Public lecture examines origins of life

Public lecture examines origins of life

Did Life Start in Hell? is the intriguing title of a public lecture to be held at the University of Queensland's St Lucia campus on Thursday, April 15.

Organised by the University's Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis and the Physics Department, the lecture will be from 6pm to 7pm at the ground floor Room G77, Parnell Building in the Great Court.

The lecture focuses on one of the great unsolved scientific mysteries, the origin of life.

It will feature Professor Paul Davies, an honorary professor in the University's Physics Department, and a visiting professor at Imperial College, London; and senior research fellow in the University's Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis Dr Philippa Uwins.

Professor Davies said most research had focused on life starting in a primordial soup somewhere on the earth's surface, but amazing new discoveries were now challenging that idea.

In 1996 NASA scientists reported fossil nano-organisms in a 4.5 billion-year-old, potato-sized Martian meteorite which crashed to Earth in Antarctica about 13,000 years ago.

Now, University of Queensland researcher Dr Uwins had discovered novel miniature organisms - called nanobes - in ancient sandstones retrieved from an oil drilling site three-five kilometres below the Australian seabed. These nanobes were much smaller than the smallest of terrestrial bacteria and could be the Earthly relatives of the Martian nano-organisms.

Professor Davies and Dr Uwins will present these results at the lecture.

Professor Davies is the author of 100 research papers and 25 books. His latest book, The Fifth Miracle: the search for the origin of life, argues that life may well have started inside the earth, deep in the hot crust, and the nanobes found by Dr Uwins could provide a missing link in the transition from nonliving chemicals to life. He said it could also be that life had emerged beneath the surface of Mars, and could long ago have reached Earth inside meteorites.

A media release issued by the University of Queensland on March 20, 1999 on Dr Uwins' discovery can be found at http://www2.uq.edu.au/newsreleases/

Media: For further information, contact Dr Uwins, telephone work 07 3365 4694 email: p.uwins@mailbox.uq.edu.au, or Jo Hughes (Physics Department), telephone work 07 3365 3405 email: jo@physics.uq.edu.au.