Where is the Origin of Life on Earth?

To answer the iconic question “Are We Alone?”, scientists around the world are also attempting to understand the origin of life. There are many pieces to the puzzle of how life began and many ways to put them together into a big picture. Some of the pieces are firmly established by the laws of chemistry and physics. Others are conjectures about what Earth was like four billion years ago, based on extrapolations of what we know from observing Earth today. However, there are still major gaps in our knowledge and these are necessarily filled in by best guesses.

We invited talented scientists to discuss their different opinions about the origin of life and the site of life’s origin. Most of them will agree that liquid water was necessary, but if we had a time machine and went back in time, would we find life first in a hydrothermal submarine setting in sea water or a fresh water site associated with emerging land masses?

Biologist David Deamer, a Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and multi-disciplinary scientist Bruce Damer, Associate Researcher in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, will describe their most recent work, which infers that hydrothermal pools are the most plausible site for the origin of life. Both biologists have been collaborating since 2016 on a full conception of the Terrestrial Origin of Life Hypothesis.

Lynn Rothschild, Senior Scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and Adjunct Professor of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry at Brown University, who is an astrobiologist/ synthetic biologist specializing in molecular approaches to evolution, particularly in microbes and the application of synthetic biology to NASA's missions, will provide an evolutionary biologist’s perspective on the subject.

[TheFhdude]

Life as we know it always comes from life and it always has the body building plan code, the software of life aka DNA i.e. the information containing the building and body plan. Unless you come up with a theory of how such a complex information in the form of DNA code came in the first place, you explained nothing. That is why there is very little progress in the study of the origin of life compared to other disciplines because the more we know about life the more we become aware how complex life and the robotic mini high tech machines inside the cell are. Our theories are still very old, like life originated from some random chemical processes etc. That is baloney and explains basically nothing. You don't have to try to explain the physical and chemical part in my view. I can give you a dead animal body which has all these components. Now give me a living animal back i.e. even if I give you all the DNA amino acids of the world still a dead animal is a dead animal and has no life. Until now, we know no origin of life other than life itself. life comes only from life. Don't act as if the main problem is getting all these chemical components together. We can get them now easily but still even our modern robots that are sophisticated are cakewalk compared to the complexity and sophistication of life. Come on, think big, don't focus only on single issues but use common sense and see the WHOLE PICTURE. The complexity of a single cell, the sophistication of a single organ like an eye, a brain etc. can never be produced with these kind of "silly" random methods even if the earth is 100 billion years old. What you guys are doing is like finding a Sumerian writing on a clay and trying to explain the physical and chemical components of the ink and in the process missing the real message, the information, big time!

[jeandanielneele]

There are three undeniable facts regarding current life on earth:

1. Cell theory . It states that all current life on earth (the only place where we are absolutely sure life exists) is cellular based. All life from cells. Viruses are no exception, they need living cells to become alive.

2. Biogenesis, Pasteur’s theory. Only life begets life. Anywhere where life is observed on earth, it originated from other life forms.

.3. We might never be able to violate the”law” of biogenesis. Even if humans become able to create artificial life, it will still not violate the “law”. Human life producing new life is still life creating life. It will only be violated if life is observed to spontaneously appears spontaneously without any input by pre-existing life.

[Murray]

The premise of SETI is that information is a product of intelligence. DNA contains information. Therefore according to SETI, DNA must be a product of intelligence.

[jigsnep]

"There's a big gap in our understanding how to get from adenine to Adenosine monophosphate (AMP) which is a nucleotide actual monomer of RNA" - Biologist David Deamer

[clivewells]

This is quite funny and sad at the same time. The man is talking about self assembly of lipid membranes but ignores the formation of protein machines that let things in and out of the living cell. The woman was slightly more honest when she said the DNA was a bit harder to get by accident, and said it stands for 'just DoNt Ask!'

[cuscof]

"You need to have a landscape supporting massive failure..."
This is a very good point, because it's certain that almost all of the first proto-cells would fail. Just one needs to succeed, but getting to that one would take billions of tries.

[nicosmind]

SETI we love you and miss your videos. Good to see another upload

[michaelwellman]

And yet, they'll still get no closer than Miller-Urey in the end.

[georgewbushcenterforintell]

The fact that Life exsist is amazing . We had to be in a universe with perfect physics with rocks turned into planets just the right distance from a star with the right combination to produce stuff that made more stuff that made a pile of stuff that turned into stuff that became intelligent life .

[zapfanzapfan]

Nice to see a face with the voice, I was wondering what Molly looked like.

Maybe the sea was less salty 4 billion years ago and the salt levels inside our cells represent what the ocean looked like when life formed?

[danielash]

I wonder if Earth's outer atmosphere with lightning charges or frequencies had something to do with the assistance to the programming system of this project.

[Jimeniuss]

I just lost 40 seconds of my during the happy birthday singing, ( not that I don’t find it lovely, I’m just a musician ), but the rest, oh my god! Thank you so much for such an amazing conference. It is mind blowing to be able to listen to this great scientists. What an amazing debate. How fortunate I feel to be able to have access to this recording. Big thanks to the presenters, the audience, the welcoming atmosphere, the fantastic moderator with her excellent professionalism. Simply,

[neptunespixels]

I wonder if the same wet dry cycles could be found in pools of liquid methane on the surface of Titan? And would there be anything in the chemistry of Titan that would prohibit the wet/dry cycles from replicating the mechanisms in liquid methane instead of fresh water?

[FirestormX]

Damn, i had no idea SETI has a YouTube channel haha what a fun find! Thank you, YouTube.

[erikandreassen]

Thank you made it so easy to understand without to much technical information, for a dummy like me, Thank you again great lecture.

[MountainFisher]

Where's Dr. James Tour? Organic synthetic chemist, the dude builds molecules that drive or seek out bacteria. Oh he says it is impossible for life to build itself so I guess he wasn't invited.

[jeremiah]

Wouldn't "synthetic biologist" be considered a contradiction in terms?

[Semper_Fish]

Where is the origin of life? "We don't know." ... nailed it!

[mostlynew]

I thank you for making this complex subject accessible to/for the general reader. I wonder how this concept is supported by the ‘geosphere’ approach that explains production of necessary minerals.

[mastergonz]

Excellent presentation; I enjoyed the format of having each presenter have only 3 slides, but still present sufficient evidence to corroborate their hypotheses.