On the usual background beginning there is

a point of the most serious speech
he has cited find the common use.

More to Google's problem but
a sign of George Mason University thought.

Really empty when he went to MIT intended
to be a chemical engineer and stand.

By what some would consider never
a thousand miles off you should.

Be paid scientists that
has gone on to have.

The seed of career.

As a sign Well he is an expert on crystal
structures one of the things he and

his career he was very involved in

the founding principle
structures the growth to.

The something that incredible just in the
physics community at the time that that

happened maybe didn't take
people contributions I mean all

these all those who lived there was always
Perhaps the poster who was there I know

he had written very widely
science textbooks he has written

multiple popular assigned books one of
his most recent books is the story of

the earth the first cool point five
billion years I'm waiting for the sequel.

Twenty five and he's written hundreds and
hundreds of Facebook pages

one of my most hindsight
was coauthored with Paul.

To work with so wonderful that he
did get me to come up with that kids

in the sense of the are just like.

Thank you thank you David thank you all
for being here to see so many friends and

new friends I hope to tell you about
some of the ideas that have been

developing I will confess right
up front I am a mineralogist that

is my background I started
collecting minerals when I was ten.

Years old I never got over it I tried
to become a chemical engineer but

I know minerals just kept pulling me back
but if you're a mineralogist you are in

a sense a chemical engineer as well we
all work with atoms and bonds and and

molecules and see how their properties
change and how we can use them to improve

the life of people one of the directions
that mineralogy is taking me is origin of

life I am not an origin of life
scientist per se I'm a mineralogist

who is interested in the origin of
life and it is let me just think about

this transition this transition
from Chia chemistry on the one hand

to the rich biochemistry see on Earth
today the other hand from this context

of an Earth scientists someone who thinks
about minerals I will confess right up

front that when you talk about origin
of life that no one gets their Ph D.

in the origin of life it just doesn't work
that way so your molecular biologist or

your chemistry organic synthetic organic
chemist and so you see the whole origin of

life field through these narrow blinders
I'm a mineralogist So everything about

the origin of life calls out to mineralogy
to me and you'll see some of that today

but I want to step back a little bit
from that personal bias that personal.

Myopia if you will and
think about this larger question of origin

of life this talks going to be in three
parts I want to ask this question Is life

a cosmic imperative I want to look at how
you can actually study the origin of life

in a laboratory environment and there
are many very distinguished people in this

room that are doing exactly that I want to
think about life existing on other worlds

and to approach these grand questions
the fundamental questions the drive us in

the field of astrobiology and
origins research.

I want to do three things first is
going to be a rather basic introduction

this whole question about just
how you go into a laboratory and

study origin of life I have my own sort
of framing of this story other people

might frame it differently but I want
to give you a sense of what people are.

Doing how they're thinking about it
that I want to propose an idea that.

May be setting up a straw man but

there have been discussions about whether
the origin of life is a unique event or

a very very rare or it happens everywhere
and I want to have a more nuanced view of

this idea of chance for us in the sense
that he is being a false dichotomy and

finally I want to demonstrate something
that is this clearly obvious but

really has not been articulated
very often in the origin field and

that's that events that may
be exceptionally difficult or

almost impossible to reproduce in
a laboratory environment may be absolutely

inevitable given a planetary scale of time
and space and you'll see what I mean.

OK let's start with the basic idea
of how we study life's origins

I've got a few assumptions the first
life forms were carbon based they're

based on again a chemistry just
like life's life today there's so

there's no silicate life or
we're not doing Clay life or

something like that the origin of life was
a chemical process it relies on the basic

building blocks you have you have oceans
you have atmosphere you have rocks and

minerals you have materials coming
in from asteroids and comets but

those are the raw materials and finally
that life's origin requires a sequence of

chemical reactions we're really talking
about chemistry here this is not biology

yet you haven't made the first cell the
first living self replicating system so

you have to start with Geo chemistry So

let's think about chemical reactions life
involves chemical reactions and the very

common ones there are things like rusting
and cooking the things like taking and

acid and these are chemical reactions
we're all familiar with their oxidation

reduction reactions we have politicization
and they should be hydration dehydration

and of course acid base reactions and
so these are very common everyday

kinds of reactions that have to
be invoked from the early G.

a chemical environment then to
ultimately lead to a living so

I think life began as a sequence to come.

Reactions and you can divide this into
a sequence of what I call emergent

steps the first is you have to make
the basic building blocks the biomolecules

the amino acids the sugars the limpid the
things that make the structures of life

then you have to organize them select and
concentrate them organize them into

polymers the membranes and so forth and
then ultimately need a self replicating

cycle of molecules that's obviously the
huge big challenging step that many people

including people in this room are working
on but if you break it down to three

different kinds of chemical reactions I
think you can sort of conceptually see how

she a chemistry may have gradually
complexified to become the first self

replicating chemical system this first
step making the chemical reactions is

something that's now well understood
the idea is you want to make carbon carbon

bonds you can do that in various ways
you start with the volcanic gases carbon

dioxide carbon dioxide other sorts of
compounds that come out of volcanoes and

through various chemical reactions
you want to then make more and

more complicated organic
molecules things like.

