Cafe Science

Professor David Lilley - 'The Origins of Life'

'Even the simplest life on the planet is actually extremely complex. How on earth did this get started ? Or did it even happen on Earth ?'

No-one can know for sure, but we can try to make some educated guesses about how to get from a sterile, lifeless world to one where the earliest life forms could get going. This requires combining what we know about the chemistry of the time, geology and even astrophysics.

This event will discuss the evolution of a proposed primitive form of life that does not use proteins and explains much about the origins of all life on our planet.'