On The Origin Of Life

[sigurdV]

sigurdV, I'll say it again, water cannot be a liquid at the pressures inside a nebula, ice sublimes directly into a gas, the only places where there would enough pressure to form liquid water are on planets, or for that matter any of the liquids that might support life, these substances do not exist as liquids in the environment of space. JMJones's graph demonstrated this very well. Just repeating your assertion over and over will not change the laws of physics.

 

You might a leg to stand if you specified comets, it's possible some of the largest ones might have had some liquid in their interiors but again planets provide vastly more water in the liquid state than any possible nebula or comet. Some of the moons in the outer solar system might have oceans of water under their crusts and life might have started there as well but we won't know until we drill down to the water layers and see.

 

On top of that simply having water in it's liquid form doesn't guarantee life, the indications so far seem to point to the needs of inorganic substances as well to serve as catalysts, not to mention oceans that break on a shore line to break apart the lipid bubbles that form, yes you guessed it... in water

 

It is very probable that life required a synergy of many different pathways to evolve the first cells, the clouds in interstellar space are too thin and diffuse to allow the reactions necessary to produce anything but some of the simple chemicals life builds on when they are dissolved in a fluid.

 

Well the matter at last gets discussed :)

 

"the only places where there would be enough pressure to form liquid water are on planets"

 

If I look at the graph, all that seems needed for parts of the cloud to contain liquid water is a temperature of 100

and a pressure slightly above 1...somehow this cannot be the case anywhere...Why?

 

I would not like to argue for comets...but theres many of them...

 

The proto sun had water in its contracting cloud

and you say that never in the process of spinning and contracting

the pressure and temperature allowed liquid water!

 

And the same in a lesser scale for planets...I would like to know : How do you know? I cant see it in the graph!

[sigurdV]

I ask you what does this have to do with life forming in interstellar clouds?

If life came from elsewhere it had time there to evolve up to the cell,

which seems more difficult than later developments seemingly taking longer time.

[sigurdV]

Most importantly, my standard caveat applies. I am not an astronomer, an astrophysicist, nor an astrobiologist.

 

 

 

Perhaps. If you twist my arm, I'd even be tempted to agree. However, note that these isolated areas are far less than the vast volume you were previously expecting to serve as a nursery for the first instances of life, and as pressure is the "limiting variable" for liquid water, and that pressure requires accumulated mass in order to generate the necessary gravity, these isolated areas of both sufficient pressure and temperature correspond very well to planets and moons, not vast volumes of a solar nebula.

 

 

 

 

Honestly, we're venturing too far from an amateur level of knowledge for me to feel comfortable in even speculating. I think you should find it instructive, though, to notice that even though the moon is relatively right next door to the Earth, and has approximately 1/8 the gravity of the Earth, nowhere on the moon would you expect to find liquid water. My contention all along has been not that abiogenesis must have taken place on (or in) the Earth - though this is the simplest assumption, but rather, abiogenesis must have taken place on (or in) a planet or moon. I am not aware of any reason to believe that abiogenesis could have taken place in a solar nebula.

 

The pressure requirement diminished my conjecture...Yes!

 

How much remains to be seen.

 

At the moment im considering if genesis might have taken place in the forming process of a planet or moon.

 

The smaller volume is countered by the longer time...

 

And I wholeheartedly agree its a question for experts to decide :)

 

But its nice that my question suddenly gets attention!

[Moontanman]

Well the matter at last gets discussed :)

 

"the only places where there would be enough pressure to form liquid water are on planets"

 

If I look at the graph, all that seems needed for parts of the cloud to contain liquid water is a temperature of 100

and a pressure slightly above 1...somehow this cannot be the case anywhere...Why?

 

I admit that in a contracting clouds the conditions for liquid water droplets to form is almost certain but the areas with these conditions would be ethereal, lasting maybe not more than weeks as the clouds contract and the water clouds in these areas are sucked down by gravity to much hotter levels.

 

I get the impression you are thinking of vast, more or less static, nebula dense enough to allow for liquid water oceans in free fall. This is simply not an accurate description of the reality. Although such a thing as liquid water in free fall naturally occurring is discussed in the Novel by Larry Niven "The Integral Trees" Such an occurrence would be so unlikely it can be ignored completely and that novel idea isn't a static nebula or a contracting nebula but a smoke ring around a neutron star.

