Sara Walker asks: What is life?
by Maeve Keane
What is life?
One of the biggest mysteries of our entire existence.
Sara Imari Walker asks herself this question every day as part of her job. After leaving Cape Cod Community College, Walker became a theoretical physicist, a professor at Arizona State University and an astrobiologist. Her research primarily focuses on if there are missing laws of physics or if there is a better comprehension of reality at a fundamental level that would explain the nature of life.
“4C’s is the reason I’m a physicist because that was the first time, I ever took a physics class,” she says in a phone interview.
“I had an instructor named Professor Shaw, Jim Shaw. He taught physics but I remember my first class and what struck me about that was this idea that humans could build a theory and that theory could tell them about things we don’t know.”
After taking Professor Shaw’s physics class, she went on to further research the question “What is life?”
Walker explains that, during her first year at Cape Cod. it became clear to her that she had a real passion for theoretical physics and that she wanted to pursue her career. She wanted to contribute to the scientific community and search for better, deeper answers to what constitutes as life and how we can decipher these theories.
“When I went to 4Cs, I was thinking more that I wanted to be an artist, but I just liked science, so I took all the science classes.”
“What is life?” is an all-encompassing question, but it’s one Walker tackles each day.
“My colleagues will argue life must be common (in places other than Earth) because there are lots of stars and lots of planets, but I just don’t think that’s a valid argument… Science is never complete, and there are new areas that emerge because people come up with new kinds of ways of asking questions. So, what is life? Let’s look at the chemistry of life and uncover DNA and proteins and lipids, but that clearly hasn't solved some of the deeper questions of the origins of life.”
Walker is an example of Cape Cod Community College students reaching for the stars (literally) and chasing their dreams.
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