Acid and

very early on in the field of origins back
in the early one nine hundred fifty S.

Stanley Miller the graduate student
his advisor the Nobel Prize

winning Harold theory came up with
the idea of doing a simple benchtop

experiment you've heard about the
glassware stands about this high you have

water which represents a primitive ocean
you have an atmosphere of various gases

which they thought might replicate the
early Earth and you have little sparks and

basically you make a whole series of
interesting compounds amino acids to make

limpid you make carbohydrates you make
the building blocks of D.N.A. and R.N.A.

people thought because this looks so much
like a balanced diet that this may and

fact have solved the problem in fact
it was almost too easy to quick

because there was some reservations
on the part of Miller and

his colleagues to accept any other
ideas but other ideas have emerged

the idea of making these molecules in
dense molecular clouds where you have.

Ultraviolet radiation albeit
extremely cold temperatures but

on dust particles in these dense
molecular crowd you can get some

interesting chemistry many of those
same building blocks which we see

with telescopic observations
of distant gas clouds.

NASA Ames Research Laboratories one of
the pioneers in this but many other people

are doing this kind of research and then
in my own laboratory we began thinking

about what might happen on the ocean floor
in a volcanic system maybe a hot system

maybe a warm system mineral rich so
you have lots of chemical potential energy

here lots of oxidation reduction acts
reactions to go on and we have done what

are called Gold Tube experiments these
high temperature high pressure conditions

we take little gold tubes we seal various
reactance in them we subject them

the high temperature and high pressure we
have colleagues in organic chemistry like

George Cody who can analyze those products
and you see a whole variety of interesting

chemical reactions result from this
very basic chemistry and I think.

We now even see that there are new
ways of making organic molecules that

are quite heretical a few years ago in
Earth's mantle where the temperatures can

be above one thousand Celsius where you
have incredibly high pressures if you have

C.O.H. fluids Dimitris for Jenny has now
shown that even in these deep conditions

where you might have what's called
subduction zones you can create very

interesting organic molecules depending
on the PH in the horizontal scale and

the oxygen for gas city on the vertical
scale so you can make for example more

hydrocarbon like material as you can make
more acetic acid like materials but you

can form carbon carbon bonds in Earth's
mantle and these fluids rich an organic

materials are also in it contribute
to the nurse surface environment.

OK step one making those basic building
blocks the amino acids the lip is

the carbohydrates the building blocks of
D.N.A. and R.N.A. while there's lots and

lots of details still to be worked
out that's basically understood.

Earth was just chock full of the building
blocks of life that's not a mystery and

that's going to be true in any Earth
like planet anywhere in the cosmos.

OK So step two though is trying
to get around a problem that

you make you make too many molecules you
make thousands you make tens of thousands

of different kinds of molecules but
life only uses a few different kinds so

you have to think about what prebiotic
processes in this step to selecting and

organizing those molecules what process
is selected in concentrated molecules

in a way that allows you to do something
useful to have structures that membranes

the polymers that life requires So

in this case we can do a couple of
different kinds of things let me give you

an example of one of the very
first naive experiments we ran so

I was incredibly influenced by a scientist
passed away recently Harold Mauro it's

some of us in this room have the pleasure
of knowing him and his sort of vibrancy he

argued that the very most
basic part of biochemistry

was the TCAS cycle the Krebs cycle
decision that cycle because that

cycle run in reverse where you take small
molecules and add them to make larger and

larger molecules up to citric acid which
would then would divide into two and

you have a self replicating cycle he
argued that that could be the beginning of

a real bio chemistry arising out
of geochemistry and so one of our

very first experiments to say let's see
if we can make one of those steps go and

that's going to the three carbon
molecule of a gas it plus C O two

at high pressure would make the four
carbon molecule acetic acid and

we said we're going to just run this thing
I will do this in an afternoon we'll

get a Nature paper out of it and
it will solve

the origin of course it didn't work out
that way so what you do is you put this

stuff in a capsule two hundred degrees
Celsius very modest temperatures of fairly

cool hydrothermal vent system two thousand
atmospheres which would be some distance

below the ocean floor but still in the
crust two hours very simple experiment and

so we put a couple of drops of prove
acid C O two water put it in the capsule

run it and when you open up the and

pull out that capsule the gold tube is
really puffed up it's swelling it's

about the burst open so you know you've
produced a lot of gas of some kind and

that could be a little dangerous
these capsules can explode so

we froze it down the liquid nitrogen held
it there for a minute until the bubbling

stops pull it out snip off the top when
you snip off the capsule is to go boom you

know just like there's this release of
of gas turns out it's mostly C O two and

then it starts warming up and
then it starts fizzing it goes.