 

I would not like to argue for comets...but theres many of them...

 

Any liquid water interior of comets would also be a short lived phenomena...

 

The proto sun had water in its contracting cloud

and you say that never in the process of spinning and contracting

the pressure and temperature allowed liquid water!

 

And the same in a lesser scale for planets...I would like to know : How do you know? I cant see it in the graph!

 

As I said such conditions in a contracting nebula would be fleeting.

 

I think it was Carl Sagan who proposed life in the clouds of gas giant planets but of course not the same thing...

 

 

If life came from elsewhere it had time there to evolve up to the cell,

which seems more difficult than later developments seemingly taking longer time.

 

Conplex life took a very long time to come about. Simple life like Bacteria and Archaea came almost 3.5 billion years before Eukaryota.

 

The pressure requirement diminished my conjecture...Yes!

 

Yes

 

How much remains to be seen.

 

Completely

 

At the moment im considering if genesis might have taken place in the forming process of a planet or moon.

 

Thomas Gold hypothesized that in his book "The Deep Hot Biosphere"

 

The smaller volume is countered by the longer time...

 

As I have pointed out the time would be extremely short... not longer

 

And I wholeheartedly agree its a question for experts to decide :)

 

But its nice that my question suddenly gets attention!

 

The idea of life forming in space has no evidence to support it and lots of obvious reasons why it couldn't happen, nebula are not vast clouds of gas under pressure. They would still be a good hard vacuum compared to Earth air pressure....

[sigurdV]

I admit that in a contracting clouds the conditions for liquid water droplets to form is almost certain but the areas with these conditions would be ethereal, lasting maybe not more than weeks as the clouds contract and the water clouds in these areas are sucked down by gravity to much hotter levels.

 

I get the impression you are thinking of vast, more or less static, nebula dense enough to allow for liquid water oceans in free fall. This is simply not an accurate description of the reality. Although such a thing as liquid water in free fall naturally occurring is discussed in the Novel by Larry Niven "The Integral Trees" Such an occurrence would be so unlikely it can be ignored completely and that novel idea isn't a static nebula or a contracting nebula but a smoke ring around a neutron star.

 

 

 

Any liquid water interior of comets would also be a short lived phenomena...

 

 

 

As I said such conditions in a contracting nebula would be fleeting.

 

I think it was Carl Sagan who proposed life in the clouds of gas giant planets but of course not the same thing...

 

 

 

 

Conplex life took a very long time to come about. Simple life like Bacteria and Archaea came almost 3.5 billion years before Eukaryota.

 

 

 

Yes

 

 

 

Completely

 

 

 

Thomas Gold hypothesized that in his book "The Deep Hot Biosphere"

 

 

 

As I have pointed out the time would be extremely short... not longer

 

 

 

The idea of life forming in space has no evidence to support it and lots of obvious reasons why it couldn't happen, nebula are not vast clouds of gas under pressure. They would still be a good hard vacuum compared to Earth air pressure....

 

I guess your description of my initial thinking is accurate...

 

But most of the time I try (after a while) to improve the basic assumptions of my thoughts. This time you were quicker.

 

On second thought: your idea of liquid water in comets is not so bad...

 

Let w be the amount of liquid water on earth, t be the time from the cooled earth until life appears,ws be the amount of liquid water in the cloud and ts be the time the ws exists...then my thesis is:

 

"t times w is less than ts times ws"

 

I still think t is a very small compared with ts but ws might be very much smaller than I thought, compared to w since most cloud water might be frozen...

 

All in all I think the inequality may hold even if only liquid water in comets are considered because of the eventual huge difference between t and ts!

 

Nice of you to consider the sun environment, if life starts there in the outer fringes it must somehow remain there and escape to be of any use...

Perhaps what was to be Mercurius came to the rescue?

 

What about Lagrange points? Did the sun take fire all at once or was the process slow, pushing water (and life with it) slowly outwards?...Remember that we think not much time is needed for genesis if the conditions are right!?

 

What happens the first time fusion occurs? Will a wave of radiation push matter outwards temporarily reducing pressure stopping the fusion? Can there be a long repeating process with radiation,turbulence and convection preventing some water from travelling too far towards the sun center? Making eventual life resistent to radiation?

