WEBVTT

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The Earth is 4.6 billion years old,

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but a human lifetime often lasts
for less than 100 years.

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So why care about
the history of our planet

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when the distant past seems
so inconsequential to everyday life?

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You see, as far as we can tell,

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Earth is the only planet
in our solar system

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known to have sparked life,

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and the only system able to provide
life support for human beings.

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So why Earth?

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We know Earth is unique
for having plate tectonics,

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liquid water on its surface,
and an oxygen-rich atmosphere,

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but this has not always been the case,

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and we know this because ancient rocks

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have recorded the pivotal moments
in Earth's planetary evolution.

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And one of the best places
to observe those ancient rocks

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is in the Pilbara of Western Australia.

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The rocks here are 3.5 billion years old,

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and they contain some of the oldest
evidence for life on the planet.

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Now, often when we think of early life,

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we might imagine a Stegosaurus,

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or maybe a fish crawling onto land,

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but the early life that I'm talking about

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is simple microscopic life like bacteria,

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and their fossils are often preserved

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as layered rock structures
called stromatolites.

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This simple form of life
is almost all we see in the fossil record

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for the first three billion years
of life on Earth.

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Our species can only be traced
back in the fossil record

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to a few hundred thousand years ago.

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We know from the fossil record,

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bacteria life had grabbed
a strong foothold

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by about 3.5 to four billion years ago.

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The rocks older than this
have been either destroyed

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or highly deformed
through plate tectonics,

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so what remains a missing
piece of the puzzle

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is exactly when and how
life on Earth began.

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So here again is that ancient
volcanic landscape in the Pilbara.

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Little did I know that our research here
would provide another clue

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to that origin of life puzzle.

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It was on my first field trip here

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toward the end of a full
long week mapping project

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that I came across something
rather special.

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Now, what probably looks like
a bunch of wrinkly old rocks

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are actually stromatolites,

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and at the center of this mound
is a small, peculiar rock

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about the size of a child's hand.

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It took six months before
we inspected this rock under a microscope.

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When one of my mentors
at the time, Malcolm Walter,

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suggested the rock resembled geyserite.

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Geyserite is a rock type that only forms

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in and around the edges
of hot spring pools.

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Now in order for you to understand
the significance of geyserite,

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I need to take you back
a couple of centuries.

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In 1871, in a letter
to his friend Joseph Hooker,

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Charles Darwin suggested,

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"What if life started
in some warm little pond

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with all sort of chemicals

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still ready to undergo

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more complex changes?"

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Well, we know of warm little ponds.
We call them hot springs.

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In these environments you have hot water

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dissolving minerals
from the underlying rocks.

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This solution mixes with organic compounds

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and results in a kind of chemical factory,

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which researchers have shown
can manufacture simple cellular structures

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that are the first steps toward life.

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But a hundred years after Darwin's letter,

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deep sea hydrothermal vents, or hot vents,
were discovered in the ocean,

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and these are also chemical factories.

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This one is located along
the Tonga volcanic arc,

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1,100 meters below sea level
in the Pacific Ocean.

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The black smoke that you see billowing
out of these chimney-like structures

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is also mineral-rich fluid,

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which is being fed off by bacteria.

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And since the discovery
of these deep-sea vents,

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the favored scenario for an origin of life

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has been in the ocean.

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And this is for good reason:

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deep sea vents are well known
in the ancient rock record,

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and it's thought that the early Earth

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had a global ocean
and very little land surface.

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So the probability that deep sea vents
were abundant on the very early Earth

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fits well with an origin of life

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in the ocean.

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However, our research in the Pilbara

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provides and supports
an alternative perspective.

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After three years,

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finally we were able to show that in fact
our little rock was geyserite.

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So this conclusion suggested
not only did hot springs exist

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in our 3.5 billion-year-old
volcano in the Pilbara,

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but it pushed back evidence for life

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living on land in hot springs
in the geological record of Earth

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by three billion years.

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And so, from a geological perspective,

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Darwin's warm little pond
is a reasonable origin of life candidate.

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Of course, it's still debatable
how life began on Earth,

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and it probably always will be,

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but it is clear that it's flourished,

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it has diversified,

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and it has become ever more complex.

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Eventually, it reached
the age of the human,

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a species that has begun
to question its own existence

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and the existence of life elsewhere.

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Is there a cosmic community
waiting to connect with us,

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or are we all there is?

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A clue to this puzzle again
comes from the ancient rock record.

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At about 2.5 billion years ago,

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there is evidence that bacteria
had begun to produce oxygen,

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kind of like plants do today.

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Geologists refer to
the period that followed

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as the Great Oxidation Event.

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It is implied from rocks
called banded iron formations,

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many of which can be observed as
hundreds of meter thick packages of rock

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which are exposed in gorges

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that carve their way through
the Karijini National Park

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in Western Australia.

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The arrival of free oxygen allowed
two major changes to occur on our planet.

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First, it allowed complex life to evolve.

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You see, life needs oxygen
to get big and complex.

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And it produced the ozone layer,
which protects modern life

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from the harmful effects
of the sun's UVB radiation.

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So in an ironic twist, microbial life
made way for complex life

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and in essence relinquished
its three billion year reign

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over the planet.

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Today, we humans dig up
fossilized complex life

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and burn it for fuel.

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This practice pumps vast amounts
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,

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and like our microbial predecessors,

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we have begun to make
substantial changes to our planet,

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and the effects of those
are encompassed by global warming.

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Unfortunately, the ironic twist here

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could see the demise of humanity,

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and so maybe the reason
we aren't connecting with life elsewhere,

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intelligent life elsewhere,

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is that once it evolves,

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it extinguishes itself quickly.

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If the rocks could talk,

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I suspect they might say this:

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life on Earth is precious.

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It is the product of
four or so billion years

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of a delicate and complex
co-evolution between life and Earth,

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of which humans only represent
the very last speck of time.

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You can use this information
as a guide or a forecast,

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or an explanation as to why it seems
so lonely in this part of the galaxy.

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But use it to gain some perspective

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about the legacy that you
want to leave behind

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on the planet that you call home.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)