English subtitles for clip: File:Biochemist Lee Cronin on creating artificial life-VPRO-The Mind of the Universe.ogv

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Lee: I'm Lee Cronin. I'm the Regius Professor of Chemistry at University of Glasgow.

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I run a pretty big research group exploring complex chemistry

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and I try to think about how things got started in chemistry and biology

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and how to make ways to explore all of chemistry.

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Speaker 2: Is there one question, in particular, you ask yourself?

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Lee: Yeah.

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I think the question I ask myself a lot is, "Why?" And I suppose linked to that, "How did, basically,

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the earth become living?" I am an inorganic chemist.

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The word "inorganic" is associated with dead or nonliving and organic chemistry is associated with living.

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The question I ask, almost to make fun or to describe it clearly, is,

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"How did dead chemistry become living?" Or "How did an inorganic world become organic?" Put simply,

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where did biology come from on earth?

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Speaker 2: What's the difference between organic chemistry and biology?

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Lee: I can answer that in a very complex way and a very simple way,

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The ultimate machine that biology's built is the organic chemist, because then they can make more molecules,

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but this is a robot argument I'll talk about later, but biology, predominately, is based up on organic chemistry.

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It's a very nice chemistry.

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All your DNA, all the proteins, all your muscles, all built with organic chemistry and some inorganic stuff.

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Some salt and all that to make it work.

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Speaker 2: The main question you try to answer is "How do we create life from dead material?".

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Lee: Yeah. Absolutely. If you imagine back to the.. When planet earth got started.

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It was probably a fairly busy place. Asteroids, meteorites and lava, thunder and lightning, but it was dead.

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I think of it like a beach, like sand on a beach where there was nothing but the wind blowing it around.

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How does that sand on the beach, that inorganic dead stuff turn into living stuff? To seaweed.

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To fish. To the trees. To the grass. To the bacteria. What on earth happened? Literally, what on earth happened?

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It's quite an interesting question, because put so simply, it's a chemist's ultimate dream.

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It's like, this is the question: What turned the dead chemistry into living chemistry?

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Speaker 2: This is the question?

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Lee: For me, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Why did you raise that question?

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Lee: Well, I'm not the first to raise that question. Lots of people raise that question in their own way.

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I guess we all have a "What is the meaning?" question, don't we?

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Whether you're an artist or a composer or a film maker or an architect, I guess we all..

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There is all meaning in the things that we build and create.

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For me, I'm really fascinated by the fact that chemistry's extremely complicated. Organic chemistry's complicated.

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The way the biology works, disease works, molecules work, it's all complicated.

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I can do stuff with my hands and my eyes, but it's complicated.

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If I purposefully build something, I'm controlling my fingers, I can see my work, but how did that work without me?

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I wondered, "What are the steps...

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What are the simple steps that lead to complexity?" For me, it's kind of like manifestation of..

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Although I'm a chemist, I don't really understand very much chemistry. It seems quite complicated.

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I'd like to know where we start.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because now add an aspect in its complexity, but where does it start with you?

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Trying to answer that question.

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Lee: Oh gosh. I guess in the laboratory I was always fascinated how I could make molecules make themselves.

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What we try to do, there's this thing called nanotechnology.

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Nanotechnology is bigger than the molecule, but smaller than, say, a second hand or a spring in a very fine watch.

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How can I get molecules to go into that nano world? Because then I can make nano machines.

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If I can make nano machines, then I can do all sorts of fascinating things.

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As an inorganic chemist, I basically took sand, stuff as simple as sand, and all I did was I added acid to it.

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When I added acid to certain sands, they turned into nano objects. I was fascinated.

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How could those nano objects build themselves?

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Part of the training I got when I was doing my PhD, and after my PhD, was explaining

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and exploring the self assembly of sand. Literally, how could the sand castle build itself without the bucket?

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How could the grains of sand know that each other existed to build the castle? I spent a lot of time looking at that.

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Maybe, because I look back in time, it's easy for me to say, "Oh, I was always interested in the origin of life

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and making new life," but I guess it started with a fascinating of just complexity in general.

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How could the castle build itself without a person or a bucket?

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Speaker 2: Is it like could this house have built itself?

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Lee: No. That's really-

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Speaker 2: It's too complex...

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Lee: Yeah. Well, it's not.. Well, of course, a house build itself if you allow the human being to be..

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Because the thing is now I say to people, "Oh 747 is too complicated.

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I just spontaneously assemble." There is a problem with probability and there is a problem with complexity.

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If you say to a mathematician or a statistician that something is complex,

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they will translate that to as being improbable to happen on its own. I think they're wrong.

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I think it's not just improbable, I think the chances of it happening are zero.

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I think the chances of some improbable things happening is zero.

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Just because you put a number on it,

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it makes them feel better.	With a 747 there is a zero chance a 747 will assemble itself..

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However, have a origin of life, have human beings, make your 747, they then..

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The human being plus technology makes a 747, so clearly the probability isn't zero, because 747s exist..

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I think that that's.. About this house. The house didn't form itself. A person did it.

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When you then think about life, a life is a very interesting thing,

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because it's a machine that can actually on surroundings to conquer it.

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It's almost like, for me, living matter is somehow superior to dead matter, because it can literally-

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Speaker 2: Oh, if it's a problem

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Lee: Fine. Fine. Fine. For me, it's really interesting to me about enslavement and stuff going on.

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This house did not build itself, a human being did. Okay. What built the human being?

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That's go down from there and you go backwards and backwards

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and backwards down to say what is the simplest thing that could happen by chance that could make more sophisticated

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things happen? This is where all the notion of complexity came from then the house then the person.

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I often have say one thing, which is no origin of life, no biology. No biology, no biologists.

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No biologist, no human being. No philosopher, no philosophy.

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I'll try and say it in a bit of a more elegant way later, but it's kind of interesting..

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Quintessentially, what I'm saying is that you and I, we, human beings, we see the world and we make a..

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We understand the world.

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We perceive it, so what is it about the stuff in me, the atoms in me, that allow me to appreciate the world?

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That is a really interesting phase transition.

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The sand in that castle is not aware of itself, but you add some complexity to it

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and a few billion years of evolution and you have of a human being. How did that happen?

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Speaker 2: I don't know.

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Lee: I think it's a step in complexity. We can go right down to the history of it-.

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Speaker 2: But can you describe the complexity? On this level you are doing your research..

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You are trying to find the building blocks or where it all started? The dead parts..

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Lee: Yeah. There's lots of.. I don't know if you want to go down this part depending..

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I'll let you me, but if you.. Let's go back to the origin of life.

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People often talk about trying to work out the origin of life. I think it's a really important problem.,

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There is more money and time being spent on the origin of the universe and the origin of mass, i.e.,

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that's the Higgs boson and gravity, than the origin of life.

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THere's never been a big project for the origin of life, but if I could understand where life came for or if I could,

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and this is my objective to make new life in my lab, I could then tell you if alien life is possible,

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the constraints for new life forms, and I could expand the chemistry.

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The chemical space beyond what we know already and we could talk about the shadow biosphere

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and new types of life forms. That's a really important problem.

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The problem with the origin of life is that it is a historical question.

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Lots of people go back and say, first assumption, origin of life took billions of years.

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Well, everyone's saying, "Well, no, maybe just a billion." Say, "Well, why a billion?

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Chemistry occurs much faster than a billion years. Evolution takes a long time. We know that.

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Then when you think about the problem, so if complex chemistry didn't take a billion years, how long?

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A hundred million? Two hundred million? What about a year?

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What about if you could go from sand to a primitive cell in a year? What would that change?

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Then you say, "Okay, people say that that's impossible." Then you say, "Why?" They say, "Well,

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origin of life was clearly improbable. Clearly impossible. We are clearly a fluke..

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We are clearly an accident." That's also a very.. That's not tested.

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The fact we are here, the first assumption I make is that we're easy. Life is easier than you think.

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Speaker 2: Wait a minute. We are easy?

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Lee: We are easy.

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Speaker 2: You mean our life? Our form of life? Our intelligence or is-

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Lee: No. No, no, no. I think there are three problems I'm really interested in...

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First of all is how to make a new life form. Second on is how can that life.. Does it..

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Is it a single cell or something. Then, how does that life form become cooperative to make a multi-cellular creature?

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Because, actually, that took a billion years. That did take a very long time. Could we speed it up?

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Thirdly, what happens to that multi-cellular creature to make it intelligent? To have a brain and then have sense.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Lee: I think the origin of life might be much easier than we think.

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Multi-cellularity might just take time and then the real magic might be how do we get to intelligence.

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I just would like, so I'm a chemist, and I would just like to answer the sand to cell question

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or the dead to live first. I don't have a hundred million years. I don't maybe have a thousand years.

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I might have 10 years or 20 years, so what can I do in my laboratory to speed that up? What assumptions can I make?

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If I make those assumptions about time and complexity, does it allow me to say something really obvious like, "Well-"...

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You know what, let's say it was simple and let's assume it took no time. Took no time.

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What do we then do that opens up the entire chemical space?

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Speaker 2: Let me take a few steps back and I'm trying to visualize your lab. What is happening there?

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What are you doing there? your first question.

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Lee: Wow. What am I doing in my lab? Yeah.

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My lab now is real exciting, because it combines it expertise I've been dreaming of getting together for a decade.

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or actually, probably as long as.. For 32 years.

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Since I was 10 years old, because it combines people who can play with computers. It combines robots.

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It combines chemistry. It combines vision.

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What we're trying to do on one half of the lab is we're trying to really do chemistry, to make new molecules.

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The other half of the lab we're trying to build robots that will do really simple chemistry,.

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to build really simple molecules. We're trying to.. Look at that chemist over there, they're amazing.

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Look at that robot over there, that's really dumb.

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How can we make the dumb robot as smart as the smart chemist and what does that mean?

