In the late 1940s, Max Delbrück, a pioneer of biophysics, called living cells "magic puzzle boxes." Since then, not much has changed in the popular imagination about life: With their purposeful pursuit of growth and regeneration, living cells and organisms are profoundly different from non-living matter, such as rocks or stars. Is there some special ingredient that lifts life beyond mere physics? Or can physics explain the "magic" after all? How does life fit into the story of our universe? In this talk, we will marshal recent scientific progress to see how the physics of the nanoscale can solve the ancient puzzle of "what is life?"

Join us in the planetarium for a free lecture by Professor Peter Hoffmann,  Wednesday, September 13, 2017, at 7 p.m.