New theory on how life began

[untermensche]

Once in five billion years.

Doesn't sound like something likely to happen, as is contended.

Say's who? Where's your evidence for that?

Genetics.

What we do know is that the conditions on a primordial Earth and the Earth we now live on are quite different. Indeed - the Miller-Urey experiment showed that such a set of conditions are conducive to building amino acid chains. Now what happens after that is a bit of a mystery but I'm pretty certain that the same evolutionary model describes conditions then as they do now - it could well be that it did happen multiple times but only one line survived due to competition, or alternately that first line was sufficiently successful enough that it was able to continue reproducing in the largely anaerobic atmosphere of the early Earth leading up to the Oxygen Holocaust.

Alleged amino acids are not life, not close to life.

Life is a system where genetic information is transformed into specific strings of amino acids, not free floating amino acids, which is as I said, soup.

Once that happens two key things change. (A) the chemistry of the conditions is irrevocably changed, and (2) the Earth is full of basic life. Now we still observe polymerization happening, but the conditions are less conducive to forming net-new biopolymers that would eventually become the building blocks of new life - and more importantly there are organisms that are able to consume any biopolymers and proto-biopolymers just as we have have observed bacteria who eat simpler polymers like Nylon and polyethylene.

Life has to be self-sustaining and able to replicate.

The earth is not filled with the basics of this. There appears to be one lineage and one instance of life arising.

To say we don't have enough specificity of every step is to make the exact argument the creationists do about the missing link, or to make the claim that I couldn't possibly exist unless I'm able to produce the skeleton of my great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother.

This is a wildly absurd claim and something someone trying to pass rank speculation off as inevitability might say.

 

[Juma]

The earth is not filled with the basics of this. There appears to be one lineage and one instance of life arising.

"Appears" is the weasel word here...

 

[Angry Floof]

I think I missed where the article said that the described process is a one-time event from the past.

I think creationists are wrong when they insist that creation is a singularity that happened in the distant past and that everything that has happened since is just sort of clockwork borne out of that singular creation event. I don't see how it would be so from a scientific view, either.

Are the processes described not things that go on all the time throughout nature?

 

[untermensche]

The earth is not filled with the basics of this. There appears to be one lineage and one instance of life arising.

"Appears" is the weasel word here...

The facts are weasel words?

If it is just zippity do daa moving molecules to life then why is it not starting all the time?

 

[Juma]

"Appears" is the weasel word here...

The facts are weasel words?

If it is just zippity do daa moving molecules to life then why is it not starting all the time?

Please show that it is a fact.

 

[Angry Floof]

"Appears" is the weasel word here...

The facts are weasel words?

If it is just zippity do daa moving molecules to life then why is it not starting all the time?

That's my question. Who says it isn't? Groups of atoms are exposed to sources of energy all the time.

Why the assumption that it's a one-off deal in the past?

 

[PyramidHead]

The facts are weasel words?

If it is just zippity do daa moving molecules to life then why is it not starting all the time?

That's my question. Who says it isn't? Groups of atoms are exposed to sources of energy all the time.

Why the assumption that it's a one-off deal in the past?

Because the progenitors of what we call life are easy prey for existing life. Abiogenesis was able to happen for the first time because there were no microbes around to break the first lifeforms down for energy. Nowadays, there are few places where self-organizing molecules could progress far enough toward replication and metabolism without being snuffed out by other organisms long before then.

 

[untermensche]

The facts are weasel words?

If it is just zippity do daa moving molecules to life then why is it not starting all the time?

Please show that it is a fact.

All that exists is interrelated.

They all use similar mechanisms.

Where are the other forms of life that have started as well?

 

[untermensche]

The facts are weasel words?

If it is just zippity do daa moving molecules to life then why is it not starting all the time?

That's my question. Who says it isn't? Groups of atoms are exposed to sources of energy all the time.

Why the assumption that it's a one-off deal in the past?

We can only talk about this planet, and there is no evidence it is not a one time event.

All the evidence is that all life is interrelated and variation is the result of evolution, not multiple genesis.

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That's my question. Who says it isn't? Groups of atoms are exposed to sources of energy all the time.

Why the assumption that it's a one-off deal in the past?

Because the progenitors of what we call life are easy prey for existing life. Abiogenesis was able to happen for the first time because there were no microbes around to break the first lifeforms down for energy. Nowadays, there are few places where self-organizing molecules could progress far enough toward replication and metabolism without being snuffed out by other organisms long before then.

You assume no patches of isolation for billions of years.

It is not a theory that would stand up to investigation.

 

[Angry Floof]

That's my question. Who says it isn't? Groups of atoms are exposed to sources of energy all the time.

Why the assumption that it's a one-off deal in the past?

Because the progenitors of what we call life are easy prey for existing life. Abiogenesis was able to happen for the first time because there were no microbes around to break the first lifeforms down for energy. Nowadays, there are few places where self-organizing molecules could progress far enough toward replication and metabolism without being snuffed out by other organisms long before then.

Gotcha. So it's pretty much a one-off but not due to life needing a special singularity event to begin, but that that event has a hard time happening again due to the nature of the life it started. Is this a useful understanding?

 

[untermensche]

Because the progenitors of what we call life are easy prey for existing life. Abiogenesis was able to happen for the first time because there were no microbes around to break the first lifeforms down for energy. Nowadays, there are few places where self-organizing molecules could progress far enough toward replication and metabolism without being snuffed out by other organisms long before then.

Gotcha. So it's pretty much a one-off but not due to life needing a special singularity event to begin, but that that event has a hard time happening again due to the nature of the life it started. Is this a useful understanding?

The question is: Is it true?

