Jump to content
Science Forums

Life's Origins


hazelm

Recommended Posts

I saw another news item that life came from outer space via all sorts of paths.  There are at least 500 of those, maybe a thousand.  So, I skipped it.  Then I went to Wiki's Abiogenesis and discovered there are at least 200 branches of that.  So, I'll also skip JustForFun's challenge and lock A-Wal's door while someone sorts it all out. 

 

Meanwhile, I have a question about abiogenesis that I suspect anybody can answer.  At least I hope so.  A simple Yes or No will do it.

 

IF  (stress the word IF which many seem not to understand the meaning of)  IF, as abiogenesis says, life formed from inorganic materials, does that mean that the many different forms of life are a result of the many  different inorganic forms of matter?

 

Would I confuse the issue if I suggested the many different combinations of the elements resulted in different forms of inorganic matter which then formed many different species of life?

 

Notice:  I am not asking for any support of the idea.  I only want to know if that is what abiogenesis is saying.

 

Thank you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I saw another news item that life came from outer space via all sorts of paths.  There are at least 500 of those, maybe a thousand.  So, I skipped it.  Then I went to Wiki's Abiogenesis and discovered there are at least 200 branches of that.  So, I'll also skip JustForFun's challenge and lock A-Wal's door while someone sorts it all out. 

 

Meanwhile, I have a question about abiogenesis that I suspect anybody can answer.  At least I hope so.  A simple Yes or No will do it.

 

IF  (stress the word IF which many seem not to understand the meaning of)  IF, as abiogenesis says, life formed from inorganic materials, does that mean that the many different forms of life are a result of the many  different inorganic forms of matter?

 

Would I confuse the issue if I suggested the many different combinations of the elements resulted in different forms of inorganic matter which then formed many different species of life?

 

Notice:  I am not asking for any support of the idea.  I only want to know if that is what abiogenesis is saying.

 

Thank you.

If you watch the show Castle Rock there's a deaf man in the woods who describes the ringing in one's ears as "the schismo" synchronizing consciousnesses. The vibrational frequency has been compared to "the voice of God" in several mythologies, in Twin Peaks even. Like the static electricity, or "white noise" or when you get static on an old fashioned TV when the channel goes out, it's apart of the CMBR Artifact. In fact you can say information panspermia via quantum entanglement is potentially several orders of magnitude faster than Warp Factor 9 in Star Trek or c^9, when selecting potentialities for Goldilocks planet alien abiogeneses via probability manipulation in the simulated microverses harvested by matrioshka brains of kugelblitz driven partial dyson swarms...

Edited by Super Polymath
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I saw another news item that life came from outer space via all sorts of paths.  There are at least 500 of those, maybe a thousand.  So, I skipped it.  Then I went to Wiki's Abiogenesis and discovered there are at least 200 branches of that.  So, I'll also skip JustForFun's challenge and lock A-Wal's door while someone sorts it all out. 

 

Meanwhile, I have a question about abiogenesis that I suspect anybody can answer.  At least I hope so.  A simple Yes or No will do it.

 

IF  (stress the word IF which many seem not to understand the meaning of)  IF, as abiogenesis says, life formed from inorganic materials, does that mean that the many different forms of life are a result of the many  different inorganic forms of matter?

 

Would I confuse the issue if I suggested the many different combinations of the elements resulted in different forms of inorganic matter which then formed many different species of life?

 

Notice:  I am not asking for any support of the idea.  I only want to know if that is what abiogenesis is saying.

 

Thank you.

Interesting question Hazel. 

 

First of all it is worth keeping in mind that science has no theory of abiogenesis. All we have is a few speculative and tantalising pieces of a jigsaw. "Abiogenesis" is merely the term for the process by which life arose from non-life. It does not imply we know what that process was.

 

What we can say, however, is that there is pretty strong evidence that all life seems to have come from a common ancestor, rather than what you are in effect suggesting, that the life we see today came from a number of different original forms. The evidence is in the degree of commonality of the basic biochemistry. Things like the use of ATP <-> ADP as the chemical "battery" for energy in cellular reactions, which we discussed on another thread recently. And perhaps you know the famous observation that we share 50% of our DNA with a banana. 