And this yellow brown oily goose
starts pouring out of that gold tube.

And then the smell hits you it's the smell
if it's lower temperature like two

hundred smells like molasses
that's very sugary you know so

you're making interesting organic
molecules if it's at three or

three twenty five it smells
exactly like Jack Daniels.

And I mean a perv they'd the room like
this and so people are walking by and

they say is there a party
going on can I have some of.

The moral here is we're not make our gas
we're making some some very interesting

molecules and when you do the gas
chromatograph you just see this hump and

you see thousands and
thousands of different molecular species

produced by various cyclic additions
implementations the proven gas is just

going through all different kinds
of reactions and this is a problem.

This is a crisis for the origin of life
because you're not making just those

you know that one molecule you
really need you're making tens

of thousands of things and in low
abundance as so what good is that and

I despaired I said OK this is
like a dead an experiment and

then we contacted talked about this
one our very good friends David Deemer

at the University of California Santa Cruz
who who thinks about the formation of

membranes these to have you tried putting
a drop of that stuff in water and see what

it looks like I said No Dave why would I
do that is because it might self organize.

So here's Dave you'll notice that origin
of life scientists are often smiling

I see them smiling around the room
right now I mean this is something but

they've had this idea that might
form a something analogous to

a a lifted by a layer membrane and
sure enough we put it in water and

these beautiful fluorescent objects occur
this kind of self organization has now

been shown again and again and again so
even if you make a messy mixture of stuff

you still can get out of
it a useful structure.

A structure of this kind must have played
some kind of role in the encapsulation

of that first cell in the origin of life
so that's one thing self organization

clearly happens and it's a way of
molecules even if they're very diverse and

mixed using some kind of useable structure
the trouble is a lot of the molecules that

we're interested in sugars amino acids
they're soluble in water they're not going

to self organize in water so what do you
do then especially when you have an ocean.

And that ocean is going to be so
unbelievably dilute that too molecules

are very rarely ever even to bump into
each other much less do any interest in

chemistry OK Remember I told you
once that I was a mineralogist

So I think minerals may have played
a role and part of the thing that

led me to think about this and let me just
some of the work I did with Dave's show

all on Chi reality handedness and some of
the work that has been subsequently done

was the specimen I collected when I was
sixteen years old in Patterson New Jersey

a very famous place where you can find
lots of minerals this is courts it's not

particularly rare mineral but if you look
carefully you'll see that there's red

coatings if you look closely at those
red coatings they don't coat every face

they coat alternate faces cts has
three fold symmetry hematite the red

iron oxide turns out bonds to taxi only to
three of those spaces it does not bond to

the other three dis taught me very
early on that you can't study

mineral molecule interactions without
thinking about specific crystal and

faces if you grind up your crystal
you're randomizing this and

you're losing information so that was
something I saw visually and it's really

influenced a lot of our work so Quartz has
lots of different crystal phases you can

study them individually you can look at
the individual structures on those faces.

We can do this at other minerals
one of my favorites and

one that I did a lot of research on
was calcite because it has crystal and

faces which are highly handed as
the structures of the faces you see what

are called left and right handed faces
of this very very common mineral calcite

calcium carbonate which you
find all over earth's surface.

These are highly selective of left and
right handed amino acids and

we did very experiments to show how this
might work we can analyze this with D.F.T.

and show in detail that if you
have this is for example and

fitting onto a right hand the surface you
get three very strong points of attachment

and that has a high binding energy if
you use the other hand a molecule or

the opposite handed
surface you only get two.

Somewhat weaker points of attachment and
the difference between binding left and

right in the molecules is a kilocalories
promo it's a very substantial

difference so this was the kind of thing
that we could study and realised that

mineral surfaces can be highly selective
of different kinds of molecules including

chiral molecules so this is ongoing
research we have many many projects

going there's there's thousands of
different kinds of mineral faces there's.

Many many thousands of different kinds of
molecules I'm interested in to study them

all even if we have common internal
chemistry techniques is a huge task but

I think in principle we can
understand that you can select and

concentrate molecules either
by self organization or

by absorption of mineral surfaces
are perhaps in other kinds of surfaces

an unnatural environment so
at least in principle we understand there

are mechanisms once you make the molecules
to select and concentrate those molecules.

