Beyond Center

Thinking Beyond with David Blair will be "Interstellar travel is bunk!" on February 23rd at 6pm MST/5 PST/8pm EST. Register at: asu.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

Thinking Beyond with Matthew Kleban will be "From the Quantum World to the Multiverse" on January 26th at 6pm MST/5 PST/8pm EST. Register at: asu.zoom.us/webinar/regist…

Thinking Beyond with Louie Slocombe will be about "Is Life Quantum?" on November 24th at 6pm MST/5 PST/8pm EST. Register at links.asu.edu/ThinkingBeyond

Thinking Beyond with Cynthia Keeler will be about "How much does a black hole know (that it won't tell us)?" on October 27th at 6pm MST/6 PST/9pm EST. Register at links.asu.edu/ThinkingBeyond

Thinking Beyond with @PhilTeeNet will be on "AI: Salvation or Damnation" on September 29th at 6pm MST/6 PST/9pm EST. Register at links.asu.edu/ThinkingBeyond

Join us for a movie screening of "Who is Nathan Law?", followed by a conversation with Nathan Law on September 22nd from 6-8:30pm MST. Register at links.asu.edu/NathanLaw.

Sara Walker, theoretical physicist, joins us this week on The Generalist podcast! What makes something alive? @Sara_Imari is a theoretical physicist who studies the origins of life and the author of Life as No One Knows It. As AI prompts us to rethink what consciousness, intelligence, and life really mean, Sara's work offers a provocative framework for understanding these fundamental questions. In this conversation, Sara shares how she developed assembly theory—a revolutionary approach suggesting that complex objects like DNA molecules and even microphones are evidence of life's processes. Listen now: • YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=kqAuqQ… • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0YyBjB… • Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wha… A big thank you to the incredible sponsors that make the podcast possible: ✨ Tezi – The AI agent for recruiting high-quality candidates quickly: tezi.ai/mario ✨ Brex – The banking solution for startups: brex.com/mario We explore: → Why Sara believes we need entirely new laws of physics to understand life → How assembly theory quantifies the transition from non-life to life with a measurable threshold → Why complex objects like DNA and microphones are evidence of evolutionary processes → How our perception of objects as "physical" or "abstract" depends on their temporal scale → Why traditional definitions of life fail as scientific frameworks → How assembly theory could revolutionize our search for extraterrestrial life → The surprising connection between urban atmospheres and biosignatures → Why Sara sees fundamental differences between computation and physical construction → How assembly theory views AI systems and large language models → The creative parallels between theoretical physics and conceptual art Books 📕 Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence: amazon.com/Life-No-One-Kn… 📕 The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World: amazon.com/Beginning-Infi…