 

So, while there could, I suppose, have been more than one form of proto-life, it looks as if one came to dominate pretty quickly and, if there were any rivals, they have not left any identifiable descendants. Or not so far as we know. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From ExChemist:  So, while there could, I suppose, have been more than one form of proto-life, it looks as if one came to dominate pretty quickly and, if there were any rivals, they have not left any identifiable descendants. Or not so far as we know.

 

Trusting that you are speaking of what those who speak for abiogenesis say/speculate, the basic idea of origin is the same as it is for Darwinism.  Yes?  Is so, I have a response to that but I'm trying very hard to keep this simple.  One step at a time. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From ExChemist:  So, while there could, I suppose, have been more than one form of proto-life, it looks as if one came to dominate pretty quickly and, if there were any rivals, they have not left any identifiable descendants. Or not so far as we know.

 

Trusting that you are speaking of what those who speak for abiogenesis say/speculate, the basic idea of origin is the same as it is for Darwinism.  Yes?  Is so, I have a response to that but I'm trying very hard to keep this simple.  One step at a time. 

"Darwinism" is a term mainly used by social scientists, politicians and creationists. In biology, people who want to talk about the basic concept of evolution by variation and natural selection tend to refer to that as "Darwinian evolution", rather than "Darwinism". 

 

But no, the process of abiogenesis is quite a different subject from Darwinian evolution. 

 

Darwinian evolution presupposes that you already have a mechanism by which characteristics can be inherited, from one generation to the next. Once you have that in place, then natural selection can work to amplify advantageous characteristics and eliminate disadvantageous ones. Darwinian evolution is a theory of how one species can arise from an earlier one. It is not a theory of how life started in the first place. 

 

Abiogenesis may well have started without any mechanism for inheritance. There are, so I have read, several hypotheses for what features of life came to pass first. Inheritance? Metabolism? Something structural? etc. Personally I have difficulty seeing how inheritance can have arisen first. My money would be on metabolism. It takes a lot of energy to assemble the complex molecules for heredity. I'd have thought you would get a source of energy in cellular reactions first and then the complexity arose subsequently, drawing on the energy. So maybe a system of reactions producing an ATP <-> ADP cycle and then more complex reactions harnessing the ATP energy store to build bigger molecules.

 

But it's all speculation so far.    

Edited by exchemist
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We are wandering a bit.  I was only trying to touch at the very beginning of life - the very first spark of life in the universe.  I think I see my problem now.  I was seeing abiogenesis as an "antagonist" to Darwinian evolutions[ opinion of how life began.  If I follow now, it is not.  It  simply denies biogenesis as the origin of life.  Hence the term "abiogenesis".   Other details and/or disagreements may come up later but that's their "origin".  And, they are right.  Unless you believe that God created first life, the universe's first life could not have been biogenetic. 

 

My opinion but it is not my purpose to argue that. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We are wandering a bit.  I was only trying to touch at the very beginning of life - the very first spark of life in the universe.  I think I see my problem now.  I was seeing abiogenesis as an "antagonist" to Darwinian evolutions[ opinion of how life began.  If I follow now, it is not.  It  simply denies biogenesis as the origin of life.  Hence the term "abiogenesis".   Other details and/or disagreements may come up later but that's their "origin".  And, they are right.  Unless you believe that God created first life, the universe's first life could not have been biogenetic. 

 

My opinion but it is not my purpose to argue that. 

Yes, I had to look this up but it seems it was Huxley in the c.19th who originally drew a distinction between life arising from other life, which he termed biogenesis and life arising from non-life, which he termed abiogenesis. We seem to have adopted his nomenclature. 

 

Darwinian evolution shows how you get from one organism to another, but not how organisms appeared in the first place. So there is no conflict: the two things are complementary. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, I had to look this up but it seems it was Huxley in the c.19th who originally drew a distinction between life arising from other life, which he termed biogenesis and life arising from non-life, which he termed abiogenesis. We seem to have adopted his nomenclature. 

