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iPerspectivesAIAS Fellows’ Magazine Issue 1 . SPRING 2020 LIFE ORIGIN . MEANING . FUTURE iPerspectives SPRING 2020 | 02 iPerspectives Issue 1 SPRING 2020 Editors Cici Alexander CONTENTS Jennifer Galloway Sâmia Joca Thomas Tauris Graphic Design Foreword Cici Alexander 08 04 Søren Rud Keiding ISSN Editors’ Note 2597-0453 07 Cici Alexander, Jennifer Galloway, Sâmia Joca, Thomas Tauris Published by Life in Space Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies 08 Thomas Tauris https://aias.au.dk/research/iperspective/ 12 The Destiny of Humankind 15 Christos Tsirogiannis A Brief History of Geological Time 15 Jennifer Galloway Being Human 22 Samuel McCormick 29 Maths Actually 24 Doug Speed The Origin or Destiny of Life, or what does it mean 26 to be alive? Joshua Nash Life: an ongoing geological process 34 29 Alfonso Blázquez-Castro How clocks shape our lives 34 Lisa M. Wu Temporal Entanglements: How Pasts, Presents, and Futures 38 Interlock in Niger Adeline Masquelier 03 | LIFE: ORIGIN . MEANING . FUTURE iPerspectives SPRING 2020 | 04 FOREWORD he Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) is proud to in the need to solve the challenge of the outbreak of the AIDS/HIV introduce this first edition of iPerspectives. iPerspectives is a epidemic in the 1980s. magazine issued by the fellows at AIAS, following one of the T The inside-out and the outside-in strategies are entangled, and often interdisciplinary workshops at the institute. These workshops are the solution of a specific problem will lead to new fundamental one of the key instruments in stimulating interdisciplinary thinking, knowledge, as well as the development of new theories and models and they are often the breeding ground for new scientific initiatives that will lead to new and unforeseen applications. The literature on and ideas. The ambitious title of the workshop behind the first modern research strategies is vast, and the simplistic picture given iPerspectives is The Origin and Destiny of Life, and it took place in the here is present in the numerous concepts introduced to understand winter of 2019. how science advances to benefit us all: push-pull, mission-oriented, blue- Science, and in particular the advancement of science for the benefit sky, grand challenge, SDGs, Innovation, Pasteur’s Quadrant… of us all, has always been driven by the delicate balance between However, less developed is perhaps our understanding of how two seemingly opposing research strategies: The inside-out strategy disciplines work together, and how we create the “nurseries” and that relies on the advances made possible by the undisturbed and provide the protected space where basic ideas and theories can “meet”. uninterrupted investigations on the theoretical foundations of our Interdisciplinarity is well described in an outside-in context, where present knowledge. A good example is the discovery of the chemical a specific challenge is addressed by a team of experts from different element no 72, Hafnium. The work of Dmitrij Mendelejev in 1869 fields of research. However, do we also provide an inside-out setting had shown that an element remained undiscovered in the periodic for interdisciplinary research, where scientists meet and share their system, and that place no 72 was empty. Later in 1922, Niels Bohr basic field-specific ideas and theories on a specific topic with the could predict the properties on the missing element, based on sole purpose of insight and inspiration? Yes, there are many good his electron theory for the atoms. Soon thereafter in 1924, it was examples of this approach, but at AIAS we think more could be done discovered and named Hafnium after the city of Copenhagen where it - by for instance encouraging the AIAS fellows to engage in arranging was identified. At that time, no one needed or asked for Hafnium, but conferences and workshops devoted to exactly this. In an effort to had it not been there, we would have been forced to adjust or rewrite make these workshops more visible and share their insights and our models for the world around us. ideas, we thus issue the iPerpectives magazine. The other strategy, the outside-in, drives science forward through Ida Marie Jensen Photo: We hope you’ll enjoy reading it, and welcome you to visit the the pressing need we as individuals or as a society have. The deep AIAS homepage for more information on upcoming events at AIAS, Søren Rud Keiding and profound knowledge we have today of our immune system, and subscribe to our Newsletter or maybe follow us on Twitter. AIAS Executive Director, Professor how it is interacting with intruding viral agents, originates partly 05 | LIFE: ORIGIN . MEANING . FUTURE iPerspectives SPRING 2020 | 06 EDITORS’ NOTE elcome to the first issue ofiPerspectives , an interdisciplinary magazine by Research Fellows at the W Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), Aarhus University, Denmark. We, the editors of this issue, came together when Thomas