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The 6th ELSI International Symposium, Building Bridges from Earth to Life: From Chemical Mechanism to Ancient Biology, begins January 9th at 9AM JST.

The webcast of the event streams live at SAGANet. To participate in the conference remotely, go to http://saganet.org/page/saganlive.

Understanding the transition from the Earth’s earliest geochemistry, to the later emergence of life, requires a synthesis of knowledge across an unprecedented range of scales of size, time, and complexity. We need both empirical data, and the ability to synthesize, compute, and reason at levels linking elementary mechanisms in organic geochemistry and catalysis, available energy systems, the assembly and roles of intermediate-scale structures, and reaching all the way to molecular and ecological systems evolutionary biology. Recent advances in several areas bring us close to connecting all the links in a chain needed to reason from micro to macro, from geochemistry to nascent biochemistry. The goal in this symposium is to hold a collaborative conversation, among speakers and participants, to sketch the form of this emerging bridge, and to point out both the most compelling opportunities and the most urgent needs.

For more information on the 6th ELSI International Symposium, visit https://elsi6sympo.com/.