 

Are we sure the early proto sun mass was not already in a turbulent condition making the route towards the center very long and time consuming, consisting in several rotations around the sun with possibilities of encountering turbulence moving water upwards?

 

Theres also Jupiter to consider, was there liquid water to be found in areas where life could be created and rescued by assistance of what became moons? Maybe a moon was so close that it eventually lost out to Jupiter but acted as a bridge out in space while it existed?

 

And the same thing maybe was the case with the sun...

 

If life anywhere within the cloud learned to take spore form it could travel far...within frozen water.

 

One explanation of why the cells took so long time to begin evolving here on earth could be that they like some archaic bacteria were experts in repairing their dna and keeping it intact... an ability acquired evolving in or near the sun?

 

To sum up: Was there a layer of suitable conditions for life circling the sun depending for its existence of several factors..among them outside gravity forces?...

The area is large so the amount of water should exceed earthly water...and so also the time factor.

 

I really would enjoy to see an expert try to rewrite the story of our stellar cloud in such a way that life may enter it as early as possible...it surely would outclass my feeble layman attempts to do so :)

Edited March 1, 2012 by sigurdV

[Moontanman]

I guess your description of my initial thinking is accurate...

 

But most of the time I try (after a while) to improve the basic assumptions of my thoughts. This time you were quicker.

 

On second thought: your idea of liquid water in comets is not so bad...

 

Let w be the amount of liquid water on earth, t be the time from the cooled earth until life appears,ws be the amount of liquid water in the cloud and ts be the time the ws exists...then my thesis is:

 

"t times w is less than ts times ws"

 

I still think t is a very small compared with ts but ws might be very much smaller than I thought, compared to w since most cloud water might be frozen...

 

All in all I think the inequality may hold even if only liquid water in comets are considered because of the eventual huge difference between t and ts!

 

Nice of you to consider the sun environment, if life starts there in the outer fringes it must somehow remain there and escape to be of any use...

Perhaps what was to be Mercurius came to the rescue?

 

What about Lagrange points? Did the sun take fire all at once or was the process slow, pushing water (and life with it) slowly outwards?...Remember that we think not much time is needed for genesis if the conditions are right!?

 

What happens the first time fusion occurs? Will a wave of radiation push matter outwards temporarily reducing pressure stopping the fusion? Can there be a long repeating process with radiation,turbulence and convection preventing some water from travelling too far towards the sun center? Making eventual life resistent to radiation?

 

Are we sure the early proto sun mass was not already in a turbulent condition making the route towards the center very long and time consuming, consisting in several rotations around the sun with possibilities of encountering turbulence moving water upwards?

 

Theres also Jupiter to consider, was there liquid water to be found in areas where life could be created and rescued by assistance of what became moons? Maybe a moon was so close that it eventually lost out to Jupiter but acted as a bridge out in space while it existed?

 

And the same thing maybe was the case with the sun...

 

If life anywhere within the cloud learned to take spore form it could travel far...within frozen water.

 

One explanation of why the cells took so long time to begin evolving here on earth could be that they like some archaic bacteria were experts in repairing their dna and keeping it intact... an ability acquired evolving in or near the sun?

 

I really would enjoy to see an expert try to rewrite the story of our stellar cloud in such a way that life may enter it as early as possible...it surely would outclass my feeble layman attempts to do so :)

 

 

Why do you insist on obfuscating the issue with nonsensical word salad? Cells developed in the wink of cosmic time I don't see why you say it took a very long time.

[sigurdV]

Why do you insist on obfuscating the issue with nonsensical word salad? Cells developed in the wink of cosmic time I don't see why you say it took a very long time.

Im not sure what your objection is?

Please dont obfuscate the issue with nonsensical word salad!

Make an intelligible point instead.

 

Is this what made you explode?

 

"One explanation of why the cells took so long time to begin evolving here on earth could be that they like some archaic bacteria were experts in repairing their dna and keeping it intact.."

 

Does this clarify?

 

"One explanation of why the cells took so long time to begin evolving into complex cells here on earth could be that they like some archaic bacteria were experts in repairing their dna and keeping it intact.."

 

To sum up: Could there have been a torus of suitable conditions for life circling the sun depending for its existence of several factors..among them outside gravity forces?...

The area could then be large, the amount of water could exceed earthly water...and so also could the time factor.

