Heather Radke

little details, little doodles of rock.

They're beautiful things to look at.

The amazing thing about these vents is they mimic the structure of cells in that it's kind of a round space with a wall around it.

And you can think of a cell as a kind of a bag of solution with a membrane around it.

That's making these gases react together to form organic molecules, which are forming inside the pores themselves.

They will form spontaneously in this kind of environment into what we call protocells, a little bit optimistically maybe, but effectively a membrane around a bag of water.

with some stuff inside.

Yes, it's got the right materials and it's got the structure.

And I think that's what's been missing from the chemistry and it's what's missing from the soup and it's what's missing from, you know, delivery of organic molecules from space by panspermia.

It ends up in a soup.

How does that soup form structure?

Well, the earth itself forms the structure for you in the first place in these hydrothermal vents.

there is a beautiful link between the geology of the planet with active volcanic systems and active turnover of the surface of the planet and the bottom of the oceans and the way that living cells work.

It's as if

a living planet gives rise to living cells, which have the same structure.

Both the planet and the cell is a little bit like a battery.

It's got a positive charge outside, a negative charge inside, a membrane surrounding it.

And they're both like that.

And there's a lovely, lovely sense of continuity that a planet gives rise to living cells.

That you are a horrible person if you touch yourself, if you engage with anybody else in any kind of sex whatsoever outside of marriage.