Dr. Sara Seager

And I do have a way to explain it to you.

It's been an incredible journey.

Well, every milestone we do in the lab, and some of this is my own team, some is with partners from other labs.

The organic chemists out there and the people who review our papers, like let's say an editor at a high profile journal.

Right.

They will legit believe our result.

They'll say, well, this result, it looks good.

But even if it is true, this work is going to just dead end.

So initially they would say, well, amino acids, you've shown those are stable, but it doesn't matter because peptides won't be stable.

Then we can say peptides are stable.

Some peptides are stable.

And they'll say, well, that doesn't really matter because you have to show they fold.

And, you know, there'll come a time and maybe we can show that and people will keep complaining about the next thing that will dead end.

But I'll tell you what, I already lived through all this before for exoplanets.

I lived through a time when people kept telling us the field was going to dead end.

But if you work in the field and you're deep in the trenches and you see all the possibilities flourish, then you know it's possible.

Like, I can't guarantee that the biomolecule complexity won't dead end in sulfuric acid, but everything so far shows it's a go.

And we're going to keep following this and keep on doing it.

Yes, well, I've given this a lot of thought, actually.

And I'm about to make a big move from my current job at MIT in the USA to Canada, to the University of Toronto.