NASA Reproduces a Building Block of Life In the Lab 264
xp65 writes "NASA scientists studying the origin of life have reproduced uracil, a key component of our hereditary material, in the laboratory. They discovered that an ice sample containing pyrimidine exposed to ultraviolet radiation under space-like conditions produces this essential ingredient of life. 'We have demonstrated for the first time that we can make uracil, a component of RNA, non-biologically in a laboratory under conditions found in space,' said Michel Nuevo, research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. 'We are showing that these laboratory processes, which simulate occurrences in outer space, can make a fundamental building block used by living organisms on Earth.'"
Ah, Uracil! (Score:3, Interesting)
Wasn't that the secret ingredient that made Sucrets sooth sore throats 27% faster? Or Pampers 14% drier? Or Lucky Strikes the choice of five out of six doctors surveyed?
But seriously . . . cool.
If only because the Discovery Institute will have to scrap another set of creationist text books.
Re:Ah, Uracil! (Score:4, Informative)
As if. Creationists don't care about facts. If they did, they wouldn't be creationists.
Re:Ah, Uracil! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, no. They pretty much deny a number of facts. What they deny will change over time, and often will change depending on the audience. I have had Creationists deny in one moment any evolution beyond species variation, then the next claim that some degree of macroevolution is possible, then in the next try to rearend Biblical "kinds" into genuses and families. In fact, the only thing that Creationists can be counted on to declare as "fact" is that no matter how much evolution is going on, men and apes are not related.
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Does not a fact make, it merely confirms that an observable event has taken place and to deny that would be perverse. I suppose that "the behavior was observed" could be considered the fact. So at least as far as that is concerned I'll accept that it is both.
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Much like: the sky is blue, the sun gives off light/heat, gravity keeps us planted to the earth.
The theory of evolution - the process by which evolution occurs - is a theory.
(much like we have theories for how gravity works.)
That evolution occurs is factual - we've seen it happen both naturally and in the lab.
The exact processes that cause it are somewhat (but not very) debatable.
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I don't consider that very wise at all, conflating religion with creationism. "Creationism" is the product of relatively recent offshoots of Christianity that attempt to deny, among other things, the role of reason. Despite its popularity in the United States, this kind of thinking is a small aberration in the history of Christian thinking, and from what I've seen, doesn't fit in well with most other major world religions as well.
The reason Christianity and the cultures that adopted it thrived so well thr
Re:Evolution is a theory, and a fact. (Score:4, Informative)
Evolution -is- a fact; evolution has been observed and tested and met the criteria of a fact, just as gravity is a fact. The number of scientific papers where evolution as fact has been observed number in the hundred thousand or millions.
This extraordinary body of evidence consists of numerous tests of evolution, and easily fulfills any common definition of fact. [google.com]
Evolution is also a theory, in the scientific sense-- which means that it is a broadly applicable set of principles that help explain nature.
Much has been written regarding this; a little use of the 'ol google will provide much more to show you wrong.
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Hah. Evolution is as weak a theory as gravity. But since gravity's wrong and you're floating in mid-air at the moment, evolution may be wrong.
Stupid people like yourself need to shut up about things they don't understand - like gravity, or science, or facts in general. How do you even function in the real world? I'd feel bad for you if you hadn't brought all this upon yourself. It would be slightly amusing, except all you stupid people keep trying to drag our (once) great country back into the dark ages whi
Re:Ah, Uracil! (Score:4, Informative)
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You - like myself at one point - are giving the creationists too much credit. See, I thought that everybody without some level of mental deficiency would be forced to reevaluate their beliefs when confronted with facts that contradicted them.
Not so with creationists. They avoid that little "problem" by simply asserting that the fact doesn't exist. Since it's not a fact, there's no cognitive dissonance, right?
Check this out: http://rationalwiki.com/wiki/Lenski_affair [rationalwiki.com] . In short, the good ol' boys over at Co
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God put that stuff there and then made it all come together to form life.
*blinks* I'm confused about this one. It seems that you are suggesting that all Creationists (and by extension, Christians) believe God used evolution to form life? While there are plenty of "Theistic Evolutionists," there are also those that believe evolution of species did not occur at all (and that God did not use evolution).
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How is declaring anything all Creationists believe in any way related to what all Christians believe? Creationism, in Catholic theology, is a heresy (see St. Augustine).
