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Sara Imari Walker

@saraimari.bsky.social

2.6K followers 230 following 54 posts

Physicist interested in life and it’s origin. Professor at Arizona State University; External Faculty at Santa Fe Institute

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · May 26

I'm so happy to share that my debut book, LIFE AS NO ONE KNOWS IT, comes out August 6th, 2024 from @riverheadbooks! Read more about it here: bit.ly/3QN0Nop

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Reposted by Sara Imari Walker

The Long Now Foundation @longnow.org · 7h

“You only exist here. And you exist here because four billion years was necessary to construct you on this planet.”
- @saraimari.bsky.social

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · 27d

It is an odd feature of the human mind that we use all these things that don’t exist to reason about the ones that do.

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Reposted by Sara Imari Walker

Greg @jamyang.net · Sep 4

Recursive Worlds (@saraimari.bsky.social): Life reshapes how we think about reality: best understood in time, not space. Earth is a self-constructing system: ‘a very deep stack of recursive objects’ built over 4 billion years. recursiveworlds.antikythera.org

Recursive Worlds | Antikythera

recursiveworlds.antikythera.org

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Reposted by Sara Imari Walker

Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · Aug 20

Unfold the history of proteins and you find rich, unexplained complexity. This August, an SFI working group with @ELSI_origins and @ASU_SCAS used machine learning and assembly theory to explore hidden rules underlying all folded matter, from proteins to potential new drugs.

santafe.edu/news

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Aug 18

We should always take seriously where computational descriptions fail, as it tells us something about where the current boundaries of what we can describe in language lie

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Aug 14

Of all the materials that compose you, the most significant is time. It takes billions of years for our universe to generate structures like us.

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Reposted by Sara Imari Walker

Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · Aug 11

Collaborate with researchers globally. Chart your transdisciplinary path. Apply to SFI's 2026 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships. Competitive pay, research funds, and generous benefits to become a leader in transdisciplinary research.

Deadline: Oct 1, 2025
Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Aug 13

Known examples of life persist across scales from the molecular to the planetary. Death also is a matter of scale, raising the question of which of our deaths matters most? The individual? The lineage? The biosphere/planetary? Or the universe?

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Aug 13

Myths are very much alive in modern societies, and apart from in few cultural practices, like science, we have just as hard of a time recognizing when we are steeped in them as our ancestors did.

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Reposted by Sara Imari Walker

Nils Gilman @nilsgilman.bsky.social · Aug 11

Toward Planetary Maturity: The RAND Corporation's new proposal for astrographic standardization will help to provide a standard grammar for #PlanetarySapience, thus helping to "mature the technosphere," as per @saraimari.bsky.social. My latest substack: nilsgilman.substack.com/p/toward-pla...

Toward Planetary Maturity

The RAND Corporation's new proposal for astrographic standardization will help to provide a standard grammar for planetary sapience, thus helping mature the technosphere

nilsgilman.substack.com

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Reposted by Sara Imari Walker

Ruthanna Emrys @r-emrys.bsky.social · Aug 5

Finally, in the second Seeds of Story post, @saraimari.bsky.social's Life as No One Knows It offers cool new physics and a metric for whether that thing out there is aliens: reactormag.com/the-wild-ali...

Finite Monkeys, Finite Keyboards: The Wild Alien Possibilities of Sara Imari Walker’s Life as No One Knows It - Reactor

Radically rethinking the origins of life on Earth and throughout the universe...

reactormag.com

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Aug 12

Life as No One Knows It, my conversation with Sophia Al Maria during the inaugural AIR festival (also named Life As No One Knows It!!) now on Aspen Public radio, an incredible week celebrating art, artists, creativity and ideas with so many amazing humans ❤️ www.aspenpublicradio.org/ideas-speake...

Aspen Art Museum: Life As No One Knows It - Sara Imari Walker and Sophia Al-Maria

Physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker and artist Sophia Al-Maria explore life on other worlds. Departing from Walker’s radical rethinking of the origins and definitions of life in her 2024 bo...

www.aspenpublicradio.org

Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Aug 1

“Human” is the most amazing configuration of matter any of us has ever observed, yet we deeply under appreciate what we are

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Jul 31

What is the human aesthetic choice behind Google's algorithm ‘People also ask' - it seems like it prioritizes content scaling over relevance and/or depth. The answers are depressing and boring. Would love it to add value to my original search.Why is understanding NOT the aesthetic we are going for?

Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Jul 30

Physics for a new century should solve what we, and all life, share fundamentally youtube.com/watch?v=43Re...

2025 Interdisciplinary Science Summit Showcase Talk: Sara Walker

YouTube video by Schmidt Science Fellows

youtube.com

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Reposted by Sara Imari Walker

Reactor Magazine @reactorsff.bsky.social · Jul 29

@r-emrys.bsky.social explores the work of physicist and astrobiologist Sara Imari Walker, and how her insights into Assembly Theory and the origins of life might influence the future of science and science fiction 🌱

reactormag.com/the-wild-ali...

Finite Monkeys, Finite Keyboards: The Wild Alien Possibilities of Sara Imari Walker’s Life as No One Knows It - Reactor

Radically rethinking the origins of life on Earth and throughout the universe...

reactormag.com

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Jun 4

Many cannot see past the current representational maps that architect our minds & want them to remain static, but it’s important to recognize these can always be revised - the models we inhabit in our own minds should always be changing if we are to really come to understand anything about our world

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Jun 2

The most transformative theories never come from trying to build better mathematical representations of current theories. Instead we get them by making direct contact with observations not accounted for in our existing map of the world.

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Reposted by Sara Imari Walker

The Long Now Foundation @longnow.org · May 28

What is Life?

In her Long Now Talk, astrobiologist and theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker (@saraimari.bsky.social) explores the fundamental nature of life and how can physics help shape our understanding of how it arises in the universe.

Full talk here: youtu.be/zhzxQraB2m0?...

Sara Imari Walker | An Informational Theory of Life | Long Now Talks

YouTube video by The Long Now Foundation

youtu.be

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Reposted by Sara Imari Walker

Sigal Samuel @sigalsamuel.bsky.social · May 7

"We are lineages, not individuals." @saraimari.bsky.social is such a badass! Making great & under-appreciated points in this @noemamag.com piece: www.noemamag.com/ai-is-life/

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · May 2

the term “prebiotic” in origin of life research is ironic given that it almost always refers to chemistry post-selected to be of interest to biology on Earth

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · May 2

The origin of life is not computable, yet it happens anyways

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Apr 26

Glad you enjoyed it!

Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Apr 25

Math is evolved

Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Apr 24

Math is physical

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Sara Imari Walker @saraimari.bsky.social · Apr 24

Math is physical

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