According to Queloz, life from the lab is possible by the end of the century
Published: Friday, Dec 22nd 2023, 11:10
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According to Swiss Nobel Prize winner Didier Queloz, it will be possible to create life in the laboratory before the end of this century. "In my opinion, it is only a matter of time before we succeed," the physicist told Tamedia titles.
"So we will gain a kind of divine power," Queloz continued in the Tamedia interview on Friday. "We have had the power of destruction since we have had nuclear weapons. In this century, we will gain the divine power of creation by creating artificial life from scratch."
The emergence of life is ultimately a chemical process, says Queloz. "If the conditions are right, life will emerge. I see no need for an initial nudge from a creator god," said the Nobel Prize winner with conviction.
Research Center
The 57-year-old astrophysicist was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2019 together with his colleague Michel Mayor for the discovery of the first planet orbiting a sun-like star.
Since 2021, he has been setting up a center at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich to research the origin of life. According to Queloz, this includes researching the solar system and analyzing exoplanets, as well as attempting to simulate the origin of life in laboratory experiments.
Nobel Prize has changed lives
Queloz is convinced that it was his Nobel Prize that made the creation of this center possible. Many colleagues from the field of physics do not consider the search for the origin of life to be a real science, said Queloz. Chemists do not care about the subject because it is obviously more attractive for them to work in the pharmaceutical industry. "But with the Nobel Prize behind me, people suddenly listened to me and I began to explain the matter to them," Queloz continued.
The Nobel Prize had also changed his life in other ways, said the physicist. According to the astrophysicist, people outside the field of astrophysics had suddenly listened to him and he had become a kind of scientific diplomat.
He also receives "nonsense by e-mail almost every day", said Queloz: "One person has reinvented the history of the universe, another thinks they know the solution to all of humanity's problems and a third claims to be able to prove the existence of God."
©Keystone/SDA
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