Plasma Comes Alive 267
j_hirny writes "So, it seems that the widely acclaimed theory of how life begun, during hundreds of millions of years is, at least, not the only one which is being researched. As New Scientist report, a physicist managed to create life-alike beings made of plasma. They can replicate, grow and duplicate. They don't have amino-acids or DNA strains, of course, yet they may reveal something new about life's beginnings."
Plasma Aliens (Score:5, Interesting)
This is interesting in the light of speculation about life-forms living on the surface of suns. (As described, for example, in David Brin's [davidbrin.com] Sundiver.)
Considering that a the surface of a sun itself consists of plasma, it's not improbable that spheres like in the experiment get formed there all the time. The question is whether there is any way those spheres could attain a more complex form of internal organisation, or if they remain stuck at that basic level.
Not! (Score:3, Interesting)
Reproduction is simply a continuance of that pattern. Think about it:
1) loud noise == cat runs to preserve itself.
2) War == baby boomer generation.
ad nasueum. What we have is a curiousity of bare physics, nothing more.
Re:No (Score:5, Interesting)
What, like ignoring the intellectual faculties given you by the Creator in favour of slavish devotion to some ancient collection of fairy tales?
No offence, but experiments with plasma aren't anything like as primitive as some of the things my Christian friends believe, such as the two creation myths in Genesis (although they never seem to have noticed that there are two, they just run with the cute serpent story).
Just my $0.02. You may now inform me that I am damned.
Re:A bit of wordplay here (Score:2, Interesting)
the high temperature needed to form doesn't seem like a major issue since at the very least volcanos and geysers could provide such an environment.
The plasma bubbles are interesting, but they don't seem to have even a wild guess about how they could have led to more typical forms of life.
Yes, yes you are. (Score:2, Interesting)
This orchestration of life is almost certainly bullshit. Even if a life-form could evolve from his bubbles, it would not share many of the features of life on earth. These things are pretty much miniature ball lightning.
However, many of the experiments into the origin of life are quite reasonable. Scientists have a pretty good idea of the environment about the time that life arose (at least, the time it arose if you trust fossil evidence). So they try to simulate things like lightning strikes or tidal pools in a similar environment, and they find that it creates many of the prerequisites for life "as we know it," including amino acids, nucleic acids, and microscopic spheres bounded by structures siimilar to prokaryotic membranes (no, I'm not talking about the plasma experiments).
Such experiments do not have humans "designing" life, but merely trying to recreate conditions which could have started it.
In any case, development of life this way can still be consistent with a God that created the universe, and possibly guided the development of life.
Ball Lightning (Score:5, Interesting)
More interesting references.
http://www.amasci.com/tesla/ballignt
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/tesla/ballgtn.
Re:I'm gonna get crap for this, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
We have evidence for the laws of physics. What's the evidence for God?
(Incidentally, we have evidence for things spontaneously popping into existence, too: quantum physics.)
That's an interesting use of the word "perfect" there..
Here's some more crap on your shoe... (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, on to something on a slight side note. Here's a great rant by esteemed author Ben Bova. [benbova.net] He gives a good argument on why teaching creationism is a load of bull, and that all the agguments against evolution and for creationism are ultimately flawed. Very enlightening.
Re:Neat (Score:3, Interesting)
Then perhaps we should think carefully about whether we should use a definition of life that admits such phenomena. Aristotle's definition of "man" [google.com] needed to be revised when a counterexample was pointed out.
Re:Plasma Aliens (Score:3, Interesting)
Any references older than 1937? :)
(Btw. Starmaker is quite interesting, though I find Stapledons writing rather tedious - it's essentially fictional history of life in the universe, from beginning to end; spanning billions of years in a few hundred pages)
Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)
Government, religion, education, science, philosophy, literature, music, art, food, clothing, architecture, and more in every society have been influenced by a belief in a supreme Creator. It is inseparable from the human experience. Everyone has a theistic orientation, whether it's a/mono/pan/poly-theistic or avowed agnosticism. As the Rush song goes, even if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Now please don't give the obligatory troll response of "what about a tooth fairy orientation?" Nobody believes in that. It was created as fiction from the beginning. It was never intended to be believed and plays no fundamental part (by a long shot) in the human experience.
God is axiomatic. Most people are born into the world and just know it. Theism is natural. Atheism must be taught.
(If evolution has determined that theism is important to humans, then you are choosing to devolve your posterity. Your descendents can look forward to welcoming their evolutionary superior theistic overlords. ;-)
Pure science would be objective, but everyone has philosophic bias. A denial of bias blinds a scientist to the nature of his own being and the skewed inclinations of his own presuppositions. Philosophy influences not just the interpretation of experiments, but the very construction of experiments and the choice of which experiments to conduct. Like in the media, a bias is revealed as much by what is not included than by what is included.
There is nothing in or of the Earth that contradicts the Bible; the Bible and the Earth are complementary. They were created by the same Omniscient Being. Why does "science" seem to contradict the Bible? As the Wahabis have hijacked the religion of Islam, so have the militant Atheists hijacked the practice of science. Science was first practiced in order to have greater understanding of the Creator's handiwork.
Science is worship. It used to be worship of the One who created the objects of study. We sought knowledge of creation so that we would have more to thank God for; so that we would see manifestations of His majesty and glory; so that we might gain some insight into the character of the Lord of the Universe. Now, scientists worship the knowledge itself of the created things, while denying the One who made it all. Thus, they blind themselves to the greater realizations and appreciations that science is meant to seek out. Those who are agnostic (a-gnostic; Greek for no knowledge), have chosen to remain know-nothings -- ignorant of the knowledge of God.
There is only one account of creation in the Bible. It is the chronological account in chapter one. This narrative of the creative stages ends at the conclusion of chapter one. Chapter two mentions creation, but, in fact, moves on to a completely different subject. After the sixth day (i.e., after the last verse of the chapter), creation has been completed, and God takes a day off to reflect upon His creation. This chapter puts the focus on God's relationship with man. The transition is in Gen. 2:1-3 where God provides man with his first Sabbath. This is part of the God-man relationship, because Jesus said, "The Sabbath was made on account and for the sake of man, not man for the Sabbath." (Mark 2:27, Amplified Bible) Keeping the Sabbath holy is the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:8-11) and an integral part of God's covenant with man.
Chapter two complements chapter one. It backtracks and shows how t