0:01
Okay, welcome back everyone.
Well now, you know, we're at the edge of the most important question
that we can ask in astronomy and that is, the origins of life.
So we've taken our, we've gone all the way from
studying our own solar system to studying whole other solar systems.
To studying the theory of how solar systems form.
And since we believe that planets are the home of life,
we are now ready to take on the issue of life itself.
But to do that, we have think a little bit about the
chemical building blocks of life.
So let's just think a little bit about basic chemistry, or, you
know, the sort of the chemistry that we need for understanding life.
And of course, all matter is made out of different elements, and all the
elements were either came from the big
bang itself or were forged inside of stars.
in fact actually, it's only hydrogen and helium and a few
other light elements that actually came from right after the big bang.
Everything else carbon,
nitrogen, oxygen, etc. Were all fused inside the center of stars.
0:57
So there is a you know array of elements that exist in the, the Universe.
And there's all kinds of chemical combinations they can
make and when they do those are called molecules.
Life is composed of a specific subset of those.
We think of life being organic chemistry
and this seems to be chemistry where carbon
is involved.
but also things like oxygen and hydrogen are also involved.
But organic chemistry is a, there's, because
of carbon's the structure, its, its elemental
structure, it, there's just a wild array of interactions that are possible for it.
So in particular, you know, now you know, this would be,
studying life would be impossible if it wasn't for the fact that
life on earth has chosen a particular subset of molecular structure, what are
called amino acids and nucleic acids, to really act as its building blocks.
So you know, life on Earth is all based on
a series of of, you know, complex molecules called amino acids.
And basically.
Eh, all the proteins, which are the structure and the, of, of, of cells.
The structure of life,
hair you know, the sun, the things inside of cells that
move things around are all proteins. And they are all, every protein is built
out of a, you know, a, a collection, a relatively small collection of amino
acids. And so when we start thinking about how
life formed, we're going to need to be thinking about amino acids and
how those can combine into more complex molecules.
Adam FrankProfessor
