Scientists Are Cracking the Primordial Soup Mystery 278
derekmead writes "Scientists have had a basic understanding of how life first popped up on Earth for a while. The so-called 'primordial soup' was sitting around, stagnant but containing the basic building blocks of life. Then something happened and we ended up with life. It's that 'something' that has been the sticking point for scientists, but new research from a team of scientists at the University of Leeds has started to shed light on the mystery, explaining just how objects from space might have kindled the reaction that sparked life on Earth. It's generally accepted that space rocks played an important role in life's genesis on Earth. Meteorites bombarding the planet early in its history delivered some of the necessary materials for life but none brought life as we know it. How inanimate rocks transformed into the building blocks of life has been a mystery. But this latest research suggests an answer. If meteorites containing phosphorus landed in the hot, acidic pools that surrounded young volcanoes on the early Earth, there could have been a reaction that produced a chemical similar one that's found in all living cells and is vital in producing the energy that makes something alive."
Re:Here we go again...... (Score:5, Insightful)
If we were to suddenly discover the exact mechanism, it changes nothing.
Oh yeah it does, if we can figure out how life was created, we can create more life. And THAT opens the door to a lot.....
Re:Pseudoscientific Crap (Score:3, Insightful)
... and exactly how many multi-million-year simulations have you run that prove the negative you assert, that never, once, ever, a 'beneficial code combination' escaped destruction by the 'destructive combinations' long enough to make a few copies of itself? Or that it never can?
I notice you specifically said ".. complex life". Well of course, no one asserts the primordial soup went from a few simple molecules to "complex life" in one magical step. The crux is that systems can grow in complexity in small, incremental steps.
Genetic algorithms have already shown that natural selection can operate on pre-life patterns. It works like a ratchet, each step can build on the next up the "complexity" ladder.
Never say 'never'. Never say 'guaranteed' either. Especially when it comes to nature, given geologic time. It if doesn't out-and-out violate the laws of physics, who are you or anyone else to say it couldn't happen, given the right conditions and enough time?
Re:betta fix that first sentence (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter how it happened, it happened fast... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here we go again...... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Here we go again...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stop acting as if like was an on/off switch! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because it's "common knowledge in Germany", that doesn't make it right. Science isn't built on what's "common knowledge". Your insulting tone and wording lend credence to the theory that you're just pulling from your nether regions.
Further, if you actually read TFA, you'll note that isn't about proteins - it's about ATP, an enzyme. (Something your facile "explanation" doesn't address at all, further raising suspicions as to it's value.)
Translation (Score:0, Insightful)
Atheists (not scientists) have found absolutely no evidence for universal common descent, can not defend abiogensis, and are coming up with more desperate imaginary fairy tales to defend their faith.
Re:Pseudoscientific Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Even though you are being modded up by the usual suspects and I am being modded down, everything you said above is pseudoscientific crap. Sorry. Genetic algorithms have already shown that natural selection can operate on pre-life patterns? This is pure unmitigated BS on the face of it.
You're modded down because you're simply ignorant, and refuse to open your mind to new knowledge. I feel bad for you. You seek absolute truth -- Proof of exactly what happened. There is no absolute truth in science. This is where you fall short on the science stick. We don't have the absolute evidence -- It's gone. The oldest of Earth's crust has been reabsorbed into the mantle. This happened billions of years ago, but it was after life formed here.
Application of one set of inferences and conclusions based on observations to other similar systems is not bullshit. Not any more bullshit than applying math like Information theory to descriptions of biological processes, like evolution. Selection pressure is being used in many ways, both natural and artificially. That we can do so artificially indicates that such could occur naturally as well. In short: What we see in a lab may be applied in the rest of the world. It's a basic tenet of science.
We apply evolutionary concepts in simulations because it's cheaper, but what this tells us is that it's possible for life to emerge. If we did have the time to sit and wait, we could put molecules into a specific soup in the right conditions, and eventually life would emerge. If you're lucky, have a big enough environment, and have enough time, then sentient life can emerge. We may not have the exact recipe, but we've gotten similar results with so many other ingredients that the possibility is undeniably in the favor for the emergence of life in this way -- We're not even sure if the recipe was brewed here, it If not here, then elsewhere and seeded here, but we're sure enough about the mechanism of selection that we can say that it played a key role in the formation of life.
What's interesting to me is the application of information theory to the Universe. If our universe were as you say, having too much entropic forces that would destroy all complexity before it got complex enough to be called alive, then life could not have formed. You also don't want a Universe with too little chaos; Not enough randomness and you get a monoculture -- Something that just forms then degrades over time once, with no speciation -- Like crystals. However, the parameters of this Universe are such that there is enough chaos to allow complexity to arise, but not so much randomness that it can not arise.
IMO, Earth being in the gulf between spiral arms is a huge benefit to the rise of life. Less dramatic life eradicating entropic events, like gamma ray bursts. That's where we should look for other life: Cradled between the arms of the galaxies -- They should have sent a poet.
I leave you with more evolution in action. [youtube.com]
Re:Here we go again...... (Score:3, Insightful)
You keep acting as if the mere fact that you can form an opinion gives that opinion weight.
Your opinions appear to be based on your personal ignorance. Even wtrse, you seem to hold your ignorance in high esteem, and condemn those that don't suffer your willful ignorance.
Humans evolved from apes, are apes and that is that.
Re:Exotic minerals from space rocks (Score:4, Insightful)
We live bathed in an atmosphere rich in oxygen, on a planet with seas full of sodium and chlorine. Any of those exotic space minerals would eventually react with something in the atmosphere or ocean and become something that we're more familiar with. In space any mineral created will last pretty much forever, as there is nothing for it to react with unless the asteroid hits some other.
True today, but at the time of the start of life (generally recognised as before 3.5 Gyr ago), Earth was pretty much free of oxygen. Thelarge oxygen atmosphere we know today appeared around 2.3 Gyr ago; life before this was Bacterial (technically: Archea) and based more on methanogenic and sulphur-breathing bacteria, much as we find in hydrothermal vents and extreme environments today (such bacteria ironically produce oxygen but are poisoned by it, so we don't see them on Earths surface).
More important for the 'space mineral' is that its components aren't lost. Iron-based minerals that were in the original rocks that formed Earth would have sunk to the core in the first few molten million years of Earths existence: the stuff we find on Earths surface were from fresh influxes after the "Hadean" molten phase of Earths history, when it had cooled down. These stayed on the now cool surface and were available for life.
Re:Dear God (Score:3, Insightful)
Even the simplest single celled organism is unbelievably complex and contains a prodigious amount of information. The theory that life on Earth was seeded from space begs the question, how did that life begins wherever it did begin?
That's true. But somehow you don't seem to draw the correct conclusions from that. When confronted with something complex, the theory of evolution tells you it can not have formed instantly, but instead it happened gradually. Therefore, the "starting point" of life is at the molecular level, not at the cell level. And I put the quotes there deliberately, because there won't be a single point, it will be a gradual process. Just like there isn't a point where there is a "first tree" or "first human".
Even with the best efforts of intelligent scientists and the expenditure of mountains of money, no one has yet created any life form whatsoever from nonliving matter.
So what? Why should we be able to create life? Why should it be simple? There are an unknown number of possibilities to consider. It might have been a freak accident or rather trivial, nobody knows. Whatever the odds, in a universe this big it is rather a non-issue.