Edited March 2, 2012 by sigurdV

[Eudoxus]

I don't see why people feel the panspermia hypothesis is necessary. The basic metabolism of life is based on reducing chemistry; the early atmosphere of Earth was reductive. All the basic building blocks for complex organic matter were present on early Earth, and there are many known, plausible pathways for many important molecules to form. There is even a known mechanism for cell membrane creation, catalyzed by the common clay montmorillonite.

 

Organic matter can form in space; but I think there is ample evidence that that organic matter became organized, replicating, and life-like right here on Earth, without having to speculate about protostars and interstellar gas.

[maddog]

Why do you insist on obfuscating the issue with nonsensical word salad?

Moontanman,

 

I think you "hit the nail on the head" with that comment. I basically had neglected this thread as too much struggle to understand...

 

I missed a few things since I have been away.

 

1) We got off the Drake equation and are meandering on about "liquid water" in a micro-gravity environment... Why?

a) --- Because life need water to spawn? Is this the motivation?

Answer: Astronomers have found complex organic compounds (eg. Formaldehyde, etc) in space. These were probably created

without water.

 

B) As we had learned from Kohouteck (Sorry if I butchered this spelling) in 1973 comets may not be all water/ice. In the case near the center

water may form with enough pressure to liquify (based up JMJones phase diagram shown before).

 

2. I think the real issue lies in what processes generated the simplest forms to make life life form. This is the issue for me. If the Earth as

a planet formed about 4.6 Byrs ago and it is speculated that earliest forms of life about 3.6 Byrs then what changed in the environment of

the Earth (or any body) to supported this creation.

 

3. Europa as a satellite of Jupiter is now shown by Galileo probe to definitely have subsurface water. Could life form here as well? Also

someone mentioned Sagan. He made a conjecture that maybe at the right temperature and pressure that either Ammonia (NH3) or

Methane (CH4) can do some of the polar bonding tricks that water (H2O) does such that solvents could be derived from them instead of

water. If so we need to look to the outer moons of Titan, Triton, etc as possible living zones. Never know...

 

maddog

[maddog]

I don't see why people feel the panspermia hypothesis is necessary. The basic metabolism of life is based on reducing chemistry; the early atmosphere of Earth was reductive. All the basic building blocks for complex organic matter were present on early Earth, and there are many known, plausible pathways for many important molecules to form. There is even a known mechanism for cell membrane creation, catalyzed by the common clay montmorillonite.

 

Organic matter can form in space; but I think there is ample evidence that that organic matter became organized, replicating, and life-like right here on Earth, without having to speculate about protostars and interstellar gas.

Eudoxus,

 

I actually side with you this though I do not exclude Panspermia as a possible explanation. I do not consider it required either. I

am not sure I know of all the chemical processes in early life. I have read some of the research papers on experiments to simulate

this environment. So since the early 50's when we first started such experiments, we have learned a lot of what that environment

looked like. I don't think (or am I aware of) that we have discovered any link to what chemical processes or environment needed

that created the ability to replicate it's blueprint - be it DNA or RNA or some precursor. I would like to know. Why did we only need

these four base pairs when other similar ones are available.

 

maddog

[sigurdV]

Most importantly, my standard caveat applies. I am not an astronomer, an astrophysicist, nor an astrobiologist.

 

 

 

Perhaps. If you twist my arm, I'd even be tempted to agree. However, note that these isolated areas are far less than the vast volume you were previously expecting to serve as a nursery for the first instances of life, and as pressure is the "limiting variable" for liquid water, and that pressure requires accumulated mass in order to generate the necessary gravity, these isolated areas of both sufficient pressure and temperature correspond very well to planets and moons, not vast volumes of a solar nebula.

 

 

 

 

Honestly, we're venturing too far from an amateur level of knowledge for me to feel comfortable in even speculating. I think you should find it instructive, though, to notice that even though the moon is relatively right next door to the Earth, and has approximately 1/8 the gravity of the Earth, nowhere on the moon would you expect to find liquid water. My contention all along has been not that abiogenesis must have taken place on (or in) the Earth - though this is the simplest assumption, but rather, abiogenesis must have taken place on (or in) a planet or moon. I am not aware of any reason to believe that abiogenesis could have taken place in a solar nebula.

