Grounds for Science: Investigating the Origins of Life

Come learn about cutting-edge research from the graduate student community at UC Berkeley in a relaxed, sci-fi-themed cafe setting. This month features a talk by physicist Jonathan Liu.

The audience is encouraged to interrupt and ask questions and engage in discussion with our speakers. Arrive at 6:30 pm and enjoy a variety of pinball machines, science trivia, home-roasted coffees and select beers. Talk begins at 7 pm.

As far as we know, Earth is the only planet that can harbor life. But even on Earth, the question of how life arose in the first place is extremely hard to answer. Trying to uncover the evolutionary history of the origins of life is a complicated problem, involving a mixture of geology, biology, chemistry, physics, and plain old deductive guesswork. In this talk, Jonathan will outline prevailing theories for how life originated on Earth and highlight areas where scientists have made clever progress by applying principles from physics. By the end, Jonathan hopes to impart the concept that the origin of life on Earth was an extremely complicated process that nevertheless was made possible by the early Earth’s landscape.