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Is there something the robot can do that's simple that can get smarter?

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At the moment, we've got a number of approaches. The first approach is what I call "bottom up," sand to sand castle.

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We are basically shaking the sand in a bucket

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and we're hoping that the grains collect together to build something miraculous.

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We can do it to some degree, but only small miracles. No big miracles. We're finding something really interesting.

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That small miracles can have bigger miracles and bigger miracles. This is what we call template-based self assembly..

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If you think of.. I want to make an arched and a bridge. I want to make a bridge across a river.

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One way of doing it is to build an arch, but to build and arch you need a template for the arch.

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You can made out of wood,

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but what if I could make the template of out of arch form spontaneously to fill in the bridge. That's kind of nice.

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Suddenly, the arch builds a bridge. In my lab, we're trying to make sure that we can do that.

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We've found a way of a molecule makes its own archway and then it makes a bridge.

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Then the archway dissolves and all you see is the bridge.

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The going, "Where did the bridge come from?

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I didn't build the arch?" We caught the archway, literally, with its trousers down by accident, like, there.

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Snapshot and then we understood that. That's what we call bottom up.

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Speaker 2: Do you have another example of that one? Just to understand, because you tell me about the sand-

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Lee: Yup. Yup...

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Speaker 2:. You tell me the castle, but the sand, is that.. Do you mean the molecule?

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Lee: No. I mean the grain of sand.

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Speaker 2: The grain of sand..

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Lee: Just a grain.. That sand castle is made up of sand.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Lee: To make a sand castle, you can do one of two things: You could position each sand with a microscope, by hand,

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it would take you a long time.

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You could get a bucket with the right indentation and just scoop the sand and put it in there.

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or you could program the sand to self-assembly like ants. Somehow, how do you..

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What are the smallest rules you can come up with? It's a bit like trying to work out those rules. Another archway-

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Lee: It's a hard one. Another archway that would do itself spontaneously.

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Speaker 2: It's for me to understand..

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Lee: It's a bit like making a snowman. We made a snowman outside with my son the other day. It's a bit like..

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Our snowman was made up of four snow balls. We started rolling the snow together to make a big ball.

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We just rolled the snow for, maybe, 10 minutes and we got a ball that was basically half a meter.

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then we rolled it for less time and we got, maybe a quarter of a meter. Put it on top.

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Then another one for basically half of a quarter of a meter on top. We have the fat, less fat, so a snowman.

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Here's a way of doing it to say could I allow a stone at the top of the hill to roll down the hill,

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get enough snow to become a big ball and then split into two to make another ball

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and then they would assemble at the bottom. It could happen randomly if you did enough times..

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That's what we're kind of doing in the lab. Setting up random snow balls to make.. Say, oh there's a snowman.

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There's a snowman.

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Can we try enough times throwing the stone down the hill, so gravity plus snow, roll, snowball, snowman.

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Now, the interesting thing is we need to make that simple enough.

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But then when the snowman is able to build itself, this is in the magic, this is when life starts,.

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so what is the minimum thing you can do to make something that can make itself? What is..

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It's like, how can you start the ball rolling quite literally. This is the bottom up, but that's very hard..

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We don't know where to search. You're quite right to be, not confused, but.. It's a big probability problem.

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How many lottery tickets do I have to play until I win? That's bottom up. Top down is me being control.

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I'm building robots that I will control to build everything, like atom by atom.

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What we do is we then ask if we give the robot the instructions, we give it some knowledge, some information.

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We say to the robot, we say to one robot, "You're dumb. Make a molecule. Make a snowman. Keep going. How many goes.

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How many goes. How many goes." We take another robot and say, "Here's a picture of a snowman..

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Make it." The robot goes "ah, ah, ah, ah" made a Then when we look at the robot and say, "Okay,

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that's a really good snowman. We're now gonna remove some of that information, but we still want you to make a snowman.

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How much information can we take away?" This is top down.

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What we're trying to do is work out how much information do we need to know and how much can we find.

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There's a whole concept of information in biology, so there's a bit like how much randomness can we use?

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Or how much complexity can we get from our environment. It just goes back to an observation about biology. Biology..

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All living things are made of cells and in every cell there is DNA.

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The DNA allows the cell to evolve, but no DNA, no evolution. DNA is complicated, so where did the DNA come from?

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What we're trying to do is look at the robots to help us guess that. That's what we're doing in the lab.

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We have two extremes. We have the random plus get lucky and the no random, let's big brother it.

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We have our big brother robot that videos everything and orchestrates.

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We have the conductor and we have the free form no conductor.

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Speaker 2: Those two experiments you take on at the same time?

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Lee: They're going on in the group at the same time and we're using common people to look at the experiments, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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What can I imagine when I see this experiment or experiment, this research project with the

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How do you manage to direct the.

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Lee: Here's the thing, one of the big top things that chemists are beginning to understand.. It's like spread betting.

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Spread betting.

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You go and bet on a horse, you could bet on the winner or the loser or you can spread on a variety of outcomes and say,

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"Right, I'll get money that way.

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I won't make money as fast, but I'll make money." If your objective is like, if I give you,

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I don't know how many euros or pounds and say, "Right.

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Your objective is to double your money in two hours." If you were lazy you could say, "Right.

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All on one horse," and you'd be dead or win very quickly.

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Or you say, "Okay, I'm not sure,

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but I'll make a spread." One of the things that we try to do is look at how we can look at the distribution of.

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different.. How we can spread our luck. You can do that by doing lots of things at once.

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What I'm trying to say is time is the enemy, because to get lucky you need to wait time.

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If you do one at a time it will take a long time.

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If you want to use the same amount of time to get lucky quickly, you spread bet.

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In my lab, we don't have that much time so we spread bet. It's like parallel..

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What we're trying to do is to say, "Okay, we want to set up a series of random experiments, but we want to"..

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Because we could do the experiment in one big, say, a swimming pool sized reactor.

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or we could do it in a very small cup or a test tube. Or we could do it in a smaller..

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If we have lots of small test tubes, then we could do lots of different experiments in the same space as, maybe,

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a swimming pool. Suddenly, one swimming pool could be cut up into one million or even more test tubes.

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Suddenly, we have a million goes where we had one.

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Now, take it into a droplet like an oil droplet you'd get in your salad dressing and we do all the experiments,

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one oil droplet per experiment.

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Suddenly, you can do a trillion experiments where you only had one, so you have a trillion goes.

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Then very quickly you could calculate how many times do I need to play the lottery before I get lucky.

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In the UK, I think a few weeks ago, to win the 33 million, the probability, I think,

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was something like 256 million to one. Cool. With a trillion I can do that over four times. Here I go. I win.

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I have four chances of winning in that experiment and that is how we do it.

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Speaker 2: Go on, but with the most important question. How do you define life?

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Lee: Okay.

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Before I define life, I'm going to define something else,

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because it will be really important to understand why definition is useful.

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Many scientists think that life can not be defined.

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I think that is unhelpful for trying to explain it to other people and also to try and get a concept,

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because sometimes defining a concept, you don't quite understand it. The one I like is flight.

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Imagine before humans flew they said, "Right. What is flight?" You go outside and you see birds flying maybe.

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You might look at those squirrels that can glide or bumble bees. You can say, "Okay, I have this notion of flying.

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Some do work against gravity and they can move air and they go in the air." But

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when the first airplane was made by the Wright Brothers or whoever, because I don't know, they flew a few yards,

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so it wasn't very far. Then they went, "Oh. Flight is powered heavier than air travel.

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No just balloon flight and because I could go 100 yards, now I worked out how I can go 1,000 yards..

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Then when I went 1,000 yards I went across the Atlantic and before you know it, we got".. We know what flight is.

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For me, flight is getting on an airplane, going up in the sky, coming down again safely,

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and being out of travel several thousand miles in the air without touching down.

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I think by framing it this way, if we define life in a similar way, it might help us,

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because now flight takes lots of different forms. We have rockets. We have planes. We have gliders.

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We may even have all sorts of other ways of doing. Helicopters.

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When it comes to what life is, life seems to be an object when you feed it it multiplies and that's one thing.

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Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I just don't-

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Lee: I will start with a very general, not very satisfactory concept, but it's basically an object that takes stuff,

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simple stuff, from the outside as food and can make itself. Replicate.

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A fancier way of saying it is a self-sustaining, it's a bit like a flame that can feed itself, thing that can,

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basically, that can evolve..

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Let's make it even more precise and just say life is a nontrivial self-sustaining thing in a big universe. Let me...

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There's a couple of scientifically.. Nontrivial means that it's not like a bit of sand. It's complicated.

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It means that you'd have to write down some lines in a book to write down what it is.

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Self-sustaining means it can keep going. That complex thing keeps going.

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It's a bit like, say, the storm on Jupiter that's been whirling around for these thousands of years in the universe.

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Now can you see that life, at that level, to me, has very little to do with chemistry and here is the problem:

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lots of people who are trying to make

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or understand the origin of life are being very specific in their chemical archeology,

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but I'm just looking for a process.

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I want to make the simplest object that will self-sustain itself be complicated and go around the universe.

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In my test tube, I want to make a blob or a cell that is able to make itself when you feed it food and is complicated.

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That just didn't randomly arise, because if I say life is salad dressing, like I shake some vinegar and some oil

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when I get a nice balsamic vinegar and I get this nice looking thing.

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Well, people will say, "Well, that looks like a life form, but it doesn't make itself. It's not complicated.

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It doesn't act on itself." A higher level definition of life, the one I like in the end,

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is one that can act on itself to change itself. What does that mean? Well, I'm ill. I've got a headache.

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I can go and I can pick up a pill and take it and cure my headache. I can do something from the outside to the inside.

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When you look in your environment, you don't see dead things purposefully moving around. We call this agency.

