WEBVTT

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(pensive music)

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(tires on gravel)

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(bird and insect sounds)

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My name is Alan Lightman.

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I'm a scientist and a writer.

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(car door opens)

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(insects chirping)

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(door closes )

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My family has a home on
a small island in Maine.

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(pensive music)

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The island has no roads or bridges

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and there's no ferry service.

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(switch clicking)

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(pensive music)

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One summer night, in the wee hours,

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I was coming back to
the island in my boat.

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(boat engine hums)

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I was alone on the water.

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(pensive music)

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I was captivated by the quiet

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and the stars overhead.

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(pensive music)

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I decided to turn off the engine.

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(anchor splashes)

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(switch clicks)

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I lay down in the boat and looked up.

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(expectant music)

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After a few moments,

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my world dissolved into
that star-littered sky.

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(music swells)

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The boat disappeared, my body disappeared,

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and I found myself falling into infinity.

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(uplifting music)

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(waves crash)

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(birds chirping)

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I felt as if I were part of the stars.

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(uplifting music)

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I was merging with something
much larger than myself.

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(rain pattering)

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(uplifting music)

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And the vast expanse of time

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extending from the far distant
past, long before I was born

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and then into the far distant future

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long after I'll be gone

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seemed compressed to a dot.

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(lightning crack and uplifting music)

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What was happening to me?

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(uplifting music)

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As a scientist,

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I used to think that everything
could be reduced to numbers.

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(uplifting music)

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But at that moment in the boat,

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I believe you could have hooked
up every neuron in my brain

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to a giant computer,

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and all of that data

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wouldn't have come close to
explaining my experience.

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(music echoes and fades)

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(boat engine revving)

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After a time, I sat up and
started the engine again.

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(boat engine whirring)

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And so began my personal journey

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to understand how these
different worlds relate:

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the world of atoms and molecules

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and the world of complex
human experiences.

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In a material and impermanent
cosmos, in the age of science,

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what is it that has meaning,
and how can we find it?

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(music fades)

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What's the difference
between matter that's alive

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and matter that's dead?

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(insects chirping)

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Could we actually make life from scratch?

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Creating life from
simple chemistry would be

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the ultimate proof of the materiality

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of living organisms... and us.

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It's quite possible that
this breakthrough will occur

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in Jack Szostak's laboratory.

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Professor Szostak won the 2009 Nobel Prize

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for his work on how DNA ages,

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but then he moved on to
a completely new subject,

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the origins of life on Earth.

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I have a friend who's a pretty smart guy,

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and he thinks that life could
not have originated on Earth

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because there wasn't time to create

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all of the molecules needed for life.

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- There's lots of evidence

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and lots of really modern recent evidence

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that it's actually quite easy
to make the molecules of life,

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and that they can be made very quickly.

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- What does it take for us to
decide that a thing is alive?

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- We're most interested in,

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once you have the right
chemical building blocks,

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how do they come together
to make a simple cell,

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something that can grow and
divide and start evolving

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and eventually lead to more
complicated forms of life?

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What I care about is a
system that can start

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to evolve in a Darwinian sense,

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but the other half of what we need

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to create a simple living system

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is that membrane boundary,

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the vesicles that form from simple lipids.

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[ALAN] A vesicle is
basically a compartment

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that contains RNA and
other stuff of the cell.

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Szostak is trying to understand

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how vesicles and RNA can be
created from the simple chemicals

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present in early Earth.

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[STEPHANIE] I came to this lab

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because I'm very fascinated

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by the idea of the protocells,

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which is the primitive cell forms

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on the early Earth.

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[JACK] So what Stephanie has done

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is she's created these vesicles,

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which originally were all
fairly large like these,

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and then she's added
into the solution more

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of the fatty acid molecules
that make up the membranes.

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They go into the membrane
and cause it to grow,

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and then the membrane starts to fluctuate

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and the vesicles divide

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and start generating
all the smaller vesicles

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that you can see forming.

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And it's so simple, right?

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There's no fancy cellular machinery.

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There's nothing that's evolved.

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It's just very, very basic chemistry

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and physics that's driving
everything that we see.

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[ALAN] Other researchers
are experimenting

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with how simple chemistry
can copy information

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and even evolve in conditions

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completely unlike those on early Earth.

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[KYLE] So one very interesting thing

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about these reactions

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is that the liquid that's

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in here is not water.

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This is chloroform for these ones,

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which is a very different
solvent than water.

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- So if you can prove that you can get

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a non-RNA molecule

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to replicate in a liquid
environment that's not water,

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would that increase the possibility

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of life elsewhere in the universe?

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- It's hard to say really absolutely,

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but I certainly think it would.

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- It seemed to me that Jack would have

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some pretty clear thoughts

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on that “mechanism” versus “vitalism” debate

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that had been puzzling me.

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My understanding is that
almost all biologists today

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are mechanists rather than vitalists.

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- Absolutely.

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I mean, nobody has ever
come across anything that

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requires any supernatural explanation.

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I think it's because we understand more

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and more about biology in terms
of its molecular structure

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and organization.

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- So are we all just atoms and molecules?

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- It's not “just” atoms and molecules,

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it's the organization.

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There are layers and layers
of emergent phenomena where

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when you have collections of molecules

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and sources of energy,
you get interesting, new,

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and often surprising phenomena,
you know, common in life,

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but also in other purely physical systems.

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If you combine informational
molecules that can replicate

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with some kind of physical
spatial localization,

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for example, membrane-bound vesicles,

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then you have new phenomena

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that can occur, like Darwinian evolution,

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and so now you're off

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and running in a totally new ball game.

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- You once said that you hope

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that when we do succeed
in creating something

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that we would call a living thing,

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you hope that the public understands

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that the creation of
life is totally natural.

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- If we can show that there is

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a kind of continuous pathway

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of straightforward steps
that connects chemistry,

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the environments of a young planet

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to the emergence of biology,

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then I think it would be
logical to just accept life

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as another natural phenomenon.

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I mean, it's no less
wonderful or beautiful

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because we understand that
there's a natural origin for it.

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And so understanding how we're a product

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of nature right from the beginning

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I think builds on that view

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that we're not something
separate and different,

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but we're a part of nature,

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and we should accept
that and live with that.

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(gentle music)