 

Im not believing anything... Im trying to see IF there is an alternative to the dominant view that lifes origin is on planets, and the reason for my enquiry is the awkward fact that if life originated on earth then (I read somewhere that) the period of development from non existence to cellular life was shorter than the period from cellular life to complex cells!

 

Maybe I have found an alternative, such that it explains the anomaly... The first life on earth can have been extremophiles resistant to change of their DNA!

 

I think its a new hypothesis and if we find extremophiles elsewhere in the solar system related to earthly extremophiles Ill consider my conjecture proven. ;)

[sigurdV]

I don't see why people feel the panspermia hypothesis is necessary. The basic metabolism of life is based on reducing chemistry; the early atmosphere of Earth was reductive. All the basic building blocks for complex organic matter were present on early Earth, and there are many known, plausible pathways for many important molecules to form. There is even a known mechanism for cell membrane creation, catalyzed by the common clay montmorillonite.

Organic matter can form in space; but I think there is ample evidence that that organic matter became organized, replicating, and life-like right here on Earth, without having to speculate about protostars and interstellar gas.

 

Small drops of water in microgravity will have surface tension where the cell membranes could have been formed.

Also the evolutionary process could have had a longer time span to proceed in than it had on earth!

Science will not progress if we refuse to investigate into alternatives to unproved theories!

 

Its not really wrong to reiterate the standard guesswork, but Im not fond of duplicating other ppls thoughts.

 

So I prefere the wilderness instead of the well trodden paths...

and I think thats one of the reasons my thinking is so frown upon :)

[sigurdV]

Moontanman,

 

I think you "hit the nail on the head" with that comment. I basically had neglected this thread as too much struggle to understand...

 

I missed a few things since I have been away.

 

1) We got off the Drake equation and are meandering on about "liquid water" in a micro-gravity environment... Why?

a) --- Because life need water to spawn? Is this the motivation?

Answer: Astronomers have found complex organic compounds (eg. Formaldehyde, etc) in space. These were probably created

without water.

 

B) As we had learned from Kohouteck (Sorry if I butchered this spelling) in 1973 comets may not be all water/ice. In the case near the center

water may form with enough pressure to liquify (based up JMJones phase diagram shown before).

 

2. I think the real issue lies in what processes generated the simplest forms to make life life form. This is the issue for me. If the Earth as

a planet formed about 4.6 Byrs ago and it is speculated that earliest forms of life about 3.6 Byrs then what changed in the environment of

the Earth (or any body) to supported this creation.

 

3. Europa as a satellite of Jupiter is now shown by Galileo probe to definitely have subsurface water. Could life form here as well? Also

someone mentioned Sagan. He made a conjecture that maybe at the right temperature and pressure that either Ammonia (NH3) or

Methane (CH4) can do some of the polar bonding tricks that water (H2O) does such that solvents could be derived from them instead of

water. If so we need to look to the outer moons of Titan, Triton, etc as possible living zones. Never know...

 

maddog

 

Hi maddog!

 

In the beginning of this thread all I had to go on was my reaction to the anomaly that it took one billion year from nothing to the cell,

while it took double the time for cells to become complex cells!

 

Since the pan spermi hypothesis also called for planets as the origin I decided to check the remaining alternative: The Stellar Cloud.

You can see how the struggle with Moontan Man forced me to the remaining possibility: THE SUN! (or near it)

So here is the alternative possibility (explaining the anomaly) I searched for:

 

While the proto sun took time to get fusion started, life had a long time to develop and learn how to survive as sphores (convection brought many cells into unfavorable territory) and the intermittent fusion process made them extremophiles, and at last the steady sunshine forced them away from the sun towards the planets, and moons where we might also find them... thereby proving the hypothesis.

 

Of course this might be completely wrong,

but I dont care ...it was an interesting tour :)

Edited April 18, 2012 by sigurdV

[maddog]

While the proto sun took time to get fusion started, life had a long time to develop and learn how to survive as sphores (convection brought many cells into unfavorable territory) and the intermittent fusion process made them extremophiles, and at last the steady sunshine forced them away from the sun towards the planets, and moons where we might also find them... thereby proving the hypothesis.

sigurdV,

 

The initiation of Fusion withing the core of the sun is a relatively short event in time (geologically speaking) as this is driven by gravity.

Maybe not seconds, yet not thousands of years either. So when I say 4.6 BYrs, I mean +/- say 10KYrs. The real value would be well within this "error bar".

