Life = Language? GRCDI Discussion Hour event with Dr Martin Dominik - Free
The discovery of planets orbiting stars other than the Sun has provided us with new perspectives on potentially detecting signs of life beyond Earth. However, we remain stuck on not being able to detect “life” if we do not know what it is, while we are facing fundamental limitations on generalising from a sample of size one.
What about life on Earth is “universal” and what is rather specific? Life co-developed with its environment on our small blue planet, but how special is Earth? Leaving geocentrism and anthropocentrism behind, we might need another Copernican revolution. Strikingly, the strongest evidence for extra-terrestrial life might come from the language structures within messages by alien civilisations transmitted in the form of radio waves, while the genetic code provides the “language of life” carrying instructions for the ribosome to assemble proteins. This makes for an insightful connection between SETI and molecular biology.
Dr Martin Dominik, Reader in Physics and Astronomy, Co-Director of the St Andrews Centre for Exoplanet Science (StACES), and member of the Coordinating Committee of the St Andrews SETI Post-Detection Hub poses the question: Is language the key to understanding life?
Martin's research has mainly focused on applications of the gravitational microlensing effect, including the demographics of planets and black holes throughout the Milky Way. He is a strong advocate of communication being an essential part of science, and science being an integral part of society and culture.
He organised a Royal Society Discussion Meeting on The detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society and designed an exhibition, A message from afar, on the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence and what it means to be human.
Martin is a past president of the Network of Researchers on the Chemical Emergence of Life (NoRCEL), has served on the Executive Committee of the Global Young Academy (GYA), and is a Member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA). He is engaged in fostering research communities and shaping research environments that make creative minds flourish, in nurturing links across national borders, as well as across the sciences, humanities and arts, in building capacity in fundamental sciences, and in improving education.