This third step is the big one this is
really determining the origin of life if

you can get a self replicating
cycle of molecules to make copies

in a plausible Jia chemical environment
then I think you can arguably say I really

solved the hard problem coming from
the bottom up from Jia chemistry did

the first quasi bio chemistry and
there's the TCAS cycle that's the one that

Harold Morwitz advocated and there he
is with his favorite diagram because

not only can you duplicate this
cycle each time you go around and

split that citric acid but
then branching off from this diagram

are many of those other key molecules
the amino acids and the bases and so

forth so so this is a really interesting
approach there are other approaches

at Santa Fe Institute Stuart Kaufman
had this interesting idea of

an autocatalytic network I think it's an
idea that still has to be considered and

what Kaufman said Intriguingly this is
a very theoretical idea as you could have.

A mixture in a prebiotic soup of
of thousands tens of thousands of

molecules that are interacting and
some of those molecules forming a network

as they do that reinforces the other
members of the network but

tends to degrade molecules that
are outside the network so

this network becomes autocatalytic and
becomes a kind of self replicating.

Environment of molecules.

Interesting idea and

may in fact have some relevance it may
even have occurred you know in a non.

Made out of an enclosed by membrane
it may have been a you know shallow

pool someplace where these molecules were
evolving and replicating the trouble

is when you asked Kaufman about it you
know what a molecule a what's molecule B.

You said I don't know that's for
the chemists to figure out and

even if you could figure out what
the thousand molecules might

be in an autocratic network how in
the world would you analyze them and

track their relative abundance is a so
it's a clever idea that's difficult to

do a lot of people are working on
the R.N.A. world hypothesis the idea that

the very first self replicating system was
an R.N.A. a naked are in a molecule or

maybe one cased in a primitive membrane
but to our name molecule that could both

carry information and copy itself and
once that happens once you

have any of these self replicating cycles
then you're going to have mutations you're

going to have errors bring in you're going
to have competition and selection and

then natural selection takes over and
I think that most of us would agree that

that first self replicating cycle once it
stabilized in a G a chemical environment.

Then you get Darwinian selection
taking off and that's that's really

where the origin of life occurs OK So
we haven't synthesize this plausible

self replicating cycle this is not been
done a lot of people are working on it and

I think that you know I don't know anybody
have a guess how many people think it's

going to happen in ten years
twenty years thirty years OK.

You know so in our lifetimes maybe
if we're lucky it might happen.

So at some point you have a self
replicating cycle you get mutations

these are chemical reactions that
don't quite copy perfectly and

that you then have selection competition
you've got Darwin playing a role that's.

The origin of life taking off.

So I think of the origin of life as
a sequence of chemical reactions I think

they could be studied individually
separately in different laboratory

sets of experiments I think that's one of
the ways that we make a lot of progress is

a study each of these steps and

then you have to integrate them
synthesize them into a single point.

I want to emphasize there may be many
paths it may not be single path there may

be many different chemical pathways
to something that's replicates and

keep that in mind as I talk
about the next part of this OK.

Now we're going to sort of go in a new
direction and think about this idea of

chance for us and assess that as I said
I'm kind of setting up a straw man but

there have been very strong.

Opinions about this so chemical
reactions are earth display a wide range

of probabilities it's not a matter
of just chance to necessity

there have been important
writings about this and

taking quotes out of context really
does a disservice to shock when no for

example but he did write at the very
end of his book on chance and

the Ceci that the universe is
not pregnant with life nor

the biosphere with man man at last
knows that he is alone in the unfeeling

immensity of the universe out of
which he emerged only by chance.

Not everybody agreed
six years later parents

shall feel says the origin of life and
evolution were necessary

because their conditions on Earth in
the existing properties the elements and

he went with this direction of a cosmic
imperative life is a cosmic imperative and

many people think that I think most of
us who spend a portion of our careers.

Thinking about the origin of
life must come down on this side

I mean you would if you thought origin of
life was a unique event in all the cosmos.

It would be awfully hard to study that but
if you think that any time you have

an Earth like planet there's at least
a pregnancy involved in that then

it's something you want to really
try to understand the study OK so

here's my idea in fact the conclusion
Earth's chemical reactions display a very

wide range of probability So the question
is can you determine what those

probabilities actually are and in terms
of organic reactions I don't think so

but minerals it turns out because of
some big data approaches we've just

been establishing I think we have
an answer because each mineral that you

find on the surface of earth represents
a chemical reaction so I'm going to talk

about mineral ecology Now let me explain
minerals there about five thousand three

hundred approved species of minerals
each one has a unique crystal structure

composition combination so that means
there are five thousand three hundred so

far recognize combinations of the crystal
structure and composition that

are different from the others and so you
can start doing statistical analysis now.

So we can think about Earth's
mineral evolution in this context

I want to very briefly describe something
that we're doing this is a project called

The Deep Time data infrastructure
everything I'm describing in this next

section arises out of work about
thinking big data mineralogy taking

all the data we have or mineralogy and
putting into one pot and

seeing what kinds of correlations fall
out of that you can go to our website

Carnegie science to get more information
and I'll be talking about this

specifically at a seminar tomorrow
morning at eleven o'clock here so

I'm not sure what room it's in but
you can probably find that out.