sent an open invitation to all AIAS Fellows last Photo: Trærup Anders Photo: September to co-organise an internal workshop (details on page 45) on the Origin and Destiny of Life. The idea for an e-magazine came up at one of our planning meetings, and was presented at the workshop on November 29, 2019. iPerspectives was initially meant to be a magazine by and for current and former AIAS Fellows. The interesting presentations at the workshop, and later the interest from former Fellows, motivated us to get them published, at least on our website. Photo: Søren Kjeldgaard Søren Photo: We’d like to thank: Søren Rud Keiding, our Director, who kindly agreed to write the foreword to the first issue, and supported the workshop, Morten Kyndrup, our former Director, who supported the idea of the workshop when it was first presented to him, and Photo: Melissa Bach Yildirim Melissa Bach Photo: colleagues and former Fellows who generously gave their time to make iPerspectives a reality. We are all temporarily at AIAS, and we hope that the workshop and e-magazine series will continue through Photo: Melissa Bach Yildirim Melissa Bach Photo: the current, incoming and future Fellows. We hope you will enjoy Research Fellowships at AIAS are funded by the European reading the contributions in this issue, as much as we did. Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Cici Alexander under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no 754513 and the European Union’s Seventh Framework Jennifer Galloway Programme for research, technological development and Sâmia Joca demonstration under grant agreement no 609033 and the Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF). Thomas Tauris Photo: Søren Kjeldgaard Søren Photo: 07 | LIFE: ORIGIN . MEANING . FUTURE iPerspectives SPRING 2020 | 08 hen discussing the the Milky Way. From modern view). Mankind may be able to origin of life, it knowledge of stellar evolution, spread into space and colonize W is often useful to we can set an absolute upper e.g. Mars and a few other consider the timeline for major limit on the end date, namely places (moons) within the Solar events in the 13.8 billion year 5 billion years. At that time, the System - although what a poor history of the Universe. Our Sun will become a giant star and simple indoor life without Solar System, and thus the and expand in size by a factor of access to oceans and wooded Life in Space Earth, formed 4.5 billion years several hundred, possibly even mountains. The distances ago and, interestingly enough, engulfing the Earth. Engulfed or to even the nearest exosolar the more advanced organisms, not, the enormous temperature systems leaves little hope One of the leading hypotheses for the origin of as well as the first animals, only rise on Earth will in any case kill for being reachable. Current formed during the Cambrian all existing forms of life. technology with interstellar explosion, about half a billion travelling at about 60,000 km/h It is most likely, however, life involves panspermia, that life came to Earth years ago. Actually, it is merely would require 20,000 years even that our civilization will come 50,000 years ago (at 99.9996% of to reach the nearest neighbour to an end on a much shorter the present age of the Universe) star. from space and that life exists throughout the timescale. First of all, it is Neanderthals and Homo difficult (even for an optimist) Even if mankind manages to sapiens lived in Europe side by Universe. Evidence to support this idea comes to envision a peaceful future on overcome the abovementioned side. Hence, life as we know a timescale of more than a few serious issues, we also face the it - not to mention civilised life hundred years. The dangers lurk possibility of mass extinction from several meteorites found on Earth. - evolved very slowly on a long everywhere: overpopulation, from impacts of asteroids and timescale. lack of resources, clashes of comets. By looking at the Lunar It is an interesting question religions and cultures, nuclear surface full of crater holes, and how long time civilised life on warfare, economic inequality, remembering that the Earth’s our planet can exist? The answer epidemics, pollution etc. (Global surface area is 16 times larger is crucial for the probability warming is unpleasant and may than that of the Moon, we estimates of finding civilised spark further crisis, but is not a can estimate the average time By Thomas Tauris life elsewhere in our Galaxy, major concern, in my point of intervals between catastrophic impacts. Several times in history, life on Earth suffered At that time, the Sun will from mass extinction due to such events, where up to 95% of become a giant star and expand all living species went extinct. For example, 66 million years in size by a factor of several ago when a 10-15 km asteroid or comet hit the Earth in the Gulf hundred, possibly even engulfing of Mexico, eradicating many species including the dinosaurs.

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