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I couldnt agree more.
If by "God" you mean "A statistical probability that approaches one given a large enough timespan and enough random reactions of molecules eventually forming something that can self replicate", then yes. Of course once you have something that can self replicate, it is only a matter of time before mutations in the replication process cause those molecules that are best able to replicate to fill any new environmental niches ans set of conditions that is conducive to further replication.
I
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Holy tag time. (Score:2)
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Possible Interpretations... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a feeling that this will lead to the speculation that Earth was therefore seeded with fundamental biomolecules from space and this paved the way for life to begin on Earth. I hope people don't jump to this conclusion too quickly. Personally, I find it unlikely and think there is a more likely interpretation, which I will get to in a moment. The reason this is unlikely is that just having biomolecules is not enough to start life processes. Especially in the time frame when life is hypothesized to have originated (~3.8Gya), as the surface of the Earth was completely covered by ocean at that time, and any seeding of organic molecules from external sources runs into the concentration problem: the problem of getting enough of the right molecules in the right place with the right concentration and the right inputs of energy and raw materials for biochemistry to begin. Any such seeding from external sources would end up very dilute, and biomolecules would likely break down before they could be gathered in sufficient concentrations.
Personally, one possible interpretation which I prefer is that these findings (and similar ones of finding amino acids in comets and such) indicate that organic biomolecules are fairly common and will form anywhere you have C, O, H, N, S, etc and energy. Not only would this indicate that biomolecules could form fairly easily on Earth, but that they are common in the universe, and organic life may arise just about anywhere you have an input of energy and raw materials and a way of concentrating those molecules so they will react and form self-organizing and self-replicating biochemistry.
My current favorite hypothesis about the origins of life on Earth are those championed by Martin and Russell. They hypothesize that life on Earth began and alkaline hydrothermal vents in the ocean, around which porous rocks of iron and nickel sulfide would form semi-permeable cell-like compartments in which basic organic molecules formed by the geochemistry of the vent could concentrate and react with each other. Raw materials would be constantly input from the vent, and there would be a constant energy gradient in the form of heat, pH, and proton-motive force. This neatly solves several problems of many hypotheses of abiogenesis: the energy problems, the raw materials problem, and the concentration problem to name a few. They outline the overall picture of going from geochemistry to biochemistry to prokaryotes to eukaryotes in this 2003 paper:
On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells [royalsocie...ishing.org] - Martin and Russell, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B 29 January 2003 vol. 358 no. 1429 59-85
They further clarify the possible pathways for a shift from geochemistry to biochemistry in this 2006 paper:
On the origin of biochemistry at an alkaline hydrothermal vent [royalsocie...ishing.org] - Martin and Russell, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 29 October 2007 vol. 362 no. 1486 1887-1926
A search for either of those followed by clicking on the "Cited By" link on Google Scholar will yield many papers, including some actual experiments supporting them, which expand and clarify these hypotheses. Definitely worth a read if you are interested in the possible origins of life on Earth, as well as perhaps some ideas of what to look for when looking for life elsewhere.
Anyway, point being, this is fantastic work by NASA, and an excellent example of showing that these molecules can form naturally. Just be careful about drawing any definite conclusions from them other than the simple conclusion that Uracil can form in these natural conditions, and possibly or probably others.
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I agree that we shouldn't jump to specific conclusions. However, one of the chief oriticisms leveled by Creationists/IDers and panspermiests is that necessary organic molecules were unavailable and thus natural abiogenesis on Earth is impossible.
I like to think that what's being assembled is a catalog of compounds that were around prior to abiogenesis. This allows us to build more accurate models of both the environment and of potential pathways to the first primitive replicators.
I'm also a fan of the hyd
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one of the chief oriticisms leveled by Creationists/IDers and panspermiests is that necessary organic molecules were unavailable and thus natural abiogenesis on Earth is impossible.
Most of the abiogenesis-is-impossible talks/discussions/arguments that I have heard chiefly deal with formation of life from the necessary molecules - e.g., the necessary protiens - not the formation of those molecules themselves. In other words, even if all the necessary components were there, those components don't magically create life. Scientists have not been able to talk the raw components, which we already have access to, and get them to form a something living, have they? (open to reading somethi
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Scientists have not been able to talk the raw components, which we already have access to, and get them to form a something living, have they?