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It's almost a bit like a self-awareness. A sheep will go from grass to pasture to pasture.

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A dog will go and follow it's master, you know?

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There's like, there's inputs, but I think they're quite complicated things.

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I do like this idea of a complex thing that self-sustains in a big universe.

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Speaker 2: That can conserve itself.

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Lee: Yeah. It copies itself. Over time there's more of itself.

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Basically, it can take raw materials and become more complicated. I guess these are notions.

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It's a bit like flight, because everyone tends to fight about definitions about life, because, you know,

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we thought we could make a list of things, right. It needs to evolve. Like Darwin. Right..

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It needs to be based on carbon. Right. It needs to have water. Right. Needs to have a certain..

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Then you write this list and the problem is the list gets so long you forget why you're writing the list.

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I go back to flight and say, "What is it interesting about flight?" Well, for me, I want to get on my airplane.

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I want it to take off safely and travel several thousand miles, touch down and me get off..

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Refuel and go Although.. So flight means something to us.

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If I could make a new life form based on different chemistry that would be really interesting,

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because suddenly we don't have to say it's based on carbon or water, because suddenly,

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I'm now looking for a complex thing that's self-sustaining in a universe, but it doesn't have to be based on carbon

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or water. That's kind of where we're going at the moment.

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It's not a finished definition and may never will be, but think about before flight, before airplanes.

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We didn't have anything else to reference.

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Now, we could all agree if we went to see some objects a parachutist or whatever, what would be flying or not.

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I'm hoping that if we can make new life forms with different chemistry it would help us identify new life.

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Maybe there's other life forms on the earth that are very simple that we don't understand

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or we haven't recognized because they're too simple. We just ignore them..

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Speaker 2: But that's a big.. Giant leap ahead, I guess.

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Lee: I would say potentially, but maybe not. I think maybe not.

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Speaker 2: What are you actually doing in this lab? Just to prove that your guess is right..

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Lee: Well, I think that's a very important question. What we're trying to do..

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Many people are saying we need to design or we need to select a very special chemistry

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and only a very special chemistry can lead to life and biology.

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A very special chemistry living or a origin life in biology. I'm trying to say the other way around.

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Maybe the process is more important than the chemistry and the process selects the chemistry it needs to become alive.

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Baring that in mind, suddenly we go to the lab now, we're suddenly free.

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We don't just have to use DNA, amino acids, the things that you find in biology. We can use sand. We can use salt.

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We can use other stuff.

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What we're trying to do is take the simplest molecules, the simplest chemicals and shake them together

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and look for evidence that they will become complicated. To start to become self-sustaining.

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We want to look for phenomena like forming cells. We look for making machines.

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Look for evidence of complexity and so, if I could basically take some very simple molecules

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and they would turn themselves into a cell that could self-replicate

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and look like a bacterial cell under a microscope then that would be really interesting. One of the-

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Speaker 2: That means that you're right. If you find that, but you must have conclude that you are going to find that...

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Lee: No. I don't.. No. I don't have any clue, but I think I'm right, because I think..

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If you think back to the early earth. Early earth was really crazy.

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Like, every day that goes by there's fire, there's brimstone, there's asteroids hitting, the water's being evaporated,

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there's lava coming out, the energy's really high, so any really,

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sexy sophisticated chemistry will be erased in a second. Or it would be erased..

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This is my epiphany that I saw maybe when I think about...

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Because I obviously like water, because I'm in Scotland and it's raining all the time, but if you look at..

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In the river or in the sea and you look at patterns and things and they're only there for a small moment in time.

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If the pattern was going to be erased really quickly, life is a pattern that doesn't get erased,

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it takes the outside and make a pattern and makes more of itself and replicates that pattern.

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Life is a bit like the Olympic flame.

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It's that organization that goes from thing to thing to thing in time and space that never gets erased,

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because it keeps being replicated.

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If that could happen on earth, I reasoned it has to happened much easier than we thought,

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because otherwise the complex chemistry would be erased by the meteorite, the water boiling, the fire and brimstone.

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My simple notion, if I'm being brutally honest, really honest, and I'm being really honest,

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because I don't have any cognitive reserve, is that I feel that life is far simpler than we could possibly imagine.

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I think we can recreate it in lots of different chemistries and there's no secret.

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There are lots of origins of life on planet earth, one origin of biology that we know today. There's lots of roots.

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There are lots of ways to make a life form and they all converged and they corporated and they ended up with DNA

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and proteins and ourselves as a comproise, if you like, between all the different extremes.

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Mini-disc player, iPod, tape cassette. All these different technologies that were competing..

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It was the same in chemistry, I think.. I almost say I believe.

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I guess it is a belief, because beliefs are those things that can't yet be tested.

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Obviously, I'm trying to turn that belief into a scientifically falsifiable set of experiments.

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We're going from two extremes. What I talk about top down with the robot doing it and the bottom up.

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Allowing it to happen and then videoing it. That's what we're looking for.

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We're looking for the simplest chemistry that can show evidence of becoming self-sustaining and complex.

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It's a bit like how simply can we make a fire that's able to go and find its own fuel.

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But this fire has a pattern, maybe it's not just a flame, but it's a word..

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Let's say the word "fire." Let's say the word fire can write fire and that word fire can go from..

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That's what we're looking for in the lab if that analogy makes sense. I can try think of a better one.

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Speaker 2: No. It makes sense. Very good. Very good..

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This is a very good explanation you gave right now, because of the.. I understand. I hope now the viewers do.

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Because of this element of complexity, some complexity is added and then things evolve

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and things start to development and it still is a coincidence and it has various roots, various chemical roots.

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I understand it very much, but how do you try to catch this coincidence?

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Lee: I was just thinking about it when you were talking just there. It's like extreme trial and error.

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I'll tell you something, which I found one of the most beautiful things I've ever done as a parent

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or my wife has done as a parent, it was a gift we were given, which was, basically, grow your own butterfly.

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You have this kit where you have these things that turn into caterpillars and they have their own food

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and they go around you watch them go through the process. The caterpillars eat the food.

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They then make chrysalis and you put them in a little net and they go up and they ready

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and after some time the butterflies come out. But when we did it, we had five.

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We were really emotionally attached and the kids were like,

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"Look at this butterfly it's coming." The fifth one got tangled in its silk and it never made it free. It died..

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We were so.. We were trying to cut it free and we were so upset.

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Then we were like, "Ah, that is the perfect thing about life. It's trial and error.

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Those that survive continue." If you think about trial and error,

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life is nothing more than matter that helps itself through trial and error.

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It's a bit like the selfish but it's more primal than that. It's more simple.

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To put simply, what is the simplest sand or dirt or rocks that can help other rocks get better?

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What is the definition of better?

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The problem we have in life though or the nice thing about life as you were talking earlier and, again,

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it's complicated now, but for something to be alive, it has to die. There's quite a simple thing.

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You will know when, let's say a bacterium is alive and is dead. When it's dead, it's no longer able to grow, reproduce.

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You know when the bacteria, if you feed it food ever 20 minutes, it splits into two, into two, into two.

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It's really interesting, that point.

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That bacterium, let's just imagine a bacterium, and then in 20 minutes does this, so I ask you a question,

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in your stomach, in your intestine you have lovely bacteria that look after you or you have your bacteria,

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whatever you want to call them, your microbiome, how old are the bacteria in your intestine?

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Speaker 2: I really have no idea.

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Lee: I would say roughly 3.9 billion years,.

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because that bacteria came from one bacteria that came from one bacteria that came..

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There is a Olympic torch of information passed back to what we call LUCA the Last Universal Common Ancestor.

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Isn't that wonderful?

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Speaker 2: LUCA.

395
00:38:48,060 --> 00:38:56,000
Lee: The Last Universal Common Ancestor. It's from the cell from which all other cells on earth originated.

396
00:38:56,001 --> 00:39:00,036
It's that Olympic torch that was then copied,

397
00:39:00,037 --> 00:39:05,022
but it wasn't just one Olympic torch that was carried from athlete to athlete, they copied it.

398
00:39:05,023 --> 00:39:12,036
It's a bit like then suddenly copying a photograph or, I don't know, something that goes viral on the internet.

399
00:39:12,054 --> 00:39:20,044
Everyone watching it. That bacteria in your intestine is billions of years old.

400
00:39:20,083 --> 00:39:26,006
You are billions of years old, because where do you come from? You come from your parents. Where do they come from?

401
00:39:26,007 --> 00:39:27,056
Their parents. Where do they come from?

402
00:39:27,057 --> 00:39:34,044
Then for evolution before then, maybe from the primates and then from before that and all that way back.

403
00:39:34,045 --> 00:39:40,061
Isn't that interesting that you persist in time, but you die?

404
00:39:41,043 --> 00:39:44,005
And so, okay, it's different for bacteria, because they never quite die.

405
00:39:44,006 --> 00:39:49,003
They split into two, split into two, but it's a changing cycle.

406
00:39:49,004 --> 00:39:53,048
It's just trial and error and so it's another way of sending up what's the minimum trial

407
00:39:53,049 --> 00:40:01,008
and error I can set up to carry on going? I still, I don't know, to be honest, I don't know what it means.

408
00:40:01,009 --> 00:40:08,088
People say, "Well, what is it?" I'm like, "Well, I kind of know what I'm looking for or I'll know when I see it,

409
00:40:09,063 --> 00:40:14,002
but what I need to do right now is start with really simple chemistry in the lab

410
00:40:14,003 --> 00:40:22,003
and I need to watch it like a hawk until suddenly something really odd happens and I go 'There are the events.

411
00:40:22,039 --> 00:40:29,027
Those events are responsible for the origin of life or maybe a new life form.'" I guess it's really that is it.

412
00:40:29,055 --> 00:40:36,048
What I'm doing is actually extremely simple. I'm just playing dice. Keep rolling the dice, rolling the dice.

