Transcription
What is the commonly held definition of life itself? The way that I consider it is that we actually don't need to define life; we need to figure out a theory that helps us derive the properties of life. We should be able to predict features of life anywhere it should occur in the universe. So that's been my approach; it's very, you know, theoretical physicist—need to build theories, need to explain regularities in nature.
She's got theoretical physics bad. I love it. It's bad in you; it's never coming out. Yeah, it's a little fever with you; you got a little fever. You got a little yeah, I do. So I mean, basically, you're like, let's not worry about identifying; let's find out what creates the identification yes, in the first place. Yes. Wow. How do you go about doing that?
Um, so I started, you know, in a true theorist fashion, I had probably like seven or eight working definitions, but I was trying to find, you know, what's the commonality under them. But a lot of them were about something to do with information structuring matter; was kind of the early way I was thinking about it. Wow. Okay, I got you, because then that gets you all the way down to single cells, because even they are carrying information. So if you get to the root of the information in what creates the information, then it may not even be a cell that you're working with; it could be something outside of that. Why? And the cell's a good example because it's very complex, and we don't think they can form outside of evolution.
So the way that we talk about these ideas now, which is what I'm really excited about, is this theory—Assembly Theory. I've been working on, uh, with my collaborator Lee Cronin—Assembly Theory. Assembly Theory, it's a theory, yeah, as a theorist should do. Yeah. So Assembly Theory's key conjecture about the nature of life is: Life is the only physics that can generate complex objects. Interesting, like a cell, right? Or a microphone or a comedian. We're not that complex, unfortunately. Very simple; we're the simplest of all life. Yeah. Wait, so you are declaring that rocks and crystals and things is not complex, so therefore, while you could in principle create those out of your modeling or out of your theories, that's not your target of interest. So the nature of how we define complexity is it doesn't happen spontaneously; it requires evolution.
So there are some kinds of rocks and minerals that do require, say, technology to precisely engineer defects in a crystal, like if you want a perfect diamond or something, or um, so there would be rocks maybe that pass the boundary of life, but they would be something life created or engineered. So I love this because you're you you you poured out the mold and you said, let me start from scratch, and if you start from scratch, you're not biased by any preexisting construct for what is or could or should be, right? Now you you can make almost anything that has complexity. Yes, and the space of complexities is then what you will study. Yes, and that space is huge. So as an astronomical example, uh, you know, I like to use this molecule taxol as an example. It's molecular weight's about 853. Taxol—what do we do with that? Taxol is an anti-cancer drug. It's just one molecule that bio—that's been created in a tree. Fule, it's a fat molecule; it's a big molecule. But if you wanted to make—how many atoms are in that molecule? Um, approximately, I mean, hundreds or go, and I think it's like a couple hundred, yeah, on that order, yeah, or 100 to 200. Um, but if you wanted to make one molecular structure of the same molecular formula, like every single three-dimensional confirmation, it would fill a volume of about one and a half universes—just one molecular formula, one centim—one molecule per centimeter cubed. This is how big chemical space is. The reason it's hard to make complex objects is there's so many of them, so evolution is necessary to select in that space. Uhu. So you like we can't have a a universe and a half full of just taxol; it'd be very boring. Right? We live in a universe with lots of different complex—wait, I have to—let me repeat what I think you said: that the complexity of what's it called again? Taxol. Taxol. It's not a special molecule either; I just picked one out of a hat. Yeah, we all have these in our hat, don't we? Yeah, I'm carrying around the hat with lots of taxol in it. So more like a ski mask. If I think I understand you, yeah, the complexity of this molecule is such that if you explored all molecules that could be that complex, mh, there's not enough room in the universe to—that's right. So clearly that molecule's existence comes from some prior requirement or Ur for that configuration—for that configuration. That's yes, that's exactly right. Yes, that's exactly right. So so let me ask you this then, because now I'm I'm a little—you'll have to forgive my ignorance, but I'm the only non-scientist here, thank God, uh, so I can say stupid—God had nothing to do with that. Okay, that's a very complex molecule. Okay, any—okay, um, where exactly does spontaneity and selection cross, and how do you identify which is which—which is which is a progression and which is a cross-colation?
