I spent two days last week attending the Harvard Radcliffe Origins of Life symposium
The first day highlighted scientists from Harvard, while the second day featured outside experts. Scientists from many diverse disciplines (astronomy, chemistry, biology, geology, etc) converged to discuss topics ranging from how to find other potentially habitable planets (Sara Seager, MIT) , to discussions and experiments aimed at giving us a better idea how life’s first precursors and polymers may have formed, replicated, or even become encapsulated .
For me, some of the highlights included Jack Szostak’s (Harvard) discussions of replicating vesicles (models for early cells or cell divisions), and Gerald Joyce’s (Scripps) work on RNA ribozymes (as a model for simple self-replicating systems).
Immersed in a sea of scientists, I was somewhat surprised to see a priest walk by me toward the end of the conference. I guess he probably spends a lot of time thinking about the origins of life too.
could be the priest was looking for some unanswered questions to fuel the inteligent design creationist ideas…a spy for the other side…
Alternatively, he could be seriously interested in how the natural world operates.