May 26 – 31, 2024
Western University
America/Toronto timezone
Welcome to the 2024 CAP Congress Program website! / Bienvenue au siteweb du programme du Congrès de l'ACP 2024!

Assembly Theory, Unlocking the Physics of Life

May 30, 2024, 4:15 PM
45m
SSC Rm 2050 (cap. 445) (Social Science Centre, Western U.)

SSC Rm 2050 (cap. 445)

Social Science Centre, Western U.

Plenary Speaker / Conférencier(ère) plénier(ère) Herzberg Public and Plenary Talks / Conférenciers des sessions Herzberg et plénières R-PLEN2 Plenary Session | Session plénière - Sara Walker, Arizona State U.

Speaker

Sara Walker (Arizona State University)

Description

What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science. The definitions we have now all fall short. None help us understand how life originates from planetary chemistry, nor do they account for the full range of possibilities for what life on other planets might be like. One approach has been to ask whether our current theories of physics are up-to-task. This was the approach adopted by the quantum physicist Erwin Schrodinger in his famous series of lectures addressing the topic “What is Life?”, which he delivered in 1943. But, what Schrodinger ultimately argued was that while life can be shown to be consistent with the known laws of physics, it also cannot be explained by them. In this talk I briefly review motivations for why our current theories of physics are not suited to solving the problem of life and why solving the origin of life may require radical new thinking and an experimentally testable theory for what life is. I discuss one promising new approach, Assembly Theory, useful for identifying and classifying “life” in terms of universal physics. If proven, the theory should apply not just to biological life on Earth but to any instance of life in the universe, even life as no one yet knows it. I discuss the foundations of the theory, what insights it provides into the origins of biochemistry, and how we might experimentally explore the origins of alien life in the lab with large scale experiments.

Author

Sara Walker (Arizona State University)

Presentation materials

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