You know, the kinds of very simple molecules that might happen on a planet, you know, can happen spontaneously. Or if you're thinking like Lego are easier for people than chemistry, if you have like a tray with a bunch of Lego in it and you shake it, you're going to get some Lego sticking together and making simple shapes. So those would be anous objects, but you're not going to be able to shake it long enough to have Hogwarts Castle spontaneously emerge out of it; that would require a process of evolution and refinement—build a wand and a wand. Yeah, no magic though. The universe doesn't have magic—oh, at least not in the scenario. So um, she covering her—she's like, you know what—she's in a Beyond—in—I am a theorist—she's in a Beyond—you got to leave her for the massive room for the—go ahead. Well, I like, you know, magic for me is uh, yet to be, you know, regularized in theoretical physics, so there still always has to be other things for us to do. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That's right. Yeah, or the laws of physics. Good. Wow. Okay, so go ahead—back to—you can't get to the place of uh, where you could shake it and then have Hogwarts. So so if you do shake it and some stick together, those are like the amino acids. Yes. Goa. Yes, because we did kind—we did that with the Miller-Urey experiment. That's right. Where he just throw some basic—explain that please—everybody knows—clearly they don't. Okay, and by the way, of course, I know—I'm just talking about the people out there. I mean, there there may be someone—regal of experiment. Yeah. So uh, Stanley Miller was a PhD student; I think he published a paper in 1953, so it was a long time ago, but basically he put, you know, a bunch of molecules that might have been available on the early Earth in a flask and put some lightning in his flask and try to—a sour of energy—a source of energy, and he had a reducing environment, and then, you know, he got am—REM—oxygen taken out. And so he made amino acids, and you know, people were so shocked by this at the time; they thought little aliens were being crawling out of, you know, life forms would be crawling out of the test tube in a couple of weeks, but that's not what happened, right? Unfortunately. Yeah, the reducing environment is that we think the early Earth did not have oxygen, right? So so he's trying to—if if life's formed on Earth under these conditions, you got to create the conditions under which it—so what came—so out of the nothing—crawled out—nothing crawled out. If you run the experiment long enough, you basically get what we call a tar in pre-chemistry, which is just an undifferentiated mess of a whole bunch of organic molecules that we can't identify. Okay. Prebiotic chemistry means what? Prebiotic chemistry means chemistry that could plausibly happen on the early Earth in the absence of life—before you have life—before you have life. So it's—or it's organic chemistry. Yeah, I like the word organic chemistry better, because prebiotic kind of makes it sound like it's predisposed to become biological, but there's no—teyes—it sounds like something you take before a meal. Yeah, people do confuse it with probiotic all the time. Oh my God! All that probiotic chemistry. Yeah. Wait, I I got something here—here we go—here we go—you want to send me—oh, right—you have the primordial soup; that's so adorable. Yes, I have a little can of primordial soup. Okay, and so in an emergency, if we got a jump-start life, you know, just come—come back—we can make that happen. Amazing. Amazing. As you can see, Sarah Walker's research and those astronauts stranded in space help us critically think about the origin of life and the future of humanity. But with recent advancements in technology, we might not have to worry about human extinction after all. Scientists have found a way to store the entire human genome in a near-indestructible 5D memory crystal, enduring extreme temperatures, pressure, and cosmic radiation for a smooth journey through space. When it comes to groundbreaking developments that challenge our understanding of existence, it's important to see how different scientific sources are interpreting the research to fully understand it. Luckily, our partners at Ground News make this much easier to do. With their Vantage plan, you get access to original reporting plus insight on every article covering it. Ground News provides this level of critical analysis for every topic you're interested in, using patented technology that helps us see important perspectives we might have otherwise missed. Head to ground.newstar talk or scan our QR code and save 40% on their top-tier Vantage plan today, making it only $5 a month for unlimited access to infinite knowledge and credible research. We can't recommend Ground News and their commitment to rigorous analysis enough. Now, back to the show. So I so I like the the the basic principles that are being invoked here—very, very simple. Yes, basic principles. Okay, so now you have—you shake the Legos—some stick together—now what? Now selection needs to happen to get to something like Hogwarts, which means that some parts have to start being uh, you know, abundant in the environment and then reused to be build further structure, right? And these these become your units of your building units—your bricks. That's right. Yes, to build the edifice. Yes, and you say selection because they are selected to succeed—is that the idea? Yes, and also because selection is excluding that huge space of other possibilities. So you're lost in space. That's right. Yeah, I don't even want to know how many possible configurations there are of the Legos in the Lego Hogwarts set—it's like 2,000 Legos. If you imagine all the things you can build out of that—crazy—three universes. So now—so now since you're looking for life outside of this—Mhm—let's consider in the selection that life outside of what I'm saying—outside of the life that we know—oh, yeah, right—you're looking for life—so other planets even—so let's go back to the primordial soup of another planet, and we have the shaken Legos, okay? Um, but are there circumstances that maybe led to selection for the development here that may be different there—creating something different entirely—could that possibly be the case? Yes, I think so. So I think Assembly Theory would predict yes, because the possibility space of the chemistry is so large, and what we've actually been able to do is to find a threshold that we expect life to emerge, which is what you described as the spontaneous to selection dynamics, and it actually has, you know, for the physics nerds out there, it has like properties of a phase transition, right? So you go from spont—like random configurations of objects to selected ones that have this historical pathway. So phase transition is all the molecules are this way, and then like a moment later they're in a whole other way—configuration. Yeah. So so but we live this, right? Okay, uh, we—it's our fancy word for it, but when water becomes ice—ice—that's ice—is not water—that's a phase transition. When water becomes—s—it's a pH trans—go. And so we actually generalize that term even in the early universe; if the—if there's—everything is this way, and then something happens, and then it's another way, we just call it a phase transition—gets us through—and we geek out on that—like we physic—just love phase transition—almost anything can