We talk about mineral evolution
which is looking at the distribution

of minerals through time we talk
about mineral ecology which is.

Looking about the distribution of minerals
spatially on a global scale and we're also

doing mineral network analysis which is
a new way of visualizing complex mineral

systems and seeing correlations and
just to give you a teaser this this whole

idea about doing mineral network analysis
where these are very dynamic interactive

graphs Here's a graph of all the manganese
minerals some of you know that this is

important people thought about manganese
in the context of life's origin and

evolution in rather the dye Vaillant
reduced manganese minerals in yellow and

blue or the more oxidized minerals we see
different clumps associated with pigment

tights and manganese metamorphic deposits
and other sorts of information a huge

amount embedded in this you can make these
three dimensional you can put on virtual

reality glasses and explore these networks
and so if you're interested in manganese

minerals everything there is to know about
manganese minerals can be embedded in this

one diagram which is interacted with
virtual reality glasses you can go and

you can click on different nodes each one
representing a different mineral species

I'll tell more about that tomorrow but
it's really it's transforming the way we

think about mineral systems and
one of the things we can do with this

is mineral ecology so mineral college
basically looks at the diversity and

distribution of minerals
across a planetary system and

what we've realized is the diversity
of minerals is very analogous to

the distribution of biomass in
an ecosystem or words in a book so

biomass most of it's in Redwood trees but
almost all the diversity is in rare

species and you can predict what's missing
by going in and counting what you see.

First thing you find is redwood tree
then you find another redwood tree then

you find another different kind of
tree and you keep adding up and

you look at a thousand plants and
ten thousand plants or

one hundred thousand plants and as you
do that the number of species you find

increases but at a slower and
slower rate you get an accumulation curve

is the same thing this kind of
this accumulation curve which me.

Done with individuals it can be done with
genome information it can be done with

minerals too and that's something new so
it turns out you need a mathematical

formulation for this and what we found out
was that the distribution of minerals on

earth is exactly like the distribution
of words in a book there are a few

words that are very very common but
most of the words are rare and

they're the things that define the kind
of uniqueness the genre of books

the authorship you know is that
manuscript by Chaucer or by Shakespeare

that's how you'd figure it out so what we
do is we basically look at minerals and

for each mineral we count the number of
localities which it's known worldwide and

there are very few minerals that are known
to tens of thousands of localities there

are some that are known to thousands and
some more that are known and hundreds and

is actually relatively common mineral but
the chances of finding a mineral at

exactly three localities is roughly eight
percent of all those five thousand three

hundred species and twenty two percent
of all minerals are known from only

a single locality worldwide and so

this gives us a distribution a frequency
spectrum if you will that allows

us to say that each of these minerals
is a chemical reaction that occurs on

Earth some of them are likely to occur
some of the are less likely to occur and

they follow a frequency spectrum one is
a large number of rare event distribution

that's a mathematical formula that looks
like this in black is the observed number

of minerals at exactly one locality to
localities through Look how these and so

on in red is the model and

you can use this to make
it accumulation curve and

the reason you can't is
because it tells you

when you find the first mineral locality
pair it's going to be a new species.

The second one probably will be a new
species and you know the tenth might be

a new species and so on but as you find
more and more mineral locality pairs

the chance of finding a new mineral
decreases it decreases by a very.

Predictable way so
this is an L N R E curve.

That's the date as of
February two thousand and

fourteen we made this
particular calculation

it extrapolates out that there's about
fifteen hundred missing minerals and

in fact right now we're at a million
roughly and the number of minerals.

Species is exactly on that curve so these
so far for the last few years we've been

on track we can also predict specific
minerals we can tell you you know how many

of those are going to be carbon minerals
or calcium minerals or copper minerals.

Because you can do subsets but

here's the point I want to make one of
the probabilities of those minerals now

that we have this accumulation curve
we can say how likely is it that if we

replayed the tape of Earth history that
we would find that same mineral again.

And it turns out that there's about
twenty one hundred minerals which

are extremely likely much greater
than ninety percent probability

there's some other minerals that have
around a fifty percent probability but

there's a bunch of minerals that have very
low probability based on this by the way

of the six thousand five hundred or so
minerals we find on Earth we estimate

there are at least twenty thousand
possible minerals on earth like planets

and Earth only at this time apparently
has about six and a third of them and

the rest them are even rarer than
the ones we find on average so

so if you go to other planets you're
going to find other sets of minerals

not necessarily the ones we find on earth
OK This allows us to say that there

are some minerals which you could call
deterministic minerals necessity almost

one hundred percent chance you'll find
them one any time you replay Earth history

there are some frozen accidents
they might be occurring only

one in every ten Earth like planets or
in some cases one of the million.

