What did we learn at: Origins of Life Conference – ISSOL17

• written by Jotun Hein

Overall attending the conference was a very useful since I haven’t been to an Origins Conference for more than 5 years and since I have stopped teaching Origins, in general, I don’t read so much on the chemical nitty-gritty.

The was much interesting material at the conference and of course, I met some people from Oxford, that I had never seen before working on catalysis.
The first day [Monday] was mainly devoted to Exoplanets and Meteorites/Comets/Transport of Organic Matter.
The second day [Tuesday] was the physical condition on earth 4 Billion or so years ago.
The third 1/2 day [Wednesday] was dedicated to the first chemical steps towards life.
The last 2 days were on the early evolution of life and more theoretical models.

Origins of Life studies are clearly getting a lot more attention/funding now. Computational studies play a much larger role. There are much more serious attempts at synthesizing life de Novo. But I can’t say there is a single convincing scenario for planet Earth. Exoplanets clearly are very exciting, but there is no way to study the architecture of life so far away [barring SETI – that was unrepresented at ISSOL] so all one can hope for a couple of centuries is observation of convincing bio-signatures.

There seemed to have been a lot of organizational problems. I didn’t know where to go and sleep and ended up sitting all night in the airport (while paying for a room at UCSD). Another person I met had experienced something else. The conference dinner was not very different from the free dinner and there were no arrangements of where to go. Anybody going to conferences/workshops knows that many connections are made at the evening socializing.

I, William Kurdahl and possibly some from the Oxford Catalysis will give an informal orientation about the meeting Tuesday, August 29th 3 PM in the small lecture room in The Department of Statistics, Oxford.
William and I both chose 5 papers/presentations that we liked.

These are the slides in progress:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p5tmy3a1g8i2kd0/ISSOL.pptx?dl=0