Little Atoms 226 – Road Trip 10 – The BEYOND Center

In this episode, Neil pays a visit to the BEYOND Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. BEYOND is a pioneering center devoted to investigating the big questions of science and philosophy. Things like how the universe came to exist, where the laws of nature came from, how life began. The center is led by the theoretical physicist Paul Davies, and this show features an iterview with Paul, and with BEYOND’s Post-Doctoral fellow Sara Imari Walker.

Sara Imari Walker is a NASA Astrobiology Institute postdoctoral fellow. She received her PhD in Physics from Dartmouth College and worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Chemical Evolution at Georgia Tech. She is fascinated by all questions regarding the nature of life in the universe. Her research focuses on the origin of life, combining techniques from theoretical physics, chemistry, and information science, to uncover how the first living systems might have arisen on a lifeless planet.

Paul Davies is the Director of BEYOND Center, Director of the Center for the Convergence of Physical Science and Cancer Biology. A theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist and best-selling author. His research ranges from the origin of the universe to the origin of life, and includes the properties of black holes, the nature of time and quantum field theory. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1995 Templeton Prize, the 2002 Michael Faraday Prize from the Royal Society and the 2011 Robinson prize in Cosmology. He is the author of many books including The Goldilocks Enigma and The Eerie Silence.