After three episodes of gazing into the sky—first dark matter, then Mars, then black holes—our intrepid host Paul Sutter now turns his gaze to a more mundane subject: Why are we here?
And I don’t mean in a Nietzschean sense (and if you want Nietzschean discussions, Ars deputy editor Nate Anderson covered you in his upcoming book on Nietzsche!) – Paul’s question is much more physical. Why be we here, specifically – us complex, multicellular sentient beings made of blobs and blobs of proteins and self-replicating DNA? Why is to live a thing? Billions of years ago, how did the Earth go from a planet without life to a planet adorned with it?
RNA, DNA and everything in between
As with the previous topics explored in “Edge of Knowledge”, there is no one-size-fits-all answer (if there was, it would be a much shorter video). Paul spends most of the front half of the video going through the current predominant theories about where life came from and why it might have happened, then calls Ars Senior Science Editor Dr. John Timmer to dig a little deeper. Timmer — whom most of us at Orbiting HQ call “Dr. Jay,” to the point where I’m always amazed to hear someone call him “John” — takes home his fancy PhD in molecular and cell biology and weighs in with his own theories about where and why life on Earth began.
We’re halfway through our “Edge of Knowledge” season, with four episodes in the can and four more to come – stay tuned!
Ars Technica may earn compensation through affiliate programs for sales of links on this post.
