Why Water is weird
Hamburg Photon Science Colloquium
- Datum: 10.06.2016
- Uhrzeit: 14:00 - 15:00
- Vortragende(r): Philip Ball
- Freelance science writer, London, United Kingdom
- Ort: CFEL (Bldg. 99)
- Raum: Seminar Room I-III, EG.076-080
- Gastgeber: CFEL, CUI, DESY, European XFEL, HZG, MPSD, SFB 925, UHH

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.