015: Cole Mathis
This week, Cole Mathis, a computational and statistical physicist who is trying to figure out the origins of life, ventures into the Zone. His work includes an effort to find life elsewhere in the universe. We were curious to see what Cole would pick if he stopped seeking alien life, and instead sought out an artifact made by alien life. The timing could not have been better, given the recent publication of a paper on evaluating artifacts of potentially living systems in the universe, that he co-authored with Leroy Cronin, Sara Walker, Heather Graham and many others.
We spend much of our conversation unpacking, or "breaking down", what's at stake in this new proposed method for detecting life: Assembly Theory. We shift into an evaluation of the "artifact" in science, in art, and in fiction. And then we hear what he would risk his life to unearth from the dangers of an Alien Crash Site, and what impact it would have on human civilization.
Learn more about everything referenced in this episode by clicking the links below:
The paper discussed: "Identifying molecules as biosignatures with assembly theory and mass spectrometry"
"Scientists develop new molecular tool to detect alien life" - news article
"Chemists design alien life detector" - news article
The essay discussed: "Art as a Product of Nature, as a work of Art" by Paul K. Feyerabend ($$ paywall)
Dragon's Egg, by Robert Forward
Related:
Atlantis's first dispatch on the "Great Phosphine Freakout" of September 2020
Sara Walker and Lee Cronin on the "Meaning" of life, as part of 2020 conversation series called "Andromeda Strain and the Meaning of Life."