 

Of course for Panspermia, you are not bound to the region of space where the sun is. Just this radius from the galactic center.

 

maddog

Edited April 19, 2012 by maddog

[sigurdV]

sigurdV,

 

The initiation of Fusion withing the core of the sun is a relatively short event in time (geologically speaking) as this is driven by gravity.

Maybe not seconds, yet not thousands of years either. So when I say 4.6 BYrs, I mean +/- say 10KYrs. The real value would be well within this "error bar".

 

Of course for Panspermia, you are not bound to the region of space where the sun is. Just this radius from the galactic center.

 

maddog

Thank you... my thoughts on the fusion process was only guesswork so information is appreciated :)

 

An exo stellar origin of life...hmmm possible, but arent the distances too long? I dont expect spores to travel fast.

 

I also dislike the thought because I prefere the idea that every stellar cloud (except the earliest..lacking vital constituents) will produce life at some time during formation of its solar system, then life will be abundant and "the business" of universes might be to produce life.

 

On the other hand... a universe packed with life might be a dangerous place to live in...

 

The general opinion seems to be that we are alone in the universe, that life is a random phenomenon of extremely low probability...sigh...

I really wish it were so, but Murphys Law forbids it :(

[sigurdV]

So how did life begin out there in space?

 

Lets see a description by Pyrotex on how it could have started on earth! Hopefully all we have to do is some rewriting...

The large body of water becomes an incredible huge collection of drops of water mixed with organics:

 

"Let's take a look at prebiogenesis (as I like to think of it), or as archeo-organic chemistry. Have you heard this reasoning before?

 

Assume a very large body of water, comprising those terrestial regions where depth is less than 10 meters, along coastlines. Assume massive amounts of solutes from lava-water interaction, and volcanic dusts. Assume massive amounts of ammonia, CO2, N2, Sulpher in various guises, many acidic. Assume large temperature (thermal) fluctuations, lightning bolts, solar radiation, and cosmic radiation due to lack of ozone. In other words, "Soup" Assume a lot of Time.

 

We know from experiments that a virtually unlimited variety of carbon compounds will eventually result out of this Soup. Many species of molecule will be relatively common, other rare. Consider that we have a huge number of "test tubes" available for natural chemistry experiments: hidden coves, caves, mudflats, tidal flats, beach zones, pools, lakes, etc. The Earth is a big place, so 10 to the 10th power of cubic-meter sized "test-tubes" is plausible. Let the average lifetime of each "test-tube" be a year, so in a billion years, we have 10^19 chemistry experiments.

 

We are concerned only with experiments where molecules of a minimum size can form; say an atomic weight of 100,000. that would be around approx 7,000 to 10,000 Carbon atoms in the molecule. Naturally, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, with traces of iron, sulfur and phosphorus would make up the rest, since those are the most common.

 

What we are looking for is NOT "life". We are looking for chemical reactions that reproduce molecules. For example, A + B + C + energy => D + E.

But E + 2F + energy => 2B + G. As you can see by inspection, the molecule B (whatever it is) will tend to multiply. There may be other reactions going on that destroy B, but if over time the average production per cycle is > 1, then B will multiply.

 

However, if B's average percentage of all chems changes that much, then we have changed the chemical environment, and now we have a "different" experiment, that enables (or retards) other reactions. Even in one "test tube" (a cubic meter of Soup) we would not be surprised to see that every time we visited it, the "recipe" in that test tube has changed, perhaps drastically.

 

Over Time (big T, millions of years) what we're going to see is that there are a large number (billions?) of molecules that are favored. They will be in cyclical reactions that produce them much faster than they die off. They probably play a role in many of those reactions, such that the greater the presence of B, the faster B is produced. up to a point of course.

 

The presence of so many concentrated species of molecules is constantly changing the landscape of both chemistry and environment. As this occurs, the average molecular weight of the dominate species also increases. More complexity and more complex reactions become possible. All it takes is more Time for a species of molecule to arrive on the scene that directly makes (near) copies of itself. For example:

J + 10K + 22L + 16M + 4 N => 2J + 32P + 8Q + 8R

Here, J would be the first proto-RNA molecule.

