ELSI is launching an eight-part series of short videos in which Prof. Shigenori Maruyama, a Principal Investigator at ELSI, answers questions about how geology is an integral part of research into the origins of life.

When, where and how did life originate? This is one of science’s biggest questions and a mystery that researchers collaborating at ELSI hope to unravel. 

How life emerged cannot be answered by biology alone; it can only be understood in a much broader context, which requires an interdisciplinary approach combining chemistry, physics, geology and planetary science.

Geology in particular plays a key role as life cannot be born in isolation. The surface environment of the early Earth was the cradle for life here, and geology – combined with geochronology – allows researchers to look back in time to understand what those conditions were like. Without geology, there is no path to discovering the origins of life.

In this series of three-minute videos, Shigenori Maruyama offers a brief glimpse of the path geology has paved for origins of life researchers.


Video series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgCfQ_4nJyOgyuIqSniXbwjejLjrEsuRF