Michael Russell - Emergence, serpentinization engine, electron exchange - what a scientist sounds like

If you enjoyed Robert Hazen and Jack Szostak, then you’ll want to add Michael Russell since his talks compliments what Dr. Szostak was explaining.  Of course, what you get out of these lectures is proportional to how well you already know the topic.  That said, any intelligent curious person can still get plenty of fascinating insights and better appreciation for the complexities scientists have come to understand by listening and then doing a little side research for themselves.  It's not like the fundamentals themselves are that difficult, it is the details that get impossibly complex and difficult to grasp.

The key is an honest curiosity to become aware of the world we live in.

With that I present another another couple lectures about the physics of Life’s folds within folds of cumulative harmonic complexity flowing down the cascade of time.  Before getting to my next essay.

Jack Szostak - Origins, geochemistry to biochemistry - What a scientist sounds like.

Whereas Robert Hazen went after the origins problem from a mineralogist's perspective, Professor of chemistry and chemical biology, the 2009 Nobel Prize laureate Jack Szostak goes at it from his expertise, the biologist’s perspective.  

Both have found that they needed to combine their expertise and to reach out to other branches of science in order to constructively tackle the problem of understanding the transition from geochemistry to biochemistry and then to full blown life as we know it.

He is another excellent public speaker so his talks are a joy to listen to.  Here I share a collection of seven informative videos of his talks along with some bio information.

Jack Szostak: The Early Earth and the Origins of Cellular Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1KqvoLEj7c

MoleCluesTV, Published on May 16, 2019  (32:11 min.)

Lecture by Dr Jack Szostak, 2009 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, at the Molecular Frontiers Symposium "Planet Earth: A Scientific Journey", at Stockholm University May 9-10, 2019.

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The Szostak Lab

https://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/

Robert Hazen - Origins, mineral evolution - What a scientist sounds like.

In order to get a change of scenery I spent the summer of 2006 working north of Boulder and living in a Teepee.  My transportation was mainly my bike and Longmont was a better destination than crowded Boulder.  It also sported a very nice library with a big non-fiction audio book collection, which was very exciting considering I’d long run out of decent nonfictions at my home town fiction loving library.  Browsing through their rows of “The Great Courses” series, I spied something new "Origins of Life."

Origins of Life

Professor Robert M. Hazen, Ph.D.

George Mason University

The Great Courses.com - course 1515

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/professors/robert-m-hazen/

With a title like that, I couldn’t say no.  It turned out to deliver one astounding surprise after another, along with a few revelations to boot.  I needed to listened a second time before returning, despite its 12 hour length.  Since then I've made a point of listening to pretty near every YouTube lecture featuring him and there are many. 

I also liked that this new understanding also vindicates my own reflexive disgust at having read some serious scientists assume that for the first few billions of years nothing happened on Earth.  It seemed a ridiculous notion to me and so it was.  Just like junk DNA, or wasted brain matter, nonsense - it was simply that we hadn’t learned enough to know what it was doing yet.  Seems that conceit and short sightedness has been a predominate feature in human thinking going way back.

The beauty of science is that truth and honesty and evidence is valued - authoritative facts win in the end.  This is because scientists belong to a community of dedicated, competitive, informed, skeptical individuals who buy into the basic premise that: We Need Each Other To Keep Ourselves Honest.  

Also they work under a set of rules, that puts honest observation at the top of the list, because constructively learning about our planet, along with her ways and means, is the goal.  A place where geophysical facts rule over personal opinion and preferences. 

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According to Neal deGrasse Tyson this is how science operates:

(1) Question authority. No idea is true just because someone says so, including me. 

(2) Think for yourself. Question yourself. Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so. 

(3) Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it. 

(4) Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence, reserve judgment. 

And perhaps the most important rule of all...

(5) Remember: you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history -- they all made mistakes. Of course they did. They were human. 

Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves, and each other.

{Mistakes are learning opportunities !}