413
00:40:36,076 --> 00:40:43,000
I want, basically, not just to get one six, but six sixes in a row and then I want to keep going

414
00:40:43,001 --> 00:40:53,021
and then I want to preserve the motion I last played to get those six sixes in a row.

415
00:40:53,022 --> 00:41:07,006
Speaker 2: Very good. I understand this very well now. Practically, how do you do this in your lab?

416
00:41:07,007 --> 00:41:09,001
I mean, I'm sorry, I would like you to tell about "Well, we have this machine, a robot-"

417
00:41:09,002 --> 00:41:09,041
Lee: Yup. Yup. We have two ways.

418
00:41:09,047 --> 00:41:16,032
Because I do a lot of inorganic chemistry, I assemble really complex molecules from simple molecules.

419
00:41:19,097 --> 00:41:28,055
The way I do this is I add acid to salt. Normally, it's boring, but in my lab, we can make it be interesting.

420
00:41:28,056 --> 00:41:30,006
That's what we're doing right now.

421
00:41:30,017 --> 00:41:40,024
We're looking at how to make the most complicated molecules with the least instructions. With the robot, the same.

422
00:41:40,025 --> 00:41:45,023
We are giving it some chemistry to do, but we're saying, "What about if we give you the least instructions?

423
00:41:45,024 --> 00:41:49,066
What is the most interesting thing you can do with the least instructions?" Then when it does nothing,

424
00:41:49,067 --> 00:41:54,069
which it does at the moment, we say, "Okay, I give in. I give you the full instructions.

425
00:41:55,059 --> 00:42:03,012
What happens when you have all the instructions? What can you then do?" That's what we've done.

426
00:42:03,013 --> 00:42:05,025
I'll show this in the laboratory.

427
00:42:05,026 --> 00:42:07,015
We've made a robot that you can give it instructions

428
00:42:07,016 --> 00:42:15,007
and it gives really complex oil droplets that look like they're alive, but they're not alive, they just move a lot.

429
00:42:15,027 --> 00:42:21,018
They were orchestrated. It was a cheat. A set up. A bribe, whatever.

430
00:42:21,019 --> 00:42:27,043
Then we say, "Okay, because we know what instructions we need to do to make the droplets look alive,

431
00:42:28,046 --> 00:42:37,004
how can we now move the information from the robot to the chemistry?" It's a bit like this,

432
00:42:37,005 --> 00:42:45,055
we ware saying we want the robot to write Shakespeare or the equivalent complex poetry song.

433
00:42:46,067 --> 00:42:51,094
Now, because the robot's dumb. It doesn't know Shakespeare, so we have to tell it Shakespeare, so it just copies it.

434
00:42:51,095 --> 00:42:55,062
Then if we blot out certain amounts of Shakespeare we say, "Okay,

435
00:42:55,063 --> 00:42:59,007
write Shakespeare with these small fragments." Then when we say, "Right.

436
00:42:59,008 --> 00:43:02,092
Okay, now you know Shakespeare, but learn a little bit of english

437
00:43:02,093 --> 00:43:05,021
and see if you can make something that sounds like Shakespeare.

438
00:43:05,022 --> 00:43:11,008
What do you need to go through to make that?" I think that's what we're trying to do...

439
00:43:11,009 --> 00:43:17,087
I know it sounds kind of intangible. It's like still.. You're kind of expecting me now...

440
00:43:17,088 --> 00:43:23,099
What we are doing in the lab, which is even to start somewhere that..

441
00:43:25,094 --> 00:43:29,090
What we are doing in the lab to start somewhere simple is we say, "Right.

442
00:43:29,091 --> 00:43:35,003
Biology's made up with carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur

443
00:43:35,077 --> 00:43:40,046
and some other metals." What we're doing is we're putting these elements together

444
00:43:40,047 --> 00:43:45,036
and we're zapping them with electricity and we're heating them. What do they form?

445
00:43:45,037 --> 00:43:52,098
We're taking hydrogen, methane, ammonia and water and we're doing a very classic experiment.

446
00:43:52,099 --> 00:43:57,013
It was first done in the 1950s called the Miller-Urey Experiment.

447
00:43:57,014 --> 00:44:05,056
They got two electrodes to simulate lightning and they got this simple soup and they heated it. Very simple.

448
00:44:05,074 --> 00:44:08,054
Very simple elements. Very simple molecules.

449
00:44:09,001 --> 00:44:14,015
What they got when they did it, and they did it for four or five days, that in the end, in that soup,

450
00:44:14,016 --> 00:44:21,037
in the primordial soup they got some oil, so it looked like gloopy crude oil, but they saw some acids in it,

451
00:44:21,038 --> 00:44:23,072
some molecules that look like amino acids.

452
00:44:23,073 --> 00:44:29,011
They got really excited, because amino acids are what you find in biology in your proteins..

453
00:44:29,012 --> 00:44:36,000
They are the simplest molecules. Everyone went, "Ah. The problem is solved. Just methane, nitrogen"..

454
00:44:36,003 --> 00:44:41,050
Sorry, "Just methane and hydrogen and ammonia and some flame and some fire

455
00:44:41,051 --> 00:44:48,073
and you can make amino acids." Those amino acids are really simple. They're in really low concentrations.

456
00:44:48,074 --> 00:44:58,041
There's a very small amount, so even though people have tried to, since the 1950s, almost the last 65, 66 years,

457
00:44:58,072 --> 00:45:03,071
people try to turn those amino acids into proteins and they have failed.

458
00:45:03,072 --> 00:45:12,024
What we have just done in the last year is we've made a robot that takes those simple amino acids.

459
00:45:12,025 --> 00:45:21,007
and does random chemistry with amino acids and we've seen how primitive proteins can emerge.. Or they're not proteins.

460
00:45:22,016 --> 00:45:27,096
I must be honest. They're protein-like, but they can emerge from the random chemistry.

461
00:45:27,097 --> 00:45:28,084
Speaker 2: So you have a clue.

462
00:45:28,085 --> 00:45:32,022
Lee: We have a clue and we used a robot to do it.

463
00:45:32,034 --> 00:45:36,050
I realized the question you're asking, because "What? You use sand. I'm bored of sand.

464
00:45:36,051 --> 00:45:45,046
I'm bored of salt. What are you doing? Hydrogen, carbon, ammonia, some flame, amino acids.

465
00:45:45,047 --> 00:45:52,070
Really simple building blocks. Those building blocks we then put into a robot to basically shake in a different way-

466
00:45:52,071 --> 00:45:56,045
Speaker 2: What's the difference between you and this year, 50-year experiment?

467
00:45:56,046 --> 00:46:05,026
Lee: Very important thing is that we then take the material from the Miller-Urey experiment,.

468
00:46:05,027 --> 00:46:14,044
which was just in a vessel and we then use an algorithm to order the..

469
00:46:15,001 --> 00:46:21,550
To simulate lots of different environments, because in a bell jar there was no sand, there was no earth's crust,.

470
00:46:21,551 --> 00:46:28,067
it was just.. It was sanitized. It was dead. It wasn't complicated enough. The earth was quite complicated.

471
00:46:28,068 --> 00:46:34,045
There were minerals, there's the surface, there was some atmosphere..

472
00:46:34,046 --> 00:46:38,002
What we did was we put everything into different building blocks.. Sorry, I'll start again.

473
00:46:38,058 --> 00:46:42,072
We put everything into different vessels and we treated it a different way.

474
00:46:42,073 --> 00:46:46,045
We did lots of random experiments and we looked for organization.

475
00:46:46,096 --> 00:46:52,008
What we did was we made a massively parallel Miller-Urey combination.

476
00:46:52,009 --> 00:46:59,044
We took the building blocks in the Miller-Urey and we divided it into literally 1,000 different pots.

477
00:47:00,047 --> 00:47:04,036
This is like how do you make a cake from random recipe, random ingredients?

478
00:47:04,066 --> 00:47:08,036
Well, you could randomly throw them together and just do one oven and you'd make nothing.

479
00:47:08,072 --> 00:47:14,047
Or you could get somewhere where you make a dough and you say, "Okay, I'll put it into 1,000 cake pots

480
00:47:16,007 --> 00:47:22,028
and put them in the over and see, which rise and select the ones, which rise and look nice." That's what we did.

481
00:47:22,029 --> 00:47:26,541
Speaker 2: Looks like, sounds like enigma machine...

482
00:47:26,542 --> 00:47:30,039
Lee: Yeah. It's exactly an enigma.. You are.. This is really good.

483
00:47:30,077 --> 00:47:35,071
Here's the thing, the enigma machine was a code breaking machine

484
00:47:35,072 --> 00:47:39,057
and I look like the origin of life is an enigma machine.

485
00:47:39,058 --> 00:47:44,002
The code, the code that came from the enemy was in the environment.

486
00:47:44,003 --> 00:47:50,046
Everyone could see it, but the sequence, the DNA if you'd like, was not known.

487
00:47:51,001 --> 00:48:00,004
We had to find that random code by guessing or to plug it in. If we plug it in we know the solution instantly.

488
00:48:00,005 --> 00:48:04,032
Or if we guess we have to take many, many goes. That's exactly it.

489
00:48:04,039 --> 00:48:11,053
You could view the origin of life like an enigma machine and we just do not know the cipher.

490
00:48:12,026 --> 00:48:15,036
WE don't know the key, sorry, to type in.

491
00:48:15,037 --> 00:48:21,045
Actually, I said this to a complexity theorist who's interested in decryption and encryption and he said, "Yeah,

492
00:48:21,046 --> 00:48:27,025
it's right." In fact, if we know all the program on earth by knowing the life form

493
00:48:27,026 --> 00:48:33,056
or knowing how we can work backwards and work out the keys and it's a bit like how you do encryption today.

494
00:48:34,021 --> 00:48:35,078
You could view it like that.