Very very unlikely
juxtaposition of elements or

temperature pressure combinations but
there's a whole bunch of minerals that

are just you know they have
probabilities they're going to be on

some fraction of Earth like planets
not one hundred percent and.

Ten percent something in the middle and
and so

when you look at chemical reactions and
that's what we're looking at here

what's the probability the particular
chemical reaction is manifest on earth

today well it's a range of probabilities
Some more likely some less likely and

I would argue since each mineral is
a chemical reaction that's telling us

something very fundamental about the
probabilities of chemical reactions where

you're you're sampling large amounts of
temperature pressure composition space

admittedly organic reactions are different
but they're not entirely different and so

what I would ask is the question if words
in wife requires a sequence of chemical

reactions some of them are going to be
more likely some of them are going to

be less likely and so and of course there
could be lots of different sequences and

so you have to think about
the origin of life is a series

of reactions with probabilities
not just simply this this

false dichotomy of saying yes it occurs
everywhere No it only occurs one place.

It's pretty simple idea and
when you can take that where you want so

I think Chance for us in the sense
that is clearly a false dichotomy

we observe a range of probabilities for
chemical reactions and really our job

is origin of life scientists would be
then to look at those reactions and

see what are most likely under
plausible early earth conditions.

But there's another aspect to this
which really has not been explored and

has to do with the company Tauriel
richness of space and time given an Earth

like planet so I'm going to argue that at
the scale of the lab there may be things

you just simply can't find out very easily
you have to be really lucky to do it when

the scale of planets there are inevitable
So think about a graduate student for

years you know you can't run
millions of experiments very easily

but planets can and
that's what we're going to see OK so

how do I go about calculating how many
experiments a planet like Earth can

do this is going to be
a outrageously over simplified

back of the envelope calculation how
many calculation how many reactions so

I actually literally calculate
this in the back of an envelope.

And here's what you have to do you have to
answer four questions in the simplest way

of thinking about this so
the first one is how long does it take for

a reaction to occur and I'm going
to say reactions are occurring in

a mineral surface because that's where
you concentrate and select the molecules

you may have some other venue that you
want to have the reactions occur but

this is what I'm doing how much
surface area does one of those mineral

molecule reactions require So
that's at the scale of an individual nano

experiment where molecules interact to the
surface and then you say how much time and

Earth have and how much surface
area did it have to work with.

And the answer then is just dividing the.

Total amount of area and time Earth has by
the total area and time it takes to run

a simple experiment so let's look at this
question one How long does it take for

a reaction to occur in a mineral surface
and you know there's not a single

answer to this and it's an incredibly
subtle and sophisticated question but

I don't care I'm just going to say
that reaction times vary widely but

on average in the kinds of experiments
we do when we study mineral molecule

reactions we see reactions of touring
turnover rates typically much less than.

Per second there catalytic reactions it
can be a million times per second but

there are other surfaces
that passive eight and

therefore you can just have the molecules
sit in there for a very long time so

I realize there's not a single answer I'm
just going to put it out there that will

use ten seconds what you will see is if
you say no it's not ten seconds it's ten

years it doesn't really matter when we
come right down to it the final answer but

let's say it's ten seconds just
go with me work with me on this

ten seconds second thing what's
the surface area this required for

him in reaction remember we're talking
about relatively small molecules simply

a few nanometers the maximum dimension for
the molecules we're talking about

mineral surfaces the spacings a few
nanometers I'm I'm going to give us a lot

of space to work in so molecules are just
really having their own little world and

say it's about a ten an area by ten and a
metre area that's ten to the minus twelve

square centimeters so that's the area I'm
giving you per experiment ten seconds

an area of this size to do a set of
molecules and by I mean this is a group of

molecules prebiotic molecules in
Iraq they may politicize they may

form some new species that then becomes
reactive and becomes a catalyst for

some other step in the process who knows
it's one of those chemical reactions that

you have to get through to go from
geochemistry the biochemistry.

That's a question to OK Question three is
fairly easy how much time to earth give us

we know that there fossils that are at
least three point five billion years

old maybe maybe three point eight now but

it's someplace around there it's possible
four billion years ago anyway earth began.

Four point five six seven billion
there was a moon forming impact which

clearly sterilized everything maybe
fifty million years after that but

I'm going to guess that we had about six
hundred million years to perform origin of

life experiments.

Of all kinds on earth.

This and
that's two times ten to sixteen seconds.

And the final question is how much
mineral surface area did Earth have to

conduct experiments so it's a total
surface areas five times twenty

eight hundred centimeters but the area
of minerals is vastly greater than this.