 

"J" would spread all over the Earth, using many if not most of the 10^19 test tubes. The experiment evolves--and this is the key point. From this time onwards, we are not doing RANDOM experiments, we are doing RANDOM experiments on "J". Progress speeds up. Eventually, we have an experiment where J' is produced much more efficiently than mere J. Or maybe it is less fragile. Or maybe one of its side-effect molecules produced (ie, "8Q") assemble to protect the J'. It takes over, elbowing out the ordinary J.

 

Now we have a NEW experiment. 10^18 to 10^19 test tubes using J'.

Then a NEWER experiment with all those test tubes using J''.

Side reactions and the environment change as well, until happenstance produces reactions that support/protect/enable J" production, perhaps by producing a "cell wall". Clay has been suggested as a catalyst for this.

 

That's as far as I'm going. Or need to. We have a self-reproducing proto-RNA molecule that affects its own environment."

 

At the same place where I collected Pyrotex story theres an opponent...

Biochemist has a problem with time...

Note that the problem is removed if the origin of life happened in SPACE:

"I appreciate you writing this down, Py. I have heard this before.

 

I do understand that this is the core of the prevailing theory for abiogenesis. I do think it appears more than a little bit wishful. Fundamentally, the statistical issue is that the first prokaryotes were pretty complex little creatures. That is, it appears subjectively that the increase in complexity from prokaryote to mammal is smaller than the increase in complexity form inorganic precursor to prokaryote. If we generally accept the 3.5 billion year age for the first prokaryote, and 4.5 billion year age of the planet, we optimistically get maybe 500 million years between adequate earth cooling and water aggregation and the generally-accepted life arrival date. Ancient prokaryotes had not just macromolecules, but organized enzyme systems with product-reactant feedback loops (just like mammals to) organized into physical deployment structures that optimize biochemical throughput.

 

I think that if you give youself 10^10 testubes, and put actual DNA bases, RNA bases (heck, throw in the sugars and the phosphates) and amino acids and bufferred the environment at 7.2, we would probably still have trouble getting a self replicating prokaryote in 500 million years in one of the test tubes. You can quibble with this, but this really is problematic. It is really tough to make the math work, given the size of the DNA in a prokaryote.

 

I don't have an issue with keeping this alternative open as a option. I just don't default to this model being reasonable.

 

Science does often show us surprises (heavens, particle physics comes to mind) so we can't rule your model out. But goodness, it certainly is not a comfortable hypothesis."

 

Unless you beat me to it Ill eventually print the facts about time!

Theres sufficiently much time and volume in the "sigurdV version" of Genesis:

 

My story starts with the beginning of the Stellar Cloud!

A rather long time ago.

Where in the early stages the organics began to form on chunks of ice...

(To be continued) :0318:

 

Since I have to fight alone, against both Evolutionists and Creationists,

it may take some time and effort...

Counting test tubes aint my cup of tea.

[maddog]

An exo stellar origin of life...hmmm possible, but arent the distances too long? I dont expect spores to travel fast.

I also dislike the thought because I prefere the idea that every stellar cloud (except the earliest..lacking vital constituents) will produce life at some time during formation of its solar system, then life will be abundant and "the business" of universes might be to produce life.

The Panspermia idea is a lot of conjecture anyway. Very lean on evidence. There is no requirement of a star nearby per se, just the material sufficient to make stuff. So when I was saying at the same galactic radius as the sun, I mean in the proximity of where might have formed. Thus the Panspermic cloud could have preceded the firing of the sun and thus be around before 6.5 BYrs. I am not aware of any guesstimate on the age of our galaxy if even known. So the bracket of time for the origin of any such cloud - is since 12.7 BYrs or so (maybe sometime after) till life arose on Earth.

 

On the other hand... a universe packed with life might be a dangerous place to live in...

The general opinion seems to be that we are alone in the universe, that life is a random phenomenon of extremely low probability...sigh...

I really wish it were so, but Murphys Law forbids it :(

I don't know you can conclude that "We are alone"...! You could speculate with some authority that maybe we might not be Interesting...?!?

That is nobody that might be out there really give a hoot of our existence if known. That we are known is likely as we have been broadcasting our existence since the wireless and TV.

 

Maybe this area of space is a "galactic nature preserve" and "galactic citizens" would suffer penalties if found communicating with the natives. Until you have an event, you can't prove or disprove a non-event in either way.

 

maddog

Edited April 23, 2012 by maddog