happen through a pH transition—and uh, like spooky things—fun things—dangerous things. So I shake the Legos—some of them stick together—they're the Lego counterpart to amino acids—this was done in the Miller-Urey experiment—it's amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein—the building blocks of life as we know it. All right—on another planet—you shake it—we're thinking it'll also make amino acids—so this becomes a unit of life—let's call it that—or your AI—your—what's at—what's the Assembly Theory at—we—we call—we talk about assembly index is the number of steps to make an object. Okay, so that's a step—y—that's a step. Okay, if that's the same step everywhere—y—then that greatly limits what comes after, because you're not starting—not everything is possible in that early first unit. Yeah, this is a great point—the interesting thing there is how varied geochemistry is on different planets, and actually even if—if you look at amino acids, there's hundreds of them that we've identified in meteorites, right? And not all of them—not all of them are in biology, right? So if you find them in meteorites, it means they're out there—out there—they're being made—they're being made—but they're not here—or—or even if they come here—we're not using them well—right—they don't serve a purpose here—right. Exactly. Okay, that's the point. Yeah. So um, so I don't think that we should have an expectation that all the steps on the pathway to something as complex as a cell would be the same, because you know, maybe the first few are similar, but as you build up the complexity of the chemistry, there's so many paths you could take—so many kinds of molecules—that there should be a point where planets start to diverge in what kind of biochemistry evolves out of the geochemistry. So let's—okay—aliens can be really weird—that's what I was going to—I—what I was going to get to—it's like it sounds to me like a like a virus could be an alien—like highly effective—like lots of information—carrying out like uh, you know, purpose—procreating, you know, I mean, it—when you—if if you can look for something like that—how do you even begin to uh, narrow the search once you start looking out there? Yeah, so the great thing about Assembly Theory is we can actually measure uh how assembled a group of molecules is—with quantitively—Quant—actually with—yeah—quantitatively—we have predictions that we can make from the theory, but we can test them in the lab, and so we have a way of measuring the complexity of a molecule independent of knowledge of what the molecule is, and we can just do it with a mass spectrometer. Okay, see, this—this is some—this is physics—badass physics—coming in—in the doorway here. All right, so we like measurements; they ground us in reality, right? Evolutionary steps—sometimes we think of them that way—is—can involve added complexity—so why—what is—what are
You're doing that's different from that. So evolutionary theory, as we have it now, works really well for biology on Earth, but it doesn't help us understand life on other planets or solve the original life because we don't know where life comes from to begin with. So we need a sample of one. Yeah, we have a sample of one; it's a big problem. We need a deeper explanation of evolution in order to explain how evolutionary systems that we recognize as biology emerge in the first place.
Is there any chance that it could just be a mistake? You know, that might be true, but then it's not very interesting from the perspective of theoretical physics, cuz there's nothing to explain. Um, okay. Oh, good answer. Yeah, I mean it doesn't stop the search though, but you're right; it's not it's not very uh interesting at that point. So let let's make sure we're on the same page here. When I think of how a biologist would define life, which has been there's been variations on that over the decades, but what comes to mind is it's something that has a metabolism, so it uses energy from its environment; it reproduces; and it evolves in a Darwinian way. Yeah.
You have things to add to that, subtract from that? I I don't, or can you just oppose both? What do you what do you call what he just said in from your where you are? What is that and then where are you different? So, so one definition that people like to use, which encapsulates what you're saying as like fundamental pieces of it, is life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution. It's quite a mouthful. Um, that is what he just said though. Yeah, it is exactly exactly what he it it totally is. So you know there's a lot of problems actually from my perspective with that definition. Um, one of them is whether you regard life to be self-sustaining. So viruses are an example; people don't know whether to place them as life or not, um, because they're not self-sustaining on their own. And in fact, when we're doing uh, you know, chemical evolution in the laboratory, like trying to study molecules, uh, you know, we don't know how to call them alive because they're not self-sustaining because graduate students are pipetting, you know, like they require the graduate student.
Um, so pipetting—that's a verb—p it's a little thing, a little glass draw in there. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you got to you got to move the molecules from one tube to the next to do artificial why you doing? You say I am crushing your head. Okay, sorry. Right. So so there's many or or my favorite example is like, you know, a parasite that um, you know, sits in the the brain of an ant and, you know, pilots the ant. Right. So I I talk about that example in my book. Love that parasite, by the way; it's so crazy. But is that is that a living is that a life form? Cuz it's actually, you know, it's a symbiont, right? So or actually a parasite. Um, so this idea of self-sustaining is kind of very problematic for a lot of uh reasons. I don't actually think life is defined by chemistry, so this is again getting at deeper physical principles. Wow. So I um include technology. Yeah, first shots fired. Yeah, okay. Yeah. So my definition or well my understanding of Life—I don't have a definition—my understanding of Life is Life is the things that can only be produced by evolution and selection, and technology is also an example of that, and that's not chemical. Um, and also this idea of it being self-reproducing. I mean, there are plenty of humans that can't self-reproduce. Actually, no human can individually self-reproduce. Right. I've been trying, but there's plenty of things I've been trying. Yeah, but but but a mule, for example, is certainly alive; can't reproduce. Can't reproduce. Yeah, and those are those are kind of odd examples cuz cuz we bred them, but even if you think of like a bee in a colony, right, like most of the bees can't reproduce alone, or are they not alive because they're part of a social network? So so so the traditional definition of Life has issues; lots of issues; every single word, plus there there are stars that have metabolisms, and they live out their lives and die, and then they explode and send their materials to other gas clouds that make other stars, so they do reproduce, and there's some heritability there because of the elements that get made in one star generation—one star goes into another—so are stars alive? Right? We can ask that question. Yes, we could. So can ask any question. So why even have a definition at all?
