Hamburg Photon Science Colloquium: WHY WATER IS WEIRD

by Philipp Ball (Freelance science writer London, United Kingdom)

Friday 10 Jun 2016, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Berlin

CFEL, Bldg. 99 (DESY Hamburg)

All life on Earth needs water to survive. But increasingly it seems that the characteristics that make water a solvent for life are also those that make it the weirdest of liquids. Some of these quirks of ‘life’s matrix’ are well understood; others are still being debated, sometimes furiously and controversially. I will explore what we do and don’t know about water, ending with a consideration both of how its behaviour in living cells can offer clues for new purification technologies and of whether its unique role for life on Earth makes it a prerequisite for life on other worlds.