Astrobiological problems for physicists

Program:

*Thursday*  (8 January 2004)    -->  Chair: Axel Brandenburg

10.30-11.00: Registration and Coffee (in Aud C)

11.00-11.15: Welcome address, practical matter, etc.

11.15-11.45: Steen Rasmussen (Los Alamos)
Bridging nonliving and living matter

11.45-12:00: Thorsteinn Thorsteinnsson (Reykjavik)
The subglacial lakes beneath Vatnajökull: Habitats for microbial life?

12.00-12.30: discussion

12.30-14.00: Lunch in the NBI Cantine

*afternoon*     -->  Chair: David Field (Aarhus)

14.00-14.15: Nils Holm (Stockholm)
Inorganic/organic geochemistry potentially supporting life on the terrestrial planets (sorry, video not available!)

14.15-14.30: Nils-Kåre Birkeland (Bergen)
Extremophiles: Basic Concepts

14.30-15.00: Peter Ditlevsen (Copenhagen)
What makes Earths climate habitable for billions of years?

15.00-15.30: Discussion

15.30-16.00: Coffee (in the NBI Cantine)

16:00-16.15: Karen Guldbæk Schmidt (Copenhagen)
Ice and Water on Mars and Europa - a summary

16.15-16.30: Liv Hornekær (Odense)
Formation of (prebiotic)molecules on grain surfaces

16.30-16.45: Harry Lehto (Turku)
Interdisciplinary nature of astrobiology: Finnish experience on university courses and scientific networking

17.00-18.00: Discussion: what have we learnt, what needs and can be done? (Chair: David Field)

18.00: Drinkies and nibbles

*Friday*  (9 January 2004)    -->  Chair: Steen Rasmussen

9.30-10.00: Hans Ludwig (Lund)
Von Neumann's ideas on self-replicating structures

10.00-10.15: Martin Nilsson (NORDITA)
Simulating molecular self-assembly

10.30-11.00: Coffee (in the NBI Cantine)

11.00-11.15: Kaare Lund Rasmussen (Odense)
Abnormal carbon isotope compositions from the Tunguska comet

11.30-12.30: Discussion

12.30-14.00: Lunch in the NBI Cantine

*afternoon*    -->  Chair: Anja C. Andersen

14.00-14.30: Uffe Gråe Jørgensen (Copenhagen)
The four basic methods for detecting exoplanet

14.30-15.00: Minik Rosing (Copenhagen)
Evidence for life in >3700-Ma sea-floor sedimentary rocks from West Greenland

15.00-15.15: Kai Finster (Aarhus)
Biological experiments in a Mars-simulation chamber

15.30-16.00: Coffee (in the NBI Cantine))

16.00-16.30: Godfrey Louis (Kerala, India)
Cometary panspermia explains the red rain of Kerala
[abstract1, abstract2]

16.30-18.00: Discussion:

19:00: Conference Dinner at Spisehuset (Magstræde 12, upstairs, but below the cinema)

*Saturday*  (10 January 2004)    -->  Chair: Uffe Gråe Jørgensen

10.00-10.30: Chris Flynn (Turku)
Oscillation period of the Sun in the Galactic disk potential and periodicity in the extinction record

10.30-11.00: Coffee (in Aud C)

11.00-11.15: Pekka Janhunen (Helsinki)
Exoplanetary aurorae as habitability indicators

11.15-11.45 Morten Pedersen (Copenhagen)
Searching for early life on Mars (Spirit)

11.45-12.00: Axel Brandenburg (NORDITA)
Homochirality: models and results

12.00-12.30: Discussion

12.30-14.00: Lunch in Aud C
 

Abstracts:

Bridging nonliving and living matter paper

• ABSTRACT: Assembling non-biological materials (geomaterials) into a proto-organism constitutes a bridge between nonliving and living matter. In this paper we present a simple step-by-step route to assemble a proto-organism. Many pictures have been proposed to describe this transition within the origins of life and artificial life communities and more recently alternative pictures are emerging from advances in nanoscience and biotechnology. The proposed proto-organism lends itself to both traditions and defines a new picture based on a simple idea: Given a set of required functionalities, minimize the physicochemical structures that support these functionalities, and make sure that all structures self-assemble and mutually enhance each other's existence. The result is the first, concrete rational design of a simple physicochemical system that integrates the key functionalities in a thermodynamically favorable manner as a lipid aggregate integrates proto-genes and a proto-metabolism. Under external pumping of free energy, the metabolic processes produce the required building blocks, and only specific gene sequences enhance the metabolic kinetics sufficiently for the whole system to survive. We propose a concrete experimental implementation of the proto-organism with a discussion of our experimental results, together with relevant results produced by other experimental groups, and we specify what is still missing experimentally. Identifying the missing steps is just as important as providing the road map for the transition. We derive the kinetic and thermodynamic conditions of each of the proto-organism subsystems together with relevant theoretical and computational results about these subsystems. We present and discuss detailed 3-D simulations of the lipid aggregation processes. From the reaction kinetics we derive analytical aggregate size distributions, and derive key properties of the metabolic efficiency and stability. Thermodynamics and kinetics of the ligation directed self-replication of the proto-genes is discussed, and we summarize the full life-cycle of the proto-organism by comparing size, replication time, and energy to biomass efficiency of contemporary unicells. Finally, we also compare our proto-organism picture with existing origins of life and protocell pictures. By assembling one possible bridge between nonliving and living matter we hope to provide a brick in the ancient puzzle about who we are and from where we come.

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