 

Darwinian evolution shows how you get from one organism to another, but not how organisms appeared in the first place. So there is no conflict: the two things are complementary. 

Looks that way.  Glad I got that straight.  Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On a side note, It would seem that many forms of life can generated via Abiogenesis, there is some evidence that an alternate biochemistry Abiogenesis is happening on Jupiter's moon Titan with structured Vinyl Cyanide, so if alternate biochemical life is happening within our solar system with our own Amino Acid based life on earth within the same solar system that lends evidence that Abiogenesis happens all the time, if two biochemistries of Abiogenesis are forming within a single solar system.

 

 

Titan's Cell Membrane

 

azotosome.jpg

 

Earth's Cell Membrane

 

The-most-common-molecule-that-provides-t

Edited by VictorMedvil
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On a side note, It would seem that many forms of life can generated via Abiogenesis, there is some evidence that an alternate biochemistry Abiogenesis is happening on Jupiter's moon Titan with structured Vinyl Cyanide, so if alternate biochemical life is happening within our solar system with our own Amino Acid based life on earth within the same solar system that lends evidence that Abiogenesis happens all the time, if two biochemistries of Abiogenesis are forming within a single solar system.

 

 

 

 

What evidence? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What evidence? 

 

That Abiogenesis may have happened twice in a solar system, now to find a few more planets with proto-life on it and we will have ourselves repeated evidence which lends itself toward Abiogenesis of life being correct. The Evidence is cell membrane-like vinyl cyanide formation on the Moon Titan.

Edited by VictorMedvil
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That Abiogenesis may have happened twice in a solar system, now to find a few more planets with proto-life on it and we will have ourselves repeated evidence which lends itself toward Abiogenesis of life being correct. The Evidence is cell membrane-like vinyl cyanide formation on the Moon Titan.

There is nothing "membrane-like" about vinyl cyanide (a.k.a acrylonitrile). It's a molecule that can serve as a monomer for a class of polymers.  No membranes have been found. All that has been found is the vinyl cyanide molecule, in the atmosphere of Titan. 

 

Some scientists suggest that this could form membranes, under certain conditions. But nobody has found those conditions on Titan, let alone actual membranes. And of course you need a hell of a lot more than a membrane in order to have life. You need an entire biochemistry going on inside the membrane. Nobody has any idea of whether this is possible in the environment of Titan. 

 

So there is no evidence of an alternative biochemistry taking place on Titan. All we have is some acrylonitrile monomer. 

 

Footnote added later: if you look up"azotosome", you can read more about these hypothetical membranes based on acrylonitrile. 

Edited by exchemist
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There is nothing "membrane-like" about vinyl cyanide (a.k.a acrylonitrile). It's a molecule that can serve as a monomer for a class of polymers.  No membranes have been found. All that has been found is the vinyl cyanide molecule, in the atmosphere of Titan. 

 

Some scientists suggest that this could form membranes, under certain conditions. But nobody has found those conditions on Titan, let alone actual membranes. And of course you need a hell of a lot more than a membrane in order to have life. You need an entire biochemistry going on inside the membrane. Nobody has any idea of whether this is possible in the environment of Titan. 

 

So there is no evidence of an alternative biochemistry taking place on Titan. All we have is some acrylonitrile monomer. 

 

Footnote added later: if you look up"azotosome", you can read more about these hypothetical membranes based on acrylonitrile. 

 

Oh, I thought an actual membrane version of them had been found on Titan, more like a Pool of Amino Acids, I suppose from what you are saying.

Edited by VictorMedvil
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, I thought an actual membrane version of them had been found on Titan, more like a Pool of Amino Acids, I suppose from what you are saying.

No, from what I read, vinyl cyanide (CH2=CH-CN) has been detected spectroscopically in the atmosphere of Titan, that's all.

 

The Huygens probe did make a soft landing on Titan, which is what you would need to detect actual tiny membranes, but nothing like that was either looked for or found, so far as I can tell.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...