495
00:48:36,082 --> 00:48:46,033
Life suddenly, even though I'm a chemist, life suddenly takes on a meaning that is not based on chemistry..

496
00:48:46,034 --> 00:48:49,053
It's in information. What about..

497
00:48:49,072 --> 00:48:55,046
What is now the magic information I can give you to go away and build a whole new society.

498
00:48:55,047 --> 00:49:02,006
I've sent you to Mars, which one book would you take to make oxygen, water. Have you seen The Martian?

499
00:49:02,007 --> 00:49:04,041
Maybe we shouldn't talk about films in this.

500
00:49:04,042 --> 00:49:07,004
Speaker 2: No. No I haven't seen it, but I'm certainly

501
00:49:07,005 --> 00:49:09,023
Lee: Here's an interesting thing.

502
00:49:09,055 --> 00:49:20,014
In the end, the way human beings escape planet earth, is they will send out robots that will go to other planets

503
00:49:20,073 --> 00:49:21,086
and they will look for resource

504
00:49:21,087 --> 00:49:28,007
and they will turn that resource into a living algorithm to make more of itself to make a living machines.

505
00:49:29,077 --> 00:49:33,012
That's what we'll do. I guess.

506
00:49:33,013 --> 00:49:39,007
Speaker 2: That makes you the new, I forgot his name, the man who cracks the enigma code.

507
00:49:39,008 --> 00:49:41,045
Lee: Turing?

508
00:49:41,046 --> 00:49:42,008
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.

509
00:49:42,009 --> 00:49:52,080
Lee: Well, I mean, a lot of the work we're doing is inspired by Turing..

510
00:49:52,081 --> 00:49:57,007
Turing, given what just happened today, I'm not sure I want to talk..

511
00:49:57,008 --> 00:50:00,072
But if Turing, if Boltzmann both committed suicide.

512
00:50:00,073 --> 00:50:04,072
Boltzmann committed suicide because no one understood what he was talking about

513
00:50:04,073 --> 00:50:08,073
and was really shunned by the environment, shunned by the society.

514
00:50:08,074 --> 00:50:15,068
Turing committed suicide for reasons that are complicated. He was homosexual. He was victimized. He was bullied..

515
00:50:15,069 --> 00:50:18,006
He was pushed out. He had.. Anyway.

516
00:50:18,007 --> 00:50:25,071
Turing really inspired, both Turing and Boltzmann inspire me, not because they committed suicide,

517
00:50:25,072 --> 00:50:34,017
but because they really had very interesting handles on a very complex problem. Boltzmann talked about disorder.

518
00:50:34,019 --> 00:50:40,001
He knew about randomness and he worked out this thing, this measure of randomness called entropy.

519
00:50:40,002 --> 00:50:46,081
Basically, my kids, when they go into their bedroom they go and if they're entropy is high, i.e.

520
00:50:46,082 --> 00:50:52,015
If it's very random, they've worked hard and made it random. It's like what happens when heat goes out.

521
00:50:52,048 --> 00:50:55,081
If I go in and I order everything, I decrease the entropy.

522
00:50:56,028 --> 00:51:01,015
So I then, the nice thing while I decrease the entropy, I give it chance to be disordered again.

523
00:51:01,016 --> 00:51:06,098
Turing understood this also, but in a different way. He came up with an idea called morphogenesis.

524
00:51:07,043 --> 00:51:15,018
When I go running now, when I'm thinking fr years, for me, what has inspired me, what drives me and, I think that,

525
00:51:15,056 --> 00:51:20,052
because of course everyone says to me sometimes when they're making fun, I don't have any original ideas.

526
00:51:20,053 --> 00:51:25,054
I'm desperate to have an original ideas. Maybe I haven't yet. It's just the synthesis of other people's ideas..

527
00:51:25,055 --> 00:51:31,032
For me, I want to come up with chemistry that undergoes morphogenesis. If I can..

528
00:51:31,048 --> 00:51:40,036
Morphogenesis is like an object that can chance shape and change function, but still be itself.

529
00:51:40,085 --> 00:51:46,044
I guess, what I would say to maybe the viewer, is like, what defines yourself?

530
00:51:47,022 --> 00:51:51,072
You wouldn't go out and look at a rock and say, "Oh, that's a self," but you would go out and look at a deer

531
00:51:51,073 --> 00:51:55,053
or a goat or a child or an animal and say, "Oh, that's a self.

532
00:51:55,054 --> 00:52:02,093
It controls." A living thing is a thing, which can then actually observe itself and walk and talk and move.

533
00:52:02,094 --> 00:52:08,033
IT's not only that, because bacteria can't walk and talk and move in the same way.

534
00:52:08,034 --> 00:52:10,085
They certainly move, but it's more crude.

535
00:52:12,012 --> 00:52:17,094
There is something interesting about what Turing thought about decryption, decryption and computers and robots

536
00:52:17,095 --> 00:52:18,072
and so on.

537
00:52:19,009 --> 00:52:25,067
In the end, I'm pretty sure that human beings will be able to make a robot that will be able to make itself,

538
00:52:27,047 --> 00:52:35,091
but I'm anxious that we don't forget the origin of life, because one day, maybe-

539
00:52:35,092 --> 00:52:36,004
Speaker 2: in this robot.

540
00:52:36,005 --> 00:52:41,083
Lee: Well, maybe. Here's a story. Let's imagine that human beings are long gone and there are only robots.

541
00:52:42,032 --> 00:52:47,005
The robots make themselves and the robots go to another planet and there's a robot society

542
00:52:47,041 --> 00:52:58,041
and there's a super nova that erases the memory. The robots forget where they come from.

543
00:52:58,042 --> 00:53:01,084
"Where do we come from?" So they start the origin of robot life.

544
00:53:01,085 --> 00:53:05,052
They're grinding silicon chips up in beakers like, "Where did the chip come from?

545
00:53:05,053 --> 00:53:14,097
It's not self assembling." And they forget that they're a complex machine made by a more simple machine made by a more

546
00:53:15,014 --> 00:53:16,052
simple machine.

547
00:53:17,054 --> 00:53:21,033
If I can tell you anything today, which I think for me I can't really justify,

548
00:53:21,034 --> 00:53:31,092
but my feeling is life started with a minimal machine that can make a slightly more complicated machine that can make a

549
00:53:31,093 --> 00:53:36,055
slightly more complicated machine and so, yes, it's turtles all the way down,

550
00:53:36,056 --> 00:53:41,062
but they're simpler until the turtle right at the bottom is just sand and water.

551
00:53:41,063 --> 00:53:48,046
At the end we have, I don't know, pornography.

552
00:53:48,047 --> 00:53:53,015
Well, because, you know, this is like I say one of my friends who's looking at robot culture.

553
00:53:53,016 --> 00:53:59,072
That's the ultimate, the ultimate form of a robot culture will be robot pornography that they all share.

554
00:53:59,073 --> 00:54:04,068
But maybe, you don't want to put this in the main movie, I don't know, the main documentary.

555
00:54:04,093 --> 00:54:11,016
I think your comment about Turing is very perceptive. I'm certainly inspired by him.

556
00:54:11,017 --> 00:54:14,009
I'm certainly inspired by a lot of people that looked at informatics.

557
00:54:14,091 --> 00:54:21,083
I think I'm one of the first synthetic chemists to be sufficiently inspired by information and say,.

558
00:54:21,084 --> 00:54:23,088
"How can I do minimum..

559
00:54:24,026 --> 00:54:30,081
How can I come up with the minimum information, but get the maximum chemistry?" One of the things we're doing

560
00:54:30,082 --> 00:54:38,023
and where we're going and how I kind of got to this is we're trying to discover new drugs in my lab and make new drugs.

561
00:54:38,041 --> 00:54:46,049
If the viewer's completely confused about molecules and drugs and life, I'll give you one interesting thing..

562
00:54:46,050 --> 00:54:54,001
I don't know if you know about the antibiotic problem.. Can beat the drug.

563
00:54:54,003 --> 00:54:56,004
They can out-evolve using natural selection.

564
00:54:56,005 --> 00:55:00,042
The drug doesn't use natural selection, so it relies on the human being to make a new drug.

565
00:55:00,058 --> 00:55:01,032
IN my lab,

566
00:55:01,075 --> 00:55:08,003
one of the reasons we want to make an artificial life form is if we can make drugs that are in competition with the

567
00:55:08,004 --> 00:55:14,059
bacteria and we say, "Right. Here's a new bacteria. Here's a new drug. Dead. Oh, no.

568
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:19,047
I evolve." All we do now is there's no such thing as antibiotic.

569
00:55:19,048 --> 00:55:28,035
There's only a generation of new antibiotics that can be made under pressure by the bacteria.

570
00:55:28,036 --> 00:55:34,016
Suddenly we change the entire concept of an obsolescent drug.

571
00:55:34,074 --> 00:55:39,060
No antibiotics become obsolete because we have an evolutionary machine.

572
00:55:39,061 --> 00:55:44,038
At the very worst, what we have made in my lab, it's not very good so don't get excited,

573
00:55:44,039 --> 00:55:45,094
we haven't cured the antibiotic problem,

574
00:55:45,095 --> 00:55:51,098
but we have made an evolution machine that starts to show us how we can make some drugs evolve

575
00:55:53,009 --> 00:55:58,061
and beat some antibiotics. When they out evolve the drugs we do it again and keep going.

576
00:55:58,081 --> 00:56:05,072
Our dream is to make a machine that can evolve an endless, infinite pipeline of drugs.

577
00:56:06,084 --> 00:56:13,082
When we understand that process, maybe, we can understand how the life got started,

578
00:56:14,008 --> 00:56:19,071
because it's an information-based argument. I'm going to express myself, "Isn't it wonderful the universe exists.

