Lee Cronin: Origin of Life, Aliens, Complexity, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #269

This was recently discussed in an interview with Lee Cronin on the Lex Fridman podcast [1]. The idea is that using only mass spectroscopy and a (hard to compute, but not impossible) look-up table, one can determine with vanishingly low uncertainty whether a complex molecule came from a biotic or abiotic process. This has implications for the detection of life on other planets. [1] this video

> A total of 23 types of amino acids were found in asteroid samples brought back by Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe, according to new studies published in the journal Science and elsewhere, shedding further light on the origins of life on Earth. This intersects with a raging debate in Origins of Life research. The Miller-Urey experiment demonstrated the production of amino acids from simple gasses thought the be present in the early Earth atmosphere and energy. The problem is that you can add amino acids into a flask, stir, and not much will happen. You can pump in all the energy you want and all you'll get it tar. Before you can even start to make proteins, which is what makes life, you need enzymes. The trouble with enzymes is that they're, well, proteins. So how do you get the proteins that make proteins in the first place? One line of investigation says that you don't. What happens instead are stepping-stone chemical processes that turn energy from the environment into self-reinforcing cycles that build complex molecules. Over time chemical evolution takes place to produce self-reinforcing systems that make something that's very close to amino acids and/or proteins. We don't know what these processes are, but we can deduce their necessity given the above conundrum. Chemical evolution is a process we observe on the macro scale when, for example, viruses evade vaccine defenses. In other words, finding amino acids just says that the processes that produce amino acids are ubiqu