Nick Lane

You've got all the CO2 in the ocean.

So the cells are a kind of little battery with the same structure as the Earth.

And if you look in a hydrothermal system, the cell membranes around the Earth, the crust of the Earth is like the membrane.

And where you have traffic going between the inside and the outside is the hydrothermal systems.

And the pores in these hydrothermal systems are little cell-like entities as well.

So you keep having on multiple scales the same kind of... So the idea that the Earth is a giant battery that produces little living cell mini batteries...

It's a rather beautiful idea.

I mean, you can't allow yourself to get too hung up on a metaphor, but it's a beautiful image.

Bubbling off mini copies of the Earth.

I mean, in principle, yes, you could use sodium ions instead of protons, but it's very different.

Because if you're starting with carbon dioxide, and the first thing to realize about that is carbon is extremely good at the chemistry that it does.

It's forming very strong bonds with all kinds of molecules.

So you can form complex, interesting molecules.

And you're effectively, I think of CO2 as a kind of a Lego brick that you pluck out of the air and you bind it onto something.

You can build things one brick at a time that way.

And then you can build really interesting complex molecules like DNA and RNA from doing that.

You can't do that with silicon.

So with intelligent design, you can make really complex AI robots, whatever it may be, but the whole thing requires humans to do it.

But if you're thinking about how would life start on a planet where there isn't an intelligent designer who's putting it all together, you need molecules that can do that kind of chemistry, and CO2 is an outstanding example.

And water is everywhere.