579
00:56:19,072 --> 00:56:25,000
Look at the glorious things that happened." One of the reasons why I'm doing what I'm doing is because I'm paid to ask

580
00:56:25,001 --> 00:56:25,010
why.

581
00:56:25,011 --> 00:56:27,005
Speaker 2: as well. We are also get paid to ask

582
00:56:27,006 --> 00:56:31,063
Lee: Isn't that a wonderful privilege?

583
00:56:31,064 --> 00:56:45,017
That is one of the reasons why I try and engage to tell people and why I try not to be arrogant about it,.

584
00:56:45,018 --> 00:56:52,036
because I don't feel a sense of arrogance. I feel.. Where I come from is a sense of profound dumbness.

585
00:56:52,037 --> 00:57:05,014
A profound insecurity about understanding myself and why I'm here, but I like to be creative and so, you know,

586
00:57:05,015 --> 00:57:06,055
it's a privilege to do it.

587
00:57:06,068 --> 00:57:15,017
If I can come up with, like we talked about the antibiotics earlier, a societal excuse, not to validate it,

588
00:57:15,018 --> 00:57:20,033
but if I can turn the idea into something really cool that could change humanity or be useful,

589
00:57:20,034 --> 00:57:27,053
then I think that's really excellent. One of the things, that's one I want, is obviously I want to solve the problem.

590
00:57:27,054 --> 00:57:34,057
I want to make sure I'm useful and I want to understand more about the process. It's all kind of complicated.

591
00:57:34,058 --> 00:57:37,043
It's kind of woven together.

592
00:57:37,044 --> 00:57:47,021
Speaker 2: Is it the part I want to do good and I want to be clever and I want to be important? What is it?

593
00:57:47,022 --> 00:57:47,052
What kind of mix is it?

594
00:57:47,053 --> 00:57:59,084
Lee: No. When I was at school and the teachers told me I was never going to really make it beyond anything.

595
00:57:59,085 --> 00:58:06,094
They said, "You're just not going to make it. You're not smart." They used to "You're pretending to be smart.

596
00:58:06,095 --> 00:58:10,046
Stop pretending to be smart." I was like, "Well, what do you mean?" They said, "Well,

597
00:58:10,047 --> 00:58:15,006
you're pretending to read." I'm like, "Okay." "You're pretending to do maths that we don't understand".

598
00:58:15,007 --> 00:58:16,057
or "You're pretending"..

599
00:58:16,079 --> 00:58:23,046
"I got the book out of the library." They were like, "Stop trying to fool us." I was like,

600
00:58:24,007 --> 00:58:29,060
"Surely it would be more worth it to fool you than just to do it, so if I was successfully fooling you,

601
00:58:29,061 --> 00:58:33,071
wouldn't that mean I'm even smarter than just being able to do it?" They were like,

602
00:58:33,072 --> 00:58:42,005
"just go away." I think that's one of the reasons why I can deal with imposter syndrome.

603
00:58:42,006 --> 00:58:47,097
A lot of people in science or anything, athletes, everybody, in fact, all of us. WE're all imposters to some degree.

604
00:58:48,044 --> 00:58:54,009
I mean, do we feel good enough? NO, but that's why we try and do better.

605
00:58:54,038 --> 00:59:01,024
I've become comfortable about people telling me I'm not going to succeed. That doesn't mean I shouldn't try.

606
00:59:01,025 --> 00:59:06,071
That's a very nice thing. No one thinks I'm going to succeed to make a new life form in my laboratory.

607
00:59:06,072 --> 00:59:13,046
I don't think you'll find anyone that believes I'm going to succeed, but probably I will.

608
00:59:14,041 --> 00:59:17,055
For the simple reason, not for the complicated one.

609
00:59:18,043 --> 00:59:22,061
The simple reason is because it's obviously and easy and not that complicated and going on already.

610
00:59:23,064 --> 00:59:30,014
Not for this I'm a magician who knows something they don't and I'm so incredibly smart and I'm this hidden genius.

611
00:59:30,015 --> 00:59:31,047
Clearly I'm not.

612
00:59:31,048 --> 00:59:37,097
Speaker 2: But you still think you will create life in what time?

613
00:59:37,098 --> 00:59:43,016
Lee: I made a mistake a few years ago when I gave a talk, Ted, you know, when you're trying to give these Ted talks,

614
00:59:43,017 --> 00:59:50,051
these sound bite talks. They are privileged to give and great, but you feel like you want to time bound it.

615
00:59:50,052 --> 00:59:58,036
I gave a time it would take once we knew what we were doing. I reckon we could do it quickly. A few years.

616
00:59:58,037 --> 01:00:06,072
Then that kind of got misunderstood as, "Oh, you'll do it in two or three or four years." I don't know.

617
01:00:06,073 --> 01:00:13,044
Will we make progress in one, two, three, four, five, 10 years? I would hope so. Can I put a limit on it?

618
01:00:13,045 --> 01:00:16,085
No, because I don't want to raise expectations,

619
01:00:17,016 --> 01:00:23,030
but I think right now it would be nice within the next 10 years to know how hard the problem was.

620
01:00:23,031 --> 01:00:30,061
Let's say, if I can't do it in a decade or two or if I can't convince other people to help me,

621
01:00:30,094 --> 01:00:37,004
because I think it's beyond me. I'm not capable of solving this problem alone. That's what I've realized.

622
01:00:37,005 --> 01:00:45,049
But maybe I'm capable of building a cooperative network to make a, basically, a large hydrion collider of chemistry

623
01:00:45,061 --> 01:00:53,094
and make a chemical internet so that all chemists can explain their chemistry to each other and work together.

624
01:00:54,003 --> 01:01:01,021
If I can't do it, but they can't do it, so suddenly I then crowd source chemistry through all my other labs.

625
01:01:01,025 --> 01:01:06,012
My competitors become cooperative and maybe that's a way to look at it.

626
01:01:06,047 --> 01:01:10,008
To turn it into a big cooperative endeavor and we realize it's beyond one of us.

627
01:01:10,009 --> 01:01:13,005
Speaker 2: I'm sure I'm right, but instinct says I'm right.

628
01:01:13,006 --> 01:01:13,800
Lee: Yeah.

629
01:01:14,000 --> 01:01:14,053
Speaker 2: Then you have

630
01:01:14,054 --> 01:01:22,015
Lee: Look, I'm right. Okay. If you want me to level with you, I can't tell you why I'm right. I'm right.

631
01:01:24,023 --> 01:01:29,011
My job is, quite rightly, as a skeptic, should go "No, Lee.

632
01:01:29,022 --> 01:01:38,052
Actually, you're not right until you demonstrate the theory, the experiment and the critique and you carry on

633
01:01:38,053 --> 01:01:44,072
and you let everyone else judge. And your peers will judge if you're right..

634
01:01:44,073 --> 01:01:49,087
You won't." In a way, the nice thing for me is I like.. I say, "I don't have to be right. I don't have to be wrong.

635
01:01:49,088 --> 01:01:53,018
I just have to do it." I say, "Here's my assumption.

636
01:01:53,063 --> 01:01:57,073
Here are my experiments," because you know what, when people believe they're right

637
01:01:57,074 --> 01:02:05,008
and they just think everyone else is "Oh, how dare you give me a criticism. I'm right.

638
01:02:05,009 --> 01:02:10,088
You're just too stupid to understand" or "You don't understand this" or "You don't know that." There's something wrong.

639
01:02:10,089 --> 01:02:20,006
I see this all the time. My job is to say, "Honestly, as much as possible, here are my starting points.

640
01:02:20,014 --> 01:02:24,023
Here are my rules for my experiment. Now I throw my die.

641
01:02:24,024 --> 01:02:29,069
Look how the experiment unfolds and all I want you to do is go, 'Wow,

642
01:02:29,087 --> 01:02:35,068
that's interesting.'" If I can get you to do that, it doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong, I will take a holiday or...

643
01:02:36,055 --> 01:02:37,074
Glory in discovery.

644
01:02:37,075 --> 01:02:40,093
All I want to do more than anything else, the reason I'm doing this,

645
01:02:40,094 --> 01:02:47,091
the reason I think I'm right is I want to discover the process or the phenomena.

646
01:02:47,092 --> 01:02:53,068
or the thing that it is that turns dead chemistry to living chemistry. That, for me..

647
01:02:54,006 --> 01:03:03,035
I suppose I know I'm going to discover something is probably more what I can say with certainty rather than I know I'm

648
01:03:03,036 --> 01:03:06,005
right. That's why, I guess, what I'm trying to say in the end, I don't know if I'm going to be right.

649
01:03:06,006 --> 01:03:11,094
Maybe I will never be proven right or wrong in my lifetime, because we won't have the tools or it's a near miss,

650
01:03:11,095 --> 01:03:18,026
but I lack the intellect, maybe I'm not smart enough. Maybe the computers are not fast enough.

651
01:03:18,049 --> 01:03:21,073
The time is not long enough.	But if I can start with sand

652
01:03:23,076 --> 01:03:31,040
and turn it into an object that starts to do something by itself when I feed a fuel and you go, "Wow.

653
01:03:31,041 --> 01:03:40,005
Let's look at that again." And you see that spark of life in that previously dead object, that's really cool.

654
01:03:40,006 --> 01:03:48,052
What I think I might have been able to do is when they spark and lives are set up, those sparks of life,

655
01:03:48,053 --> 01:03:53,092
those living things, can do stuff that dead things can't do.

656
01:03:53,093 --> 01:04:00,025
They make artifacts, a bit like a caveman, or me,

657
01:04:00,026 --> 01:04:07,008
would make a complex object that if you found in your backyard 1,000 years later you'd go, "Well, naturally occurring

658
01:04:07,009 --> 01:04:18,024
or someone made that." I think I have come up with a thing, an algorithm as I would call it, a measure of made upness.