So I think definitions are useful in the absence of having a more fundamental understanding. And so one of my favorite um sort of analogies that people in my field make is like how would you define water before you knew atomic theory? You would describe it as like a clear liquid; it might, you know, be a liquid at room temperature, but you wouldn't really understand what water is until you understand what atoms are and how they combine to make H2O. Um, and that's sort of where we are with definitions of life. We can kind of describe effectively its properties, but we're macroscopic. Yeah, you know what you're look you know what you're looking at; you just don't know really what it is. Yeah, that's exactly right. Right. And I want to know really what it is. I want to know at the same level that we understand our other theories of physics, like gravity or quantum mechanics. You have disentangled yeah, the definition of Life yeah from people's biases. Right, like a chef yeah like when they're cooking the primordial soup, when when they deconstruct when they deconstruct the dish—deconstruct the dish—and you see all the you're like, what the hell is that? I know, right? I I had eggplant Parmesan; the eggplant's here; the ch—I said, dude, what am I paying you to do? Exactly. The the Parmesan shows up on Tuesday. All right. So so let's get back to this. Any good theory—in fact, I I'm I'm a theory snob. Okay, forgive me. I love that. No, it's okay. I'm also a theory snob. No theory snob in me about your—I want to know what your definition of theor—I'm not sure that's a very good theory at all; that's not the kind of theory that we would let into this club. No, de—who sponsored you? Sorry, I'm sorry. If you have an idea that you're still testing, then we should call it a hypothesis, and once it's tested and verified and supported by multiple people and not just your lab in the Beyond Institute or Beyond Center, then it can elevate to the level of a theory, which gives us the thermodynamics theory, quantum theory, relativity theory, but it's not Sarah's theory until it's multiply supported. I would call it Sarah's hypothesis, and your colleagues' hypothesis. Am I allowed? Will you grant me that? I'll grant you that. I think there are clear reasons why we called a theory, and for me what theories are is are explanatory paradigms, like they're actual frameworks that have brought have to predict something that we have found. Have you what have you predicted that we have found? We have predicted that there should be a threshold above which only molecules produced by life should reside, and we've tested that experimentally. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. See, I missed that. The universe can generate comp you know simple molecules; it can't generate complex molecules without evolution and selection. That suggests a boundary—an experiment—a boundary that just random chemistry can explore, but it can't go beyond. Oh, and we've tested that with living and non-living samples, and even some that NASA sent. And this was done by Lee Cronin's lab; they sent samples, and they blinded them, and they tried to conf like, you know, a blinded sample is one that you don't know the identity of the sample, and they tried to really trick them; they sent them Murchison meteorite, which is one of the most complex inorganic non-biological samples in the solar system, and it still classified the experimental uh approach still classified it correctly as non-living. Um, and what we saw was only the living samples had an assembly index value—this number of minimal steps—above 15, which is not a magic number; it's just an experimentally confirmed number. So so you're suggesting that nowhere in the universe without some other driving force on the system would give you a complexity higher than this—about 15—but that was for a specific set of chemical like kinds of bonds that can form, so we don't know if 15 is a universal number; it might be different in a different planet with different geochemistry, but the threshold is there is is the point. So that was the first prediction that we've made that we've tested. And also the other thing that we have that hasn't come out yet is actually constructing phylogenetic trees. Hasn't been published yet. Hasn't been published yet. Uh, constructing phylogenetic trees with no genomic information, just molecular information, taking it stuff down to molecules—molecules contain their history. Wow. But I think your point is really important about a theory, and obviously like this theory is still under development, but I think theories have played a really important role in the history of physics in terms of trying to unify a broad set of phenomena that we thought were different. I would just initially I would just call them hypotheses. Yeah, I think that would then later be elevated to theory once it has been verified. Yeah, you should kind of drop it down to hypothesis, cuz then when it's elevated we can call it Sarah Theory. I don't want it to be called Sarah Theory though. What do you mean you don't want it to be called Sarah Theory? Of course, what it does is, speaking as a as a educator, yeah, what it does is it protects the usage of the word theory for things that are experimentally objectively true. Right. Right. Otherwise, you get people in Congress—I quote—"We should teach evolution only as a theory uh and therefore teach other theories as well"—evolution; it was trying to get God in there. And so so which we're susceptible to, right? If a theory is something that's sort of in progress and we're not really sure yet, and then it gets shown to be false, people will say, well, we're waiting for the day that relativity theory is shown to be false. That's not going to happen. Yeah, right. So it's I know I understand that. I think working from the scientist side of it, it's really interesting because I think also I've noticed that, you know, distinguishing between a model and a theory is hard. That's another one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So these are this is on some level it's semantic, but it's semantic; it just makes my job easier if we get the semantics right. We want your job to be easier. Don't mess with my trying to. So again, you're telling me left to its own devices, the universe can construct molecules of complexity level 15 in your units of complexity. Yes. Uh, paradigm. Yes. Okay. After that, what does it require? It requires a system that has some constraints on what kind of molecules get produced that favors one kind or another—favors selection. Selection; there's that word; we're back to we're back to that. Okay. I go. So whereas whereas getting to a complexity level of 15 does not require that. That's right. And so a key component of passing that threshold is actually storing memory in the system because you have to remember the steps. Mhm. So you can get to it every time. That's right. Oh, otherwise it's just randomly getting. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh yeah, you have to know what not to do in order to know what to do. So you're saying this meteorite and this meteorite can both get to complexity level 15 because they both formed in the void of the early universe—the early solar system—but without a driving force. Yeah, without something to remember molecules that the meteorite has made in the past and then build further complexity on top of that—can't do it. So now you need some you need a system to store information, and DNA can do that. Yes, famously. Yes. H so is do—well, I guess there's no way to know. I was going to say is DNA because like all of everything around us, you know, that's organic; we all share this right. So does is that is that optimized in any way for life? Do we look at that as a model that is optimized? I like that you because the Murchison meteorite doesn't contain living molecules. Right. All right. So uh if you're going to get what anyone would call life, why doesn't it select the same path? Because this is a question that's come up; my colleagues in geology pose the question, and I didn't have a good answer; it was an intriguing question. They look at multiple planets, and they're finding the same rocks. This comes directly out of what you're saying; they find the same rocks even though it's a completely different planet. Yeah, same rocks—that is, they understand the bio the the the the the rock chemistry of what they the composition and the like; there's basalt there; there's basalt here. Okay, they came out of a volcano—volcano here; volcanoes there. Why can't life have the same consistency that geology does? It's it it's because of the complexity. Well, say that you have an answer for that. Yeah, you come out of your assembly theory with an answer to that. Yeah, that's right. Can you assemble something like DNA that isn't DNA? That would be that would oh oh watch out. Hello. Okay. So you buried the lead. Okay, sorry. Oh my God. Okay, sorry. All right, all right. So so that's amazing what prel can store information for you and and go beyond your 15 steps that—and do you have this thing locked up? That is what I I have to say; I'm a theorist, not an experimentalist, so I haven't built these things myself, but there I mean even but even in the Bas of just synthetic biology, people have alternatives to DNA and RNA, which are the usual—let me just remind people—synthetic biology is basically genetically modified organisms, right? That's what that is; it's got this new branding, but it's that's what it is; we start out thinking about it as GMOs because nobody wants this take genetically modified anymore. Yeah, so synthetic biology. Yeah, so there's all kinds of different—they're they're called XNAs, like um, you know, alternative nucleic acids basically that people have studied. So so those are real molecules that people have validated in the lab and actually work in living cells, but what we're trying to get at that's a bit deeper than that with assembly theory is actually looking at the iteration of chemical space and trying to predict what molecules could be, and right now where we're doing that most um significantly is for drug design. That makes sense. And predicting pharmaceutical drugs, and there are there are some approaches also if you're talking about validation of a theory uh there are some places where we've been able to predict molecules and actually synthesize them and then knowing that they'd be stable. And so for example, one place is really interesting is looking at non-addictive opioids. So if you want to make an opioid, you want to keep the opioid groups like that—those parts of the molecule—and then make it non-addictive; you actually have to look at molecules that are not addictive and then try to combine their features—well, you get them together, and then you figure out how you make the non-addictive molecule bind in such a way that you get the result of the opioid without y. So you can look at the steps to making both kinds of molecules, and then you can combine those steps to look at other kinds of molecules. Freaking crazy. Okay. So so how so this is what solving alien life will give you—new drugs. Oh, we're going to get to aliens in a minute—drugs. That's good. Let me tell you something; make sure you leave with that when you're going for your grants; it is part of the strategy. Actually, it's a good one—how molecules behave. So give me an example of something that can encode store information that is not DNA. Well, you can store information in RNA and protein; those are already in cells, but there's one I like is, and I actually don't know if people have stored information in it, is called PNA; it's peptide nucleic acid. I like that because it's kind of a cross between a protein and DNA. Right. All right. And so so most of the places where people study these kind of alternative nucleic acids is just, you know, in synthetic biology labs, but there there's a whole host of them that you could use just the same way that you can store information in DNA; you could just write a sequence of bases in one of these kind of molecules. Minerals are more fun though—trying to store information in minerals is pretty crazy. Whoa. So okay, that's pretty wild. Now uh why would you be storing information in minerals? Minerals are really important in the origin of Life chemistry, and we think that they were actually the first templates for information to actually pattern chemistry in specific ways, and they retain, you know, they have an aperiodic pattern to them, which means they can contain a lot of information, and they—it was perfectly periodic; there's hardly any information. That's right. Right. Yeah. So this goes all the way back; has hardly any information, right? Because everything is regular. Yeah, right. So if you if it's varies but then repeats, you can stick something in there and repeat it and remember it. Yes. Okay, fascinating. Yeah. So