18 November 2023

14:50 – 15:35

Amphithéâtre Faure

Grégoire Danger

Grégoire Danger is a Professor at the University of Aix-Marseille. D. in Biomolecular Chemistry in 2006. After several post-doctorates in the USA and France, he was recruited in 2009 as Maître de Conférences at the University of Aix-Marseille. He was elected a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France in 2018. He is currently head of the ASTRO team at the Physics of Ionic and Molecular Interactions Laboratory, deputy director of the Origins Institute at the University of Aix-Marseille and director of the CNRS INSU/INC PILSE Research Group. His research program focuses on the evolution of organic matter, from its formation within dense molecular clouds and its evolution during the formation of a planetary system such as the Solar System, to the conditions that enabled the emergence of biochemical systems on Earth. The aim of his research is to study experimentally the evolution of organic matter in different astrophysical environments, and to determine how this evolution can provide us with clues as to the chemical processes that may have been at the origin of biochemical systems.

Conference: What role might energy have played in the emergence of life on primitive Earth?

To find answers to this question, we’ll start in the star-forming zones to understand the origin of organic matter in our solar system, and end on the Earth’s surface a few hundred million years after its formation. We will attempt to define the environments in which certain sources of energy were able to combine with matter to enable its evolution and the formation of the organic matter currently observed in interplanetary bodies such as comets and asteroids. These interplanetary bodies were able to deliver their organic content to the surface of the primitive Earth. We’ll try to understand under what conditions this extraterrestrial matter could have played a role in the emergence of living systems on Earth, and discuss whether the life present on Earth is linked to a single event, or whether it could have taken place on other planets.