659
01:04:19,004 --> 01:04:29,045
If I showed you a thing, an object, you could tell me using my rules whether a living system, a life form, made it

660
01:04:29,046 --> 01:04:30,021
or not.

661
01:04:30,022 --> 01:04:35,062
That is what I'm most excited about right now, because that seems to be working in my head

662
01:04:35,063 --> 01:04:40,007
and I'm challenging it to all the skeptics I can find and they are trying to demolish right now

663
01:04:40,008 --> 01:04:51,043
and I think they will get somewhere, but there's something in it. You're a year too early or you're right on time.

664
01:04:51,073 --> 01:05:00,544
You can cut that out depending on whether it works or not in a year's time. I think in a year's time we will know..

665
01:05:00,545 --> 01:05:03,022
If you bring me an object and if you go..

666
01:05:03,024 --> 01:05:09,031
If I got to Mars, here's my phone and you can see my phone's got a screen, it's my boys

667
01:05:09,032 --> 01:05:17,080
when they were young at the dentist, and I find this on Mars. What do you conclude? If you go to Mars.

668
01:05:17,081 --> 01:05:23,043
You're the first person on Mars and you find one of these phones, what do you conclude?

669
01:05:23,044 --> 01:05:27,091
Speaker 2: That you are not the first one.

670
01:05:27,092 --> 01:05:37,007
Lee: It's either a hoax, I'm not the first one or a life form made a phone. It's either one or the other.

671
01:05:37,008 --> 01:05:44,012
Now, let's say we go to Mars and we find an object that is so complicated. It doesn't exist on earth...

672
01:05:44,013 --> 01:05:52,075
We've never seen it before. It's not evidence of Apple going galactic or solar.. What's a solar.. Systemic.. Solar...

673
01:05:52,076 --> 01:05:55,001
Apple Solar. You heard it here.

674
01:05:55,002 --> 01:05:58,085
Speaker 2: I won't take credit for that one.

675
01:05:58,086 --> 01:06:05,098
Lee: No. I just want money from Apple. I want them to pay me to go solar. Maybe Elon Mus can do that..

676
01:06:05,099 --> 01:06:09,086
If you can find a complicated enough.. These are called bio signatures..

677
01:06:09,087 --> 01:06:14,059
What I've done is, I think I've started to use.. I've written a new complexity theory.

678
01:06:14,092 --> 01:06:20,032
Me, which I'm very proud of as someone in school who was never any good at maths apparently.

679
01:06:20,033 --> 01:06:22,052
Well, I'm obviously not bad.

680
01:06:22,053 --> 01:06:30,014
I've written a new complexity theory with my research team and it seems to give us bio signatures to tell us

681
01:06:30,015 --> 01:06:33,025
when something is as complicated or improbable as a phone.

682
01:06:34,012 --> 01:06:37,089
You bring me a molecule in your hand,

683
01:06:40,002 --> 01:06:46,098
I can tell you by doing a number of simple things to that molecule if it was made by a life form or not.

684
01:06:47,051 --> 01:06:57,006
How cool is that? Equally, if you say this house. Was this house made by a life form or not? Yes. Your car. Your phone..

685
01:06:57,007 --> 01:07:03,074
Now I've now got a hierarchy of complexity and now in the end, I can define complexity by...

686
01:07:03,075 --> 01:07:09,091
Life by complexity, the necessary complexity. It's a bit like life form..

687
01:07:10,049 --> 01:07:15,083
Life is those things that can throw six die, six sixes in a row every time.

688
01:07:15,084 --> 01:07:17,012
Speaker 2: Yeah. You explained that briefly.

689
01:07:17,013 --> 01:07:19,579
Lee: Yeah..

690
01:07:19,580 --> 01:07:22,084
Speaker 2: I was just wondering. Is it possible for you..

691
01:07:22,095 --> 01:07:34,087
You discovered this mathematics or this explanation for how to recognize intelligence in a life form.

692
01:07:34,088 --> 01:07:38,094
Lee: Not intelligence. Evidence of a life form.

693
01:07:38,095 --> 01:07:39,019
Speaker 2: Complexity.

694
01:07:39,020 --> 01:07:41,028
Lee: Not intelligence. Here's the way I did it.

695
01:07:41,029 --> 01:07:41,069
Speaker 2: But, sorry.

696
01:07:41,070 --> 01:07:42,004
Lee: Okay.

697
01:07:42,005 --> 01:07:51,005
Speaker 2: Is it like the code or how is it-.

698
01:07:51,006 --> 01:07:57,052
Lee: It's more.. It's even more brilliant than that. Oh no, I shouldn't say that. It's even more simple that.

699
01:07:57,053 --> 01:08:02,040
I don't want to sound narcissistic on camera. It's even more simple than a code, because a code requires-

700
01:08:02,041 --> 01:08:03,092
Speaker 2: What is it? How is it?

701
01:08:03,093 --> 01:08:03,844
Lee: Molecules.

702
01:08:04,044 --> 01:08:04,092
Speaker 2: Molecules.

703
01:08:04,093 --> 01:08:05,062
Lee: It's molecules.

704
01:08:05,063 --> 01:08:11,057
Speaker 2: what is the name of the molecule?

705
01:08:11,058 --> 01:08:14,028
Lee: Any molecule. If you bring a molecule to me..

706
01:08:14,043 --> 01:08:17,007
I don't want to give too much away, because it's not published yet, but it should be-

707
01:08:17,008 --> 01:08:18,026
Speaker 2: Oh, that's why.

708
01:08:18,027 --> 01:08:19,041
Lee: It should be published-

709
01:08:19,042 --> 01:08:26,068
Speaker 2: We understand. Is it something, because I'm looking for something that when you are drawing on your window-

710
01:08:26,069 --> 01:08:36,003
Lee: There is a threshold. Here is the thing. When you add sand together, you get certain patterns.

711
01:08:36,004 --> 01:08:37,055
You get those patterns to be simple.

712
01:08:37,056 --> 01:08:45,053
It's basically how many grains of sand do I have add together to get a pattern that is not randomly possible.

713
01:08:46,032 --> 01:08:51,013
That is the beginning of the code in molecules. If you imagine sand grains are atoms.

714
01:08:51,014 --> 01:08:53,077
When you throw them together they join.

715
01:08:53,078 --> 01:09:01,010
There'll be a certain pattern of atoms that, when joined together, if you can find that in the environment,

716
01:09:01,011 --> 01:09:12,025
that can not spontaneously form, because it's just too improbable. That is it all. I think.

717
01:09:12,093 --> 01:09:19,062
I'm super excited, because now I don't need to make life, just make life.

718
01:09:19,088 --> 01:09:27,002
I need to make the simplest machine that can make the most complicated molecule. Now I'm like, "Ah.

719
01:09:27,003 --> 01:09:31,050
I don't have to fly for the sake of it," because flying, no one flew for the sake of it.

720
01:09:31,051 --> 01:09:36,078
They flew because they wanted to beat gravity and they wanted to get from London to New York.

721
01:09:37,007 --> 01:09:42,097
Now I have a reason for doing it. That's really important to have a reason for doing it.

722
01:09:43,051 --> 01:09:51,098
I can improve the complexity of the molecule and more importantly than that, more important, is I can look on earth

723
01:09:53,008 --> 01:09:54,031
or Mars or Europa

724
01:09:54,032 --> 01:10:04,005
and I can see if I can find molecules on these planets that are greater than the threshold of naturally occurring

725
01:10:04,006 --> 01:10:12,098
and to see if there is Martians or Europeans, because what I could argue is that life on earth is too sophisticated,

726
01:10:12,099 --> 01:10:24,061
so it's become globalization. Let me tell you the ultimate globalization in life on earth, DNA. Everyone has it.

727
01:10:24,062 --> 01:10:29,004
Aren't we boring? We all have Mcdonalds. It's all got Mcdonalds. Look at the golden arches.

728
01:10:29,005 --> 01:10:36,073
You all have to have a thing called a ribosome. Ribosome is a machine that turns your DNA information into proteins.

729
01:10:39,029 --> 01:10:44,001
How boring is that? Everybody is being globalized on earth. We all use the same thing.

730
01:10:44,011 --> 01:10:48,041
Wouldn't it be great if, on earth, we found other life forms that didn't use DNA?

731
01:10:48,042 --> 01:10:57,053
Wouldn't it be great if on Europa and on Mars we found other life forms that didn't use DNA?

732
01:10:57,054 --> 01:10:58,096
That they were still alive.

733
01:10:59,044 --> 01:11:04,008
They were above this threshold and the only way we could recognize them is they were making really complex molecules.

734
01:11:04,009 --> 01:11:05,016
You're talking about code.

735
01:11:05,058 --> 01:11:12,043
The reason I got excited is, the reason why some of my friends in complexity science are excited is, normally

736
01:11:12,044 --> 01:11:19,000
when you take any code or you would take a picture, you have to assign a code to it. It's abstract letters.

737
01:11:19,001 --> 01:11:26,075
For me, the code is written in the periodic table. The code is solved by the process of quantum mechanics.

738
01:11:26,076 --> 01:11:30,014
The code is embedded in the laws of the universe.

739
01:11:30,072 --> 01:11:42,096
The identity, carbon or nitrogen or oxygen or sulfur, they are implicit. The code is already there. I don't add it on.

740
01:11:42,097 --> 01:11:53,038
It means that the molecule that I think is complicated on earth next to the sun is equally valid in Alpha Centauri,

741
01:11:53,039 --> 01:12:00,006
the planet next to that. It's a universal code. It's a code of complex molecules.

742
01:12:00,007 --> 01:12:05,001
If I send a space probe to somewhere else in the universe and it finds a complex molecule

743
01:12:05,002 --> 01:12:14,006
and it's different to what we know on earth, then we can assume that it formed by chance of which there is no chance,

744
01:12:14,007 --> 01:12:19,013
I've already explained. Take that as an assumption, even if you don't believe me, just say, "Okay.

