The Formation of the Solar System and the Origin of Life
20-24 February 2017 @ Oort
The recent discovery of more than 3000 exoplanets in the last three decades have demonstrated that
planetary systems are not only common, but also immensely diverse. This naturally raises the questions
how our Solar System formed and how life developed. These are the most important scientific questions
motivating our workshop. Answering these questions is not straightforward. Since 4.6 billion years have
passed since the formation event, one has to rely on various clues to constraint the answer, which in turn
requires an interdisciplinary effort.
The interdisciplinary workshop “Formation of the solar system and the origin of life” took place at the
Lorentz Center from 20--24 February 2017. It brought together around 55 international participants from
four major different research fields: astronomy, biology, geology, and chemistry. Due to the dramatic
differences among participants’ research fields, we encouraged to discuss in a central theme with
understandable languages. As such, the workshop featured a daily theme initialized by two keynote
speakers, followed by shorter contributed talks and small group discussions. The small groups were
established randomly (for example by the birth month of the participants), ensuring the diverse
backgrounds and career stages of the group members. Furthermore, instead of having the most senior
participant in the small group moderating the discussion, we invited the most junior participant to do this
job and give a summary report following the discussion. We believe that this gives junior researchers
more opportunities to talk and present themselves.
We experienced several “aha-erlebnis” moments during the discussion. These realizations, together with
many other comments, questions and possible answers, are written down in a Google document on-thefly during the discussion.
We discussed, for example, the importance and definitions of biomarkers (and anti-biomarkers). These
are addressed across different fields from various perspectives. The questions raised potentially lead to
collaborations among the participants in the near future. We believe that the main tangible outcome is
that participants from different disciplines learn to communicate more effectively and about the main
questions, topics, and methods of the various fields. This lead to identification of common grounds and
gaps in between the disciplines. We also discussed sharing and transferring working methods among the
different disciplines. For example, GPU programming widely used in astrophysics would be extremely
helpful in theoretical biology, where on the other hand there is much deeper knowledge of “big data”
analysis and algorithms lacking in astronomy.
Based on notes made collaboratively on-the-fly during these discussions, we plan to publish a paper
summarizing the outcomes of this workshop. We also hope to be able to use the facilities of the Lorentz
Center again when we plan on a follow-up interdisciplinary workshop on the evolution of the solar system
and the origin of life.
Maxwell Cai Leiden, The Netherlands
Lucie Jilkova Leiden, The Netherlands
Susanne Pfalzner Bonn, Germany
Simon Portegies Zwart Leiden, The Netherlands