Because many minerals are particulate
there sand grains but even more important

there is nano particles coming out of
OK nose both under the sea floor and

at the surface ash of various sorts and
most importantly there's clays and

clay minerals would have been abundant in
the earliest part of earth's history it's

just the natural interaction of of water
with the kinds of igneous rocks that come

up from various lava is that erupted at
the surface and the typical clay mineral

is two times ten to the six square
centimeters per cubic centimeter So

what does that mean there is a sugar
cube that's a cubic centimeter and

it's a tennis court.

So the surface area of a.

Bunch of clay of this size is like that
that's how much reactive surface area you

have now there is a coffee out some people
would say well the flat surface parts

of the clay are very unreactive the edges
are much more reactive I don't care

I'm just giving you this is all
the different kinds of surfaces we

have some are going to be more reactive
some are going to be less reactive some

chemical reactions are going to take you
know a new millionth of a second and

some are going to take a million seconds
but things are going to kind of average

out at the end as you'll see so soon the
average depth of Claridge settlements was

one metre OK that is a really really
low estimate today the average sea

floor is four hundred metres
of clay rich sediments So

saying it's only one metre that's that's
pretty small course of Roshan is much rest

more rapid now than it was then but
nevertheless let's just say it's one

metre for sake of argument that's one
hundred centimeters then that means

there's one hundred cubic centimeters of
clay for every square centimeter of Earth.

Surface you can then multiplied out
there is the surface that's the hundred

cubic centimeters for

every square centimeter That's five times
ten to twenty of cubic centimeters of

clay minerals that's something like half
a cubic kilometer if I remember correctly.

As a lot of clay minerals and so you can
multiply that times the tennis court and

that gives you a total of ten to the
twenty seven square centimeters of mineral

surface area on which to
perform chemical reactions.

OK that's Question four and so
there is the area there is the time.

Of a planet like Earth
there's the area and

there is the time for
an individual experiment and

the answer is ten times ten to
fifty fourth chemical reactions.

It's a large number and if you want to
reduce that by many orders of magnitude or

increase it for whatever reason you have
because you know more about one of these

aspects than I do that's
fine it's a big number.

Two trillion one drawing could
you know could Julia and so

the argument is there are many more
chemical reactions occur in earlier

than we can perform in the laboratory.

Very simple minded argument by I
think it's also profound because it

makes us think about
planets doing chemistry

at a scale that we simply cannot do
in four years as a graduate student.

Graduate students post-docs there's
Jim Jim Cleaves who I know spent some

time here too so the things that are maybe
virtually impossible to replicate in

a laboratory even with cleverness may be
inevitable planetary scales of space and

time so we shouldn't give up we can
use chemical into wishing we can work

backwards from modern biology and limit
the kinds of chemistry you want to look at

we can just come in Tauriel and
computational chemistry approaches hire

a lot more great students which
has been one of my strategies and.

So I think I think you at least see
the point I'm trying to make even if you

may think that many of the specifics
are are ludicrous I would.

Acknowledge they may be but
this is you know this is a conceptual

thing that we need to focus I mean
I'm a planetary scientist and and

you know they're working really hard but
it's going to be hard to get it done so

life's origin can be understood as
a sequence of chemical reactions

chanced verse in the sense
it is a false dichotomy

planets do things that graduate
students can't at least in the scale.

And I want to end on one
philosophical point because.

When I give a lecture like this
to a more general audience

I know it makes a lot of
people uncomfortable.

You're saying that there's this element of
chance that maybe just planets try this

and they try that and eventually maybe
life arises and maybe it doesn't that and

how can God have created us in his or

her image if it's just all randomness and
chance.

And you know I see it a different
way I look at the cosmos there's

a hundred billion or more galaxies
each with one hundred billion or

more stars and most of those stars
have planets as you think about that

more than a trillion planets for
every human being on earth today.

And in a universe that is so
rich so redundant in so

many ways how can this
not be part if there is

a master plan part of it if it's not it's
just that we're incredibly lucky to live

in a physical universe that primed
to try so many different kinds

of chemistry that eventually we're here
today to talk about it so that I think you

want to thank my sponsors and I hope
there might be some time for questions.

Thanks for a great talk I specially
enjoy back before the fact.

Absolutely well that's important I mean to
just before we take questions I want to.

Invent One is that
immediately following that.

Please say it.

With your questions all right
with that thank you thank you.

Do you want to moderate.

OK.

I agree.

Absolutely I mean this is a very very
simple minded first order calculation

there could be concentration mechanisms
you could have places that are very dilute

but I think on average you have molecules
organic molecules are everywhere

mineral surfaces are everywhere they're
going to interact everywhere and in so.

Many of those reactions are going
to be totally useless I mean

the vast majority of them are going
to be totally useless and

you can probably imagine what some of
them are on clay mineral surfaces but

it's just the idea that there is a common
Tauriel richness there the planets

give us that that we
often don't consider Yes.

Things.

Like.