Is there evidence for it?

Or is it mere speculation?

 

[PyramidHead]

Because the progenitors of what we call life are easy prey for existing life. Abiogenesis was able to happen for the first time because there were no microbes around to break the first lifeforms down for energy. Nowadays, there are few places where self-organizing molecules could progress far enough toward replication and metabolism without being snuffed out by other organisms long before then.

Gotcha. So it's pretty much a one-off but not due to life needing a special singularity event to begin, but that that event has a hard time happening again due to the nature of the life it started. Is this a useful understanding?

I'm just going by the hypotheses I have read, as nobody really knows for sure. It could be both, honestly. Perhaps life-starting "events" are long, drawn-out processes that take millions of years of happy coincidences to amount to anything, and an environment devoid of pre-existing life may be the only favorable conditions for these processes. Between the catalyst of whatever reaction starts the ball rolling and the emergence of something that carries instructions on how to make copies of itself, there were probably many opportunities for the whole thing to fall apart, and it might have been interrupted and started over numerous times. Not having other critters around to complicate matters was likely important. But there's a spatial component as well; these types of events could have been happening separately and independently on opposite ends of the planet. Whether their eventual convergence on the same nucleic acid code is staggeringly unlikely or inevitable is unknown, but I think the prevailing opinion is that all life can be traced back to just one lineage.

 

[untermensche]

Perhaps life-starting "events" are long, drawn-out processes that take millions of years of happy coincidences to amount to anything, and an environment devoid of pre-existing life may be the only favorable conditions for these processes.

Of course. Many things are possible.

There is no way to assign odds to the likelihood of life arising.

At least at our current level of understanding.

Life is the opposite of just letting things happen.

It is making a specific protein over and over, on purpose.

 

[none]

odds are life exists now and hasn't always existed
not sure what you think your contribution is but it isn't wisdom

 

[Angry Floof]

Gotcha. So it's pretty much a one-off but not due to life needing a special singularity event to begin, but that that event has a hard time happening again due to the nature of the life it started. Is this a useful understanding?

I'm just going by the hypotheses I have read, as nobody really knows for sure. It could be both, honestly. Perhaps life-starting "events" are long, drawn-out processes that take millions of years of happy coincidences to amount to anything, and an environment devoid of pre-existing life may be the only favorable conditions for these processes. Between the catalyst of whatever reaction starts the ball rolling and the emergence of something that carries instructions on how to make copies of itself, there were probably many opportunities for the whole thing to fall apart, and it might have been interrupted and started over numerous times. Not having other critters around to complicate matters was likely important. But there's a spatial component as well; these types of events could have been happening separately and independently on opposite ends of the planet. Whether their eventual convergence on the same nucleic acid code is staggeringly unlikely or inevitable is unknown, but I think the prevailing opinion is that all life can be traced back to just one lineage.

Ah, ok. Thanks.

 

[4321lynx]

Perhaps life-starting "events" are long, drawn-out processes that take millions of years of happy coincidences to amount to anything, and an environment devoid of pre-existing life may be the only favorable conditions for these processes.

Of course. Many things are possible.

There is no way to assign odds to the likelihood of life arising.

At least at our current level of understanding.

Life is the opposite of just letting things happen.

It is making a specific protein over and over, on purpose.

So various stuff just happens for millions of years, billions of years; here, there, and everywhere; in trillions of locations... and then somewhere - Bingo!- stuff starts to repeat to happen... It's a hypothesis, a gamble comes to be successful --- you don't like it, or so it seems to me --- so what's your view? A creator? A visit from space? What?

I have seen a man make a hole-in-one the first time he played golf, have had two different Royal Flushes dealt to me the same evening in a friendly game for pennies, but have never won more than a white rabbit in any lottery. But stuff happens. Tell us about your stuff.

 

[untermensche]

odds are life exists now and hasn't always existed
not sure what you think your contribution is but it isn't wisdom

I can contribute nothing to closed minds that offer no argument to agree with or dispute.

You can't possibly think you have said anything when you say:

odds are life exists now and hasn't always existed

Again, for the slow, the question is: What are the odds of life existing?

Nobody can get close to answering that.

 

[Juma]

Please show that it is a fact.

All that exists is interrelated.

They all use similar mechanisms.

Do they? You cannot know that. This planet is totally infected by life "model 1" so any new prelife forms could simply be outconcurrented by the established forms.

 

[Juma]

I can contribute nothing to closed minds that offer no argument to agree with or dispute.

Priceless.

 

[untermensche]

Of course. Many things are possible.

There is no way to assign odds to the likelihood of life arising.

At least at our current level of understanding.

Life is the opposite of just letting things happen.

It is making a specific protein over and over, on purpose.

So various stuff just happens for millions of years, billions of years; here, there, and everywhere; in trillions of locations... and then somewhere - Bingo!- stuff starts to repeat to happen... It's a hypothesis, a gamble comes to be successful --- you don't like it, or so it seems to me --- so what's your view? A creator? A visit from space? What?

Saying it is a bald hypothesis is not saying I don't like it.

But there may be many necessary events along the way that we cannot possibly know have happened. We cannot possibly know the odds of it happening.

It is a general notion of how life probably arose.

It is nothing scientific.

I have seen a man make a hole-in-one the first time he played golf, have had two different Royal Flushes dealt to me the same evening in a friendly game for pennies, but have never won more than a white rabbit in any lottery. But stuff happens. Tell us about your stuff.

To dispute bad ideas I need to present other unrelated ideas?

Ridiculous.

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I can contribute nothing to closed minds that offer no argument to agree with or dispute.

Priceless.

Doubly priceless.

Wow this is easy.