in part it is, i mean, effectively because of this cell, symbiosis cells can become enormously larger. and effectively more fragile to, i mean, the bigger or more complicated, you,

other easiest damage. you go. and so if you, so a lot of cell into it as a rule. yes. so bacteria, tiny valley robust but simple system is protected by a wall with a wall around them. and they, if, you know, if you take a bacterium from the floor of the lab and so it into yellowstone palms as well, it would also die. the ones that are living that have adapted to live that over millions of years. but the type of cell being small and robust is much more able to live in math environment than the one of the complicated cells that can give rise to dinosaurs are also far more likely to fall to pieces and go wrong. and so you throw them into a spring and fall to pieces. another thing, i mean i do understand how, you know, the 4 basic elements that are mixed under certain conditions and they produce still living so that i get them. i don't really understand how that living cells become

self governing and conscious. this is a big question. possible question to answer them. i was one of the most interesting questions probably and all the biology. what is conscious and i don't think we have an answer yet. there's $2.00 to $2.00 or 3 possibilities. one of them is that it's really an emergent property from a really complex nervous system. and then if you could make a robots or a sufficiently complex, then it would become conscious as well, simply because, so all of this processing going on at the same time, leads to a kind of an awareness that is unstoppable, that maybe the case. a lot of people would think perhaps it's not, and i don't think at the moment we have any way of knowing. another possibility is that it's a property of matter that all matter you asked earlier on,

is this some alive? i think the answer is no. but if, if consciousness is somehow linked to, to life and then discovered form of principle of matter of physics, then it would be the case that even the rock would be conscious in some way, in an incredibly minister way. the question for me is, i think consciousness is linked with life. i would say lots of lower animals are consciously aware in one way or another. so i don't think it with this complex central nervous system. so much is living cells. i think it's again the process of how energy works that leads to electromagnetic fields and so on. and that, that's where we should be looking for the answer. ok. and then there's cells that the light, i mean, you know, it's such a natural thing for us to seek a soulmate to reproduce. right?

so it really the idea of continuation and survival is really inherent to, to anything living. where did that come from 1st? i mean, what for us like this primitive proto cell 2 thing? well, i want to multiply i think the very 1st cells almost 2 weeks inevitably. so if you're in an environment where there's a continuous flow of energy flowing through it. and, and that is turning gases or rocks in the environment into organic molecules. and those organic molecules, things like that, for example, conform spontaneously under those completely quit paths that kinda kind of facts that we find in our cell membrane or the building blocks of proteins. the amino acids they can be formed under these conditions. ok, and if you have a continuous flow of energy and a small proportion of that is reacting and forming these things,

then effectively what you're seeing is growth. and fats will organize themselves spontaneously, into satellite structures. and those will keep going, and as they grow, they become less stable and they divide into it. it's almost the physical property of any system which is growing like that. so to understand why things would divide into is quite easy. it's just make to growth. and then if there is linked with that genetic information, that's a separate question, whether the genes come from that's difficult to. but if it's linked, this cell gets a slightly better set of information james, than, than this one does. this one might be more likely to survive and, and divide again in this one more likely to die. and then we're into standard biology into natural selection. what darwin was talking about 950 years ago. i've

heard you say that at some point oxygen was a pollutant and then you know, which is sort of adapted and then i see people choking literally dying and getting really sick in big cities because with the carbon dioxide emissions. do you think at some point the carbon dioxide emission could be like, were breathing fresh air right now where we would actually adapt to it being some mass extinction in the history of the where the things that got preferentially wiped out the most likely to die. we're the ones that suffered the most from carbon dioxide from being poisoned by carbon dioxide. so the one i'm thinking already is that permian extinction. this was 250000000 years ago. funnily enough, the animals that could draw around, dig in the mud and stagnant mud and deal with

sofa. so the things that hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide in large amounts because they were able to ventilate that spiritual system. they could kinda breathed and get rid of the calvin outside. they were more likely to survive. then the more simple things that are stuck to the bottom, and they had to take whatever was coming out them. so they get floods of carbon dioxide and they just $68.00 of them died. so we are doing this to ourselves. now with global warming, we're gradually fixating the oceans. the oxygen is being driven out of the oceans as they get warmer. the c o 2 is increasing and city by the ocean slowly. the conditions are a little bit similar to what was happening 250000000 years ago. and a lot of scientists are seriously worried that we will recapitulate that by which time the oceans addendum, those gases, hydrogen sulfide bubbling out to them,

killing the life on the chose as well. now, some life will survive, maybe no nose, maybe not much, but fast forward 5 or 10000000 years on the planet will be the same as it is now. we absolutely fine. we just won't be on it. we'll kill ourselves. i so you know, i've also heard this idea that if you don't use certain parts of your body of organs, like for instance, astronaut or cos, mounts in space because they're in weightlessness, their bones get fragile. so it made me think illusion is not necessarily an improvement. is it? it could be destination. absolutely. yes. a loss of parasites were often seen as being a kind of degraded form of life. actually they, they tend to become simple because they have to minimize anything that would recognize them as

a parasite and kill it. are immune systems for example. so the simpler they can make themselves, the more likely they are to survive. and so this kind of direction towards losing complexity is quite common with, with people in space losing bone mass that's not necessarily evolution in the single lifetime. but if, if we were to have generation after generation living in space, then it would be selected in the genes, bones will become useless and so they will be re absorbed. now we're just love to think that we are the pinnacle of evolution. yes. are we know there is no there is he problem? no pinnacle of evolution. everything's flat. a bacterium is the product of 4000000000 years of evolution. it in a specific environment. so away. so in that sense where we are, the lucky survivors are the end of a long,

long process you so as in to their springs, yellowstone, and we will not do very well. bacteria will do much better in that sense. in his own environment is much closer to a pinnacle of evolution. he loses go nowhere. it's not interested in us. and we are interested in us and we have a lot to be interested in. but we shouldn't be big headed about it. i think that there's, you know, for more than a 100 years we've known that evolution has no direction. thank you very much for this. wonderful insight is really a pleasure to talking. thank you very much. with everything

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