That diverse.

Yes.

It's.

Interesting.

And.

Say things like do you.

Yes thank you that and that's actually one
of the things I'm going to talk about at

some length tomorrow because we actually
feel that the distribution diversity

relationship that we see on Earth that
Ellen our distribution does not obtain on

the moon or does it seem like it attains
on Mars now why would that be true is that

because Earth has extensive water rock
interactions and I think it's actually

a by a signature and I think what we're
seeing in that particular distribution is

a very large number of very
specialized equilibrium or

medicine stable sets of local conditions
that lead to odd crystals and

bigger places and
life does a lot of that on Earth so so

far we've not seen anything
analogous on any other world.

Very much.

I totally agree with that and
I think one of the things that that

we've talked about David is this
idea of trying to play in any.

Signs of a a chiral system
on a planet that is so

imbedded with chiral biases so when you
find a meteorite you go through several

chemical steps and you find as a slight
excess of an elemental acid over D.M.

You know I said is that a real signal in
the media right or is it just something

that biology is done I will say that
one of those to exciting prospects for

learning more about early Earth and
its environment to me is

going back to the moon and
finding Earth meteorites on the moon and

this has actually been discussed by many
people but if you could have a moon base

if you could go out and look there
will be littered on the lunar surface.

Yeah yeah I mean this is a very
interesting idea just like on Mars and

one of the things that Curiosity
keeps finding is meteorites you find

there on planets and if they haven't
been weathered like Earth has

they just keep piling up and
accumulating the more and more of them and

you know it's like every thousand
three looks at as a meteorite so

they're going to be on the moon and
they're going to tell us what Earth was

like during that very strange you know
the prebiotic Orde the time of life sort.

So.

There.

Yes yes but that will not necessarily
still rock sitting on the surface that

have been sitting there for four billion
years so the outer portion of them.

Our Earth meteorite that lands on
the moon will certainly have some of that

weathering crust but inside will be
pretty pristine So I think I mean it but

you have to right there is all kind
of weather in the solar wind and

cosmic rays and so
forth this yes you know very much so.

Much.

I think it would be just shocking if there

wasn't some place in the cosmos
where there were microbial

type life when it goes beyond that when
it goes to multicellularity and and

then intelligent life and what most
people mean when they think of aliens.

You know what do you think I mean there's
this ten billion trillion planets

that's that's a lot of planets with
billions of years to play with

it is it really plausible that.

We're it.

I want to people think how many people
like this is the question this been asked

astrobiology conferences I mean how
many you could put your hands don't know

how many people think that there's some
other intelligent something out there

yeah I mean a lot of us sort
of have that hunch we don't

we don't know it's just a hunch
it's fun to think about.

But.

Yeah so we have a number of
people in this room who have

written very very profound statements
about this but the basic idea is as

long as you have a system where
you're pumping energy in the sun or.

Some other form of energy as long as
you're putting energy into the system and

typically at a fairly

thin interface the surface of Earth
then there's ups it's just like you

know how do you get salt crystals out of
a salt solution the salt crystals a highly

ordered system you just set it out in the
sun the water evaporates you get crystals.

It's I mean there's many many examples you
see every day in your life every spring

you know flowers plants trees leaves.

Put energy into the system if there is no
energy those things would not happen and

you'd be actually correct that there is no
way of spontaneously generating something

is information rich as life if you
don't put energy into the system

it's just going to sit there and
do nothing.

You know so

I'm I wouldn't claim that life originated
at the surface of the mineral mineral just

provide you a a place where the molecules
can meet each other and say hello and

and create interesting
structures service might be

just a nice place to latch onto so
you don't go floating off into the ocean.

But the kinds of elements that
you're talking about for molecules

that in many many different ways that here
are two different kinds of surfaces not

just mineral surfaces but you can you know
you can form oil slicks you can have and

you can also form concentrations
despite evaporating pools so

that you basically dry something up in the
remaining solution gets more and more more

concentrated so so these concentration
mechanisms just part of the physics and

chemistry of any planet that has water.

I know off the top of my head I don't but

actually there has been some
really fascinating work by

Kepler you know the Kepler mission this is
the mission that goes out and looks for

planetary transits and I think I
think it's stop collecting data now.

But it it basically found thousands
of planets around many nearby

stars now that they didn't find any
planet was exactly like Earth and

part of the reason is because
the didn't observe the transits for

a long enough time you know
to see Earth like planets.

Very many of them but if you do statistics
on the planets that they did find you can

actually predict how many smaller planets
with longer orbital periods are out there.

And it's a lot.

It doesn't mean that it's certainly
not every stellar system but

if you just extrapolate
you know it's billions so.

Somebody has done it I mean they've
basically done their extrapolation and and

it's just mind boggling
the numbers are get beyond really

being able to comprehend what it means.