Not a full on living system, no. However, the components, such as evolving self-replicators (in the form of RNA) have been made in labs. Pretty amazing stuff. (linky [npr.org] linky [newscientist.com])
This is one of the things that annoys me about those kinds of creationist/ID arguments. It took nature on the order of 400(+/- 100) million years to go from inorganic geochemistry to free living chemoautotrophs, and yet, they somehow expect scientists to be able to replicate that in the lab in the half-century or so that we've been able t
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It's not that scientists haven't been able to reproduce what happened over a million years that engenders skepticism. It's that scientists manage to make a nut and a bolt in the lab, and evolution cheerleaders point to it and say, "And in a million years, it becomes a car! WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW, JESUS BOY?"
I think it's neat that we're getting hints about how life can possibly form from ordinary chemistry. But they're just hints, and it's just a possibility. Hand-waving, story-telling and invoking the mill
What is life? (Score:2)
What is life, apart from very complex chemistry? If you belief there is some "magical" ingredient (something like Élan Vital), then you're going to have problems imagining life coming from complex chemical interactions alone - who gets to put the "magic" in? :-)
Personally, I like this answer from the first of the two papers I linked above: a very simple definition of a living system might be: compartments separated from their surroundings that spontaneously multiply with energy gleaned through self-contained, thermodynamically favourable redox reactions. (Martin and Russell, 2003 [royalsocie...ishing.org])
It's not just complex chemistry. It is self-organizing, self-contained complex chemistry. The standard biological definition of "life" requires the following 7 characteristics:
1.) organiz
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I was trying to imply that unless you believe in some sort of "magical addition", there is no stark dividing line between "life" and "non-life", no "extra ingredient"
Those criteria would seem to rule out a virus as being alive, yet I'd bet there are more than a few virologists who'd dispute that :-)
And I would disagree with them by virtue of a virus not having its own internal metabolism. ;) They would have to make a pretty convincing argument about why a virus should be considered alive.
Anyway, like I said, I wasn't disagreeing with your overall point. Just clarifying what biologists are talking about when they talk about life. Anyway, overall it's an arbitrary definition, but it does have its uses. As always, nature is free to completely ignore and invalidate any arbitrary definitions we try to appl
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Oh, right. Yeah, um I get it. So.... what you're saying is: God did it
Illiteracy is such a sad thing to witness. :(
RNA and the origin of life (Score:2)
Focus, damn you all!! (Score:2)
Terrific, scientists can duplicate something that has been going on elsewhere in the universe for gajillions of years. WHERE IS MY JET PACK?
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Surprise! We're made of common stuff! (Score:2)
It always amazes me that people are in any way surprised that the molecules used by life on Earth turn out to be easy to form, either on Earth itself or in space. It would be far more surprising and interesting if life on Earth involved molecules that are really hard to make under normal conditions.
However, this research does demonstrate that these molecules can form in space, which may indicate that they are also common across the universe, not just due to local conditions that held on the early Earth. W
Re:An Application? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's heading towards understanding the origins of life on earth and anywhere else it may have arisen or came from.
If you need an application to appreciate that, then we have very little in common, but uh it could help in our search for life on other planets, creating useful life-like things on earth, and hey why not some medical applications? Geeze who cares at this point? Not I. This is basic research of the most important kind. Who knows what could result?
Re:An Application? (Score:5, Funny)
If you need an application to appreciate that, then we have very little in common ...
Be kind. Most people need something tangible to inspire creative thought. To the OP, imagine, if you will, browsing the aisles of a toy store in your local mall. Next to the ant farm kits, and legos, you see
New from Ronco(TM). LifeBuilder(TM) 1.0.
Disclaimer: Space-like conditions and meteorites not included.
Or something like that.
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Be kind. Most people need something tangible to inspire creative thought.
No, what most people need is a life threatening situation, such as imminent loss of air. That's why I like LifesABeach's idea of putting NASA's offices on the moon.
Re:An Application? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a committed portion of the US population who don't need to "head..towards understanding the origins of life" because they are absolutely certain that they know exactly how life came about because some Bronze Age scroll tells them so. They're not going to take kindly to anything that could challenge their certainty.