so minerals might have been the templates for the first genetic information. Actually, gotta gotcha. You ever wanted one of your questions on the universe answered? We all have questions about the universe—black holes to quasars, quantum entanglement, wormholes; there is no end to the depths of cosmic curiosity. Well, the entry level of Patreon membership with StarTalk gets you just that. I think it starts at $5 a month; you have access to the question line that reaches our Cosmic Query programming, and not only that, we produce a special Cosmic Queries installment just for Patreon members. So if you weren't the director of the Hayden Planetarium, what do you think you would be doing? What? Okay, but this has to be another universe; it wouldn't happen in this universe. Okay, I'd be I'd be a a songwriter for Broadway musicals. Oo. So that's the entry level, and the perks ascend from there. Uh, there's a level in fact where we send you an autographed copy of one of my latest books uh right now it's Star Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, and it's signed with my fancy fountain pen with purple ink. So I invite you to just check the link below, and all of that money goes to our ability to experiment with new ways of bringing the universe down to earth. So thank you for those who have already joined, and we welcome others to participate in this Grand Adventure of what it is to bring the universe down to earth. As always, keep looking up. So now we want to look for aliens. Mhm. How did what you do inform that? So so the the current way that we're informing it, I think that's most significant is this ability to look for complexity in the universe as a biosignature instead of looking for specific molecules that life on Earth generated, and we can do that with a mass spectrometer, so we can just, you know, fly to another body in our solar system and try to infer whether there's high assembly molecules there, right? Whether or not it's crawling out of a beaker doesn't make a difference; or well, we haven't seen that yet. So and we haven't seen little critters crawling around on, you know, Enceladus's plumes or on Mars or anything. So I think we we need better tools. In your universe of complexity, it is a measure of the complexity of information, and artificial intelligence is a level of complexity that's even beyond bi what we think of as biological. How do you rate artificial intelligence as it's currently expressed in our world on your scale of? So I definitely think artificial intelligence is life, but I also—I know—shocking, huh? Shocking. But I also think your mic—why was I programmed to feel pain? Oh, did you feel pain from that? I'm so sorry; I didn't mean to induce pain. Um, often, you know, like yeah, there's a lot of shock value to things I say, so I I guess I induce pain. That's a very shocking statement. Um, why why do you feel that way though? Well, so I think you want to make a distinction between what you might call life and what you might call alive, and this actually comes derived from the theory and the way I've been thinking about life for a long time. So the things I would qualify is life or anything that requires evolution and selection to produce them, and artificial intelligence does not exist on a planet unless there are billions of years of evolution to make intelligent beings like us that are capable of engineering them. So in that sense, they are—is not creating AI; there there
Are no large language models on Mars unless we put them there. So therefore, we are the remembered molecular complexity to create that. Yes, we're like the minerals in printing on the genomic information of sense. I got to say I didn't want to actually agree with this, but now I'm thinking of perhaps in a world, maybe even our own, where we're a couple hundred years in the future, or we have somehow mucked things up to the point where we're not going to be here. So we then turn to artificial intelligence, imprint it with the ability to do everything that we've do; it continues to evolve in our absence, and then somebody comes and finds us. But not this organic life; it finds us in the form of what we left behind, which was artificial intelligence.
Smoking before I have a more optimistic whole story. I did create a whole story out of that, and it wasn't very optimistic, but go ahead. I think, I think when people envision that future, they don't envision us still being here. But you know, like cells are inside our bodies and part of like the evolutionary structure we are; they've been here for billions of years. I don't think artificial intelligence or technology is going to replace us; it's going to become part of a larger integrated system of technology and biology that's coevolving on the planet. I agree with that as a beginning, but I think unfortunately our nature is our pent and proclivity for self-destruction, which will leave artificial intelligence behind. Your glass is half empty; I'm a glasses half full kind of person. Let's take it to the next level. Goad. Okay, go ahead. Actually, I have the answer to the half empty half full question. Excellent. Yeah, drink it. What is the answer? That's a profound question. No, no, no. I, to me, it's no longer profound if you have a vessel, uh-huh, and you're adding liquid to it, right, and it reaches the halfway point; it's half full. If you have a vessel and it's half empty, it's half empty. So it depends on where you start. No, it depends on the rate of change, or it's the, like in calculus, would be the first derivative of the volume of liquid that's in it, right? Is that positive or negative? And then it's half full or half empty. History matters. Yes, yes, exactly. Very assembly theoretic and very evolved. See, see, I just got a compliment. You did. Don't worry, I caught the compliment. Okay, all right. So let's take it up a notch. Mhm. If we are all simulated by some alien juvenile in a basement, yeah, well, they just simulated you to think and say that. Sure, in that full-up variant, or simulate a surrounding where it would lead you to say that, even you being senian and capable of de-simulation would say something like that. It's exactly what you would say. So that was very good; that was good; that was good. So a simulation is uh zeros and ones, mhm, on a chip, mhm, creating information, mhm, that's stored in zeros and ones and manipulated and maneuvered. Is that alive? So simulation, are you alive in a simulation?