745
01:12:19,014 --> 01:12:23,056
I will assume that Lee's assumption is correct." If this molecule couldn't form by chance

746
01:12:24,068 --> 01:12:33,007
and it didn't come from earth, another life form made it. That's it. That's what we're looking for..

747
01:12:33,008 --> 01:12:44,085
Speaker 2: It sounds really exciting. Suppose you find it.. Of course, when you succeed-

748
01:12:44,086 --> 01:12:46,096
Lee: Thanks..

749
01:12:46,097 --> 01:12:55,008
Speaker 2:. What will that mean to us? Humanity?

750
01:12:55,009 --> 01:13:02,007
Lee: For me, it will be, if we succeed, when we succeed, when we succeed,

751
01:13:02,008 --> 01:13:10,002
it will tell us that the universe has the propensity, the ability, to live and that we are not a fluke.

752
01:13:10,003 --> 01:13:18,052
To that we can breathe a huge sigh of relief to say, "You know what? Our pathetic, little lives have some meaning.

753
01:13:19,024 --> 01:13:24,018
We are here." Now, what meaning? We impose the meaning on ourselves. The universe just is, right?

754
01:13:24,019 --> 01:13:25,048
I'm not looking for deep meaning anywhere.

755
01:13:25,049 --> 01:13:35,000
IT just is, but then we can shift our entire problem to saying, "Okay, life is easy. What about complex life?

756
01:13:35,022 --> 01:13:43,076
How easy is that?" Let's just say someone long after I die manages to do that and say, "Okay. What about intelligence?

757
01:13:43,077 --> 01:13:54,077
How do we make that? And what does that mean?" That is mind blowing. There are so many steps. I'm a real practical guy..

758
01:13:54,078 --> 01:14:00,088
I'm a chemist. I love computers. The reason I got.. My son is nine years old. My oldest son.

759
01:14:00,089 --> 01:14:07,046
Last Saturday I did something that my father did for me when I was nine years old. He bought me a computer..

760
01:14:07,047 --> 01:14:12,037
I took my son and I bought him the Raspberry Pi, which is the worlds..

761
01:14:12,065 --> 01:14:19,002
The best selling British computer ever and I have to be true to British computer science, because it's legend...

762
01:14:19,003 --> 01:14:24,055
I had a I bought him this Raspberry Pi. We had a nice case for the keyboard, so he..

763
01:14:24,073 --> 01:14:28,008
He's programming basic. He's addicted. It's hilarious.

764
01:14:28,055 --> 01:14:32,082
One of the things I loved about when I grew up, when I was nine, 10, 11 years old,

765
01:14:32,083 --> 01:14:37,070
the teachers were saying I was stupid, but I was programming and I was using assembly

766
01:14:37,071 --> 01:14:42,061
and trying to get as many programs into one K. I was fascinated.

767
01:14:42,062 --> 01:14:49,047
I only had one kilobyte, how much mayhem could I cause with one kilobyte? For me, it was like compression.

768
01:14:49,048 --> 01:14:53,002
How could I compress as much potential mayhem in on K?

769
01:14:53,003 --> 01:15:01,055
That's why I became obsessed with complexabilty, that's a new word, compression and complexity.

770
01:15:01,056 --> 01:15:05,056
How much mayhem could I compact into a small box?

771
01:15:05,057 --> 01:15:23,081
Speaker 2: How do you prevent yourself from going crazy, because all these things and thoughts and ideas

772
01:15:23,082 --> 01:15:27,010
and instincts together, like the giant chemical soup-

773
01:15:27,011 --> 01:15:29,046
Lee: Well, I mean-

774
01:15:29,047 --> 01:15:36,021
Speaker 2: What do you do besides thinking about this? Just to balance your-

775
01:15:36,022 --> 01:15:41,060
Lee: I've always been balanced from the beginning..

776
01:15:41,061 --> 01:15:45,546
I'm always a little bit on the weird side, in terms of I'm a little bit extrovert, but my family, it may sound...

777
01:15:45,662 --> 01:15:47,029
My family came before me..

778
01:15:47,046 --> 01:15:55,065
Okay, I talked about when I was a child, but my progress into academia, I was married before I was a professor..

779
01:15:55,066 --> 01:16:02,002
I was married before I.. My wife is one of the smartest people I know and she's so dismissive.

780
01:16:02,003 --> 01:16:04,001
She's like, "Yeah, whatever.

781
01:16:04,002 --> 01:16:10,002
Now go do the washing up" or "Yeah, you maybe smart," because she has a PhD in fundamental magnetism.

782
01:16:10,003 --> 01:16:15,011
It's kind of grounding in a way In magnetism. Quantum Magnetism.

783
01:16:15,064 --> 01:16:26,003
She was trying to understand how little magnets could order and undergo phase transitions in long distance..

784
01:16:26,004 --> 01:16:30,041
She, like me, had an interesting.. She was opposite in school.

785
01:16:30,042 --> 01:16:34,077
She was at a poor school, but the geniuses school, so everyone thought she walked on water.

786
01:16:35,012 --> 01:16:41,022
She was told she was a genius while I was told I was a non genius at school. I don't know.

787
01:16:41,045 --> 01:16:43,041
We met on a course, actually.

788
01:16:43,042 --> 01:16:44,012
Speaker 2: Crystallography?

789
01:16:44,013 --> 01:16:57,999
Lee: Course, which is like a science course. Understanding x-ray diffraction. Years and years ago. I don't know..

790
01:16:58,000 --> 01:16:58,049
I suppose.. I've never been-

791
01:16:57,876 --> 01:16:58,050
Speaker 2: Really chemistry..

792
01:16:58,076 --> 01:17:04,536
Lee: Yeah. Real chemistry. I guess, I mean, I don't know. There is something intrinsically grounded in my...

793
01:17:04,537 --> 01:17:10,045
I'm a prac.. It's practical. I think yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's the reason why it's grounded. It's all very practical.

794
01:17:10,046 --> 01:17:14,051
It's like a lot of people go crazy because it becomes more and more abstract and like, "Oh,

795
01:17:14,077 --> 01:17:20,073
you can't possibly understand how complicated it is in my head" and all this.

796
01:17:20,074 --> 01:17:21,008
Yeah, probably you can't and probably you can.

797
01:17:21,009 --> 01:17:30,004
At the end of the day, and this is why one of the things I'm doing with my research group at the moment,.

798
01:17:29,804 --> 01:17:29,804
because I'm really privileged. I have so many smart people and they're challenge..

799
01:17:30,004 --> 01:17:38,026
I probably can't use the word "retard" in America or some places. The stupid person in the group is me.

800
01:17:38,076 --> 01:17:44,012
If they can't explain to me what they've done, I can't write the paper with them.

801
01:17:44,013 --> 01:17:49,060
I can't raise the money with them, because I'm not just sitting in my office waiting for a paper and waiting for money.

802
01:17:49,061 --> 01:17:52,066
I want to do my science. I'm addicted to chemistry..

803
01:17:52,067 --> 01:17:55,008
Speaker 2: I mean, what do you do to..

804
01:17:55,039 --> 01:18:01,013
I understand how do you balance your own life with this big challenge and

805
01:18:01,014 --> 01:18:01,089
Lee: It's very practical.

806
01:18:01,090 --> 01:18:05,008
Speaker 2: Do you do sports or what do you do?

807
01:18:05,009 --> 01:18:11,024
Lee: A few weeks ago I remember being interviewed by someone who asked the same question.

808
01:18:11,063 --> 01:18:15,002
I used to have all these thing, "I do all this, that and the other." It's like now I don't do anything else.

809
01:18:15,003 --> 01:18:19,064
I sleep four hours a day. I work the rest. I spend some time with the family.

810
01:18:19,065 --> 01:18:25,064
It's not quite as severe as all that, but what I'm saying, let me finish one point, the first point is very practical,

811
01:18:25,065 --> 01:18:27,011
so the problems are very practical.

812
01:18:27,012 --> 01:18:32,005
You're having deep thoughts and then your glass breaks and there's water everywhere and there's crap everywhere

813
01:18:32,006 --> 01:18:40,062
and it's like you gotta clean it up. That's one thing. At home, well, I like to watch the television with my wife.

814
01:18:40,063 --> 01:18:45,042
We life fiction. I run every day. I've got two kids.

815
01:18:47,095 --> 01:18:52,067
I like to do stuff with them and I like them to challenge me and as much as I'm always busy,

816
01:18:52,068 --> 01:18:56,096
because I'm trying to raise money and writing papers they're like, "Look, dad. Come one." They're getting older.

817
01:18:56,097 --> 01:18:59,055
They're only going to be this age for a little while and so,

818
01:18:59,088 --> 01:19:04,072
I was fortunate enough to have children at a time in my life where everything could have gone off the rails,.

819
01:19:04,073 --> 01:19:09,093
but they bring you back. There's nothing like a kid vomiting on your shoulder or telling you..

820
01:19:10,026 --> 01:19:17,076
You come in with some brilliant ideas and the kid just goes, "No.

821
01:19:17,077 --> 01:19:20,007
Not interesting." It's quite funny, because they don't know.

822
01:19:21,001 --> 01:19:28,015
Okay, occasionally one of them says something odd, but they're smart and they're just really interesting

823
01:19:28,016 --> 01:19:37,006
and I'm interested in them. I have big hobbies. I love computers. I love technology. I love hacking around.

824
01:19:37,007 --> 01:19:38,005
Speaker 2:

825
01:19:38,006 --> 01:19:44,094
Lee: Well, yeah, I mean, but it is. I mean, you're trying to say that I paint or hand glide, I don't. I don't.

826
01:19:44,095 --> 01:19:45,095
I just-