Hans

Life has existed and evolved on earth for almost 4 billion years. Living organisms copy themselves from other life and central for all known life forms is the genetic code.

We are used to hear life described by biologists. but physicists have access to tools which can give a different and to some extend deeper understanding of life. Science Journalist Jens Degett is visiting the Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen, Denmark, talking with Professor in physics Kim Sneppen.

An example is Lichens shown in the picture above.

Lichens may form very complex pattern in nature where different colonies may compete with, help, defend, attack or exploit other colonies. It is an example of self-organizing organisms which present a diverse pattern with sharp boundaries to other colonies.  

If you wonder why the podcast is in English, and not Danish it is because we have an increasing number of listeners whenever we publish a podcast in English. Therefore, we make the experiment the next few months to produce all our podcasts in English. 

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This podcast is supported by a Maria Leptin / EMBO Science Journalism Fellowship.

You can find more information on the topic in the book: Models of life-Dynamics and Regulation in Biological Systems..