Oh, I don't think that we're living in a simulation, and the sort of key evidence there is you just talked about the simulation having to run in a chip, which means it needs a physical hardware, and there is always under, there's always a physical substrate underlying any simulation that, as far as we understand. So there's always a physical reality at the bottom. Why isn't the simulation empowering you to discover molecules that comprise your body? It does; it does actually, because you can have AI-driven exploration of chemical space, for example. So that's a clear place where a simulation is driving exploration and making things physical that aren't physical in the absence of a sim. Exactly, because we joke about, well, we talk about if, if this whole world is simulated, it would be really inefficient to simulate parts that no sentient being is abbing at any moment. So you only simulate where you need to sim. If I want to dig to the center of the earth, I don't need to make it until I'm getting to the, to the center of the Earth, and you simulate it as I'm doing it. And so the simulation is creating the molecules that I'm measuring as having complexity. I think we see observational evidence of that and just with our technologies, and I think that's really important, and I think there, it's explanatory. But when you say the universe is a simulation, I don't think it gives you any additional explanatory power; I find it to be a useless hypothesis. Well, that's, I know what you're saying, because then everything is resol, it's like I said, she just called me useless. No, no, I'm just kidding. No, what I say to that is it doesn't make a difference because at the end of the week I still owe Visa, you know, $210. So what, what difference does it make if, if the whole universe is a simulation, if at the end of the week I still owe Visa, and you can still write down like laws of physics that describe your universe? Say, make a difference; it's all the same. Oh, I understand; you're saying the distinction is not interesting if you can't make the distinction. That's right. So I think simulations being an emergent property that the universe creates, the one that happens through evolution, is interesting. And then asking about the physical nature of simulations and why life generates them, that's interesting. Saying the universe is a simulation kicks the can way too far back for me to give any explanatory power to what we're talking about. Oh, so because you can't figure it out, it don't mean nothing. Don't you know you're in a room with theoretical physicists? That's exactly like, that's my card. We'll grant you your complexity. Okay, in your assembly theory universe, I'm magnanimous of you. I know, we grant it, StarTalk grants you assembly a badge for this or something. I'll find something here, p on you here. I love all, so, or I'm like kneaded, so in that, does it say anything about free will? We've had a few episodes on that subject, uh, with some leading thinkers in, in the area. Indeed. What can you say anything about it?
Yeah, I have a lot to say on it, but I think the sort of most important thing is I think you can have free will and be consistent with the laws of physics as we understand them. And the reason for that, you can have free will, you can, because people were arguing that you couldn't because the laws of physics are in everything you say, can do. That's right. And then the flip side of it is like, you know, the universe is totally random, and then you have absolute freedom, right? So it's not that you have total, um, or you, you know, free will is a trade-off between the sort of control and the freedom. And I think what happens is when you have these evolved structures that are building complexity, they become really constrained by their history, but they still have some freedom in terms of the kind of complexity they can generate. And so, um, and, and this becomes sort of deeply intrinsic to what they are. So they are deterministic in some sense, but there's still some freedom for them to actually make action. Normally, when we think of free will, we think of I'm deciding, right? But really, if you come it from a molecular point of view, it's whatever the molecule is going to make, and it, and it'll work within the space of options it has available. Yeah, freeo, free will is executed over time, right? So this is also the thing; it's not instantaneous. We don't have free will to be in Arizona right now, but we could be there tomorrow. So I think this, you know, a key point that we're missing is it's not like, like you have instantaneous command over what the atoms in your bottom are doing, but you can make decisions over time, and even your decisions are determined by what came before, so they're executed over a period of time. Yes, just the fact that, you know, uh, well, I'm a comedian, well, I didn't just wake up one day and go, I'm a comedian; it has PR, it has precedent, right? So Mak, assembly theory makes some really radical conjectures about like the future being larger than the past, and so there's also some freedom in terms of, because of this idea, building complexity, the future is always more complex than larger in sort of the, the space of possibilities, because, because it's not here though. And no, but I get this, and it helps that we have an expanding universe, if you want. Exactly. No, this is exactly right; the universe is getting bigger, accommodate exactly this. Um, what does this say about entropy? So, oh yeah, entropy requires, oh, I want to hear this. Not hold on, hold on, he's got his popcorn. Let me get my popcorn out. He's after all that we've been through, we got the entropy now. Got Toopy wants disorder as, as, as a direction in which systems move. That's right, right. Um, so, but the, the reason that that hap, like we describe things that way is because of the way we label states. Like entropy depends on a couple key features; one is like you as an observer labeling the particular configurations, and the other one being able to talk about an ensemble of systems that are identically prepared, and there's some statistical trend. And what is happening in the biosphere is complexity is increasing; it's kind of like an entropic tendency, but it's actually overc configurations, like the common tutorial space. And so I don't really actually think the second law is telling us that things are thody, second law of thermics is necessarily telling us that things are trending toward disorder. I think there's a deeper law underlying that that can also account for the structure of what we see in life, but of course there's still entropy. You know, physics would say we're getting, it's only for closed systems that you evolve towards a higher, um, but of course the universe might be an open system. No, no, but I'm saying, but Earth is clearly not a closed system; we have sunlight coming in. That's right. And, and so we've credited that infusion of energy as a pump for the development of complexity. Yes, that wouldn't otherwise be there, right? Like if there were no sun, none of this crap would be here. But you know, one of the things that's been really hard from the perspective of, of theoretical physics as it's written now, not like what new laws might be present in biology to explain, is that it looks like the, the what life is doing is changing the nature of the underlying state space as, as we talk about it in physics as it's going along. So it's hard to define something like entropy when you can't count the same things at every instance in time. So you, you want, you want a second and a half law of thermodynamics that applies to the observed universe. The second law of thermodynamics is an approximate law; I think we, we all know this, a statistical statement. I would like an exact law. Oh wow, you are very demanding; I got to tell you, you are not messing around. Yeah, theoretical physicists don't mess around. Wow, wow. Okay, screw you, Newton; it's all his fault. And, and you put all of this in a book? There, a book? Oh my gosh, life as no one knows it except for you. Uh, I still don't know it either; I'm still one of the no ones. I love it, life as no one including the author. But it's the whole foundations of that thinking. Yes, and, and I'm glad it doesn't just live in this conversation because it lives in the pages of this book. So this came out just recently; that's um, just summer 2024. Oh, good for you. Yeah, yeah. Congratulations. Your first book? It is my first book. Excellent, wonderful, excellent. And at the rate you're going, more books should, are you kidding me? We just wrote one today; we wrote one just now. Are you kidding me? No. So look, look forward to what becomes of this branch thinking. I'm hoping we will do an experiment where an alien crawls out of it. I'm GNA say I'm not with you; just, just G to go on the record and say, no, no, you don't want the alien crawling out; nothing crawling out of craing out of anything. But the understanding that would come with that would be that want that. That's a pure scientist. But we'll learn exactly, you know, right? I think there's a famous quote from Kurt Vonnegut who says the last word ever spoken by any human is between two scientists, and one says to the other, let's try the experiment the other way. There you go; that makes perfect sense. You're all excited about it; is the last words ever spok spoken? Yeah, going to be you? It's going to start, I'm a theorist; I'm not doing all right. See, this is another reason to be a theorist. Yeah, you know, have to do the last experiment. All right, well, this has been a delight. Thank you for sharing your expertise and your wisdom and your knowledge, coming from beyond, literally beyond. Yeah, I saw what you did there. Yeah, cool. Yeah, very, very good. And you got to keep us appraised of uh new development, fascinating frontier. I got to give it to you. And, and do you, do you have a, a pipeline into NASA as they set up experiments to look for life? CU, we just had um, funky spoon, um, Dr. David, David, he's great, David Grinspoon, we just had a few days ago. Really? Yeah. And so he's guiding NASA's search for life, and if you have something to tell him, you, you better tell him quick. Yeah, yeah, I could tell him, but actually what I'm trying to do now is prepare data, because when you're talking about artificial intelligence, people are also trying to use it for life detection, and we don't have good data to train models on. So, right, right, it's not like a large language model for aliens. That's right; we don't have one. Right, right, right. Awesome. All right, that's a lot of fun. Thanks. Okay, let me, let me, let me see if I can put some cosmic perspective on this, on this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Always, throughout time, throughout the history of civilization, somebody had to think out of the box; somebody does it first, and they always look a little weird to everybody else; they look a little strange. And most people who do that are just wrong; let's be honest about this. There's a trash been a people who stepped out of the box thinking they had new insights into the nature of reality, and they did not. So how do you find the ones that work, that move where we all are and how we think? It needs to be subject to experiment and observation; it can't just live in your head and make sense to you and no one else. So for me, watching these new steps to think about life, to bring a little bit of, of physics, theoretical physics into the equation, to me is an important first step, and I look forward to where this will take us, just short of the alien crawling out of the box, unless it's an alien that can help us. Don't stop short of the possibility that the alien can help save us from ourselves; that is a cosmic perspective. There's been another episode of StarTalk, taking you to places that we hadn't been the day before. Sarah Delight. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thanks. Thanks for coming to my office here at the Hayden Planetarium; it was really fun in New York City, the American Museum of Natural History, all way up from Arizona. Yes. So tell folks at ASU I said hi. I will. We love them all down there. Yeah, in the heat. Do you know Tempe, Arizona is one quarter of a mile from the surface of the Sun? Did you? Yeah, that's funny; I knew that; that's an old joke. It hit 120 degrees this past summer. Right? Yeah, that's typical. Oh yeah, yeah. All right, sometimes we can't even fly planes; it's so hot. Oh, cuz the, the not enough air density coming through the thing. That's right. Wow, there's some good physics for you. Yeah, yeah. It's not that it's not just the temperature; it's the density of the air. Yeah. Well, you need a longer runway or something. Yeah, yeah. We got to call it quits there, Chuck. Always good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. And again, thank you so much. My congratulations and good luck on life as no one knows it, not even the author; that's what makes this especially intriguing. Hopefully someone will know it one day. One day. One day. All right, StarTalk here, keep looking up. [Music] [Music]