I wouldn't be so sure that ten years from now this kind of research will be allowed, at least in public institutions. Don't forget that until recently there were bans on publicly-funded research which used cells from deceased embryos and lab-created blastocytes, because they "have souls".
You think so, and I think so, but a very vocal and (seemingly) influential minority thinks it's heresy.
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Yes. (Score:4, Informative)
The bible belt is becoming more influential because it has more money. Northern liberals have been foolishly dismissing the bible belt as stupid now for 50 years and really at their own peril, for, while they have done so, the bible belt has utterly stacked the deck of American commercial policy to its advantage. The bible belt needs protectionist food, and free trade goods, so it can import cheap tools and labors to sell crops to a captive market, and lo, what is American trade policy? Gee... we write GM bailout size checks to American farmers every year and no one complains, because the bible belt has us convinced that this glaring exception to the free trade they advocate is not an exception at all.
Re:An Application? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be so sure that ten years from now this kind of research will be allowed, at least in public institutions. Don't forget that until recently there were bans on publicly-funded research which used cells from deceased embryos and lab-created blastocytes, because they "have souls".
That's just stupid. Simply put, there has to be a lot more fundamentalist Christians than there are for such a thing to come about. My view is that the embryo ban came about because it was an icky, new technology like cloning or artificial insemination. After it's been around for a couple of decades, nobody but a few people will give it a second thought.
Re:An Application? (Score:5, Insightful)
The example of artificial insemination is a good example. When artificial insemination was first introduced there was a lot of outcry over it. Now the only major objection is from the Catholic Church. Others who still object do so out of side-effects such as the destruction of embryos rather than objecting to the process as a whole (which the Catholic Church does). And in a few years even the Catholics will likely be fine with it.
But at the same time, this sort of example isn't so great. It involves a direct application: people are much more willing to change their ethical and moral attitudes when they see the actual benefits of a new technology.
The general worry of poor treatment of science is a valid one. Sarah Palin railed against research involving "fruit flies" and John McCain complained about research about bear DNA, and neither of those even had any moral or ethical component to them. There's a very strong anti-science attitude in certain groups in the United States. Worse, it appears on both sides of the political spectrum (the anti-vaccination movement and much of the fringier elements of alternative medicine are very much on the left end of the political spectrum). Moreover, strongly negative attitudes about evolution and abiogenesis research have already won out in some Islamic countries. Look at Turkey for example which is a nominally secular country (indeed with disturbingly enforced secularism) and yet evolution isn't taught in schools and universities have trouble doing any research connected to evolution or abiogenesis. See for example http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/11/islamic_creationism_in_the_new.php [scienceblogs.com] for a quick summary of the current situation in the Islamic world. Moreover, Islamic creationists in Turkey have succeeded partially due to support and cooperation with Christian creationists in the United States. So it is possible for religious fanatics to really restrict this sort of thing: It has happened in other countries. Is it likely? Probably not. But it isn't impossible.
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The general worry of poor treatment of science is a valid one
you have to be careful to not generalize. Biology isn't something the right is interested in, unless it can produce new drugs, in which case, drug companies should pay for it, not the US taxpayer. In any case, modern medicine is backsliding anyway as diseases evolve faster than doctors can keep up. People do not have faith in the medical system and that really undermines biology.
But in the case of physics research, aeronautics, and space flight,
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define "a few" (Score:2)
We've been making test tube babies for well over 20 years, and artificial insemination for way longer than that. And not only is the Catholic church still not fine with it, they're probably even less fine with than they were, say, in the 70's. Color me unconvinced that they'll be changing their minds any time soon.
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Re:An Application? (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree that research should be allowed on this stuff but some of the opposition isn't crazy Christians. People like me are concerned about at what specific point does a person turn from a pile of cells to a "human". This has nothing to do with souls and more to do with defining important things like what constitutes murder. When is the magic point where some living thing goes from being thrown away as abortion waste to being something so valuable that society could potentially put someone to death for killing it.
I know that wasn't the exact point you were trying to make but I just wanted to voice that not everyone is opposed to something because of religious reasons. Some people have moral questions, separate from religious beliefs, that question how we treat living things.
I think this scientific research is way more important than a national health care plan, yet I still think boundaries should be respected if a valid reason is brought up. I know we now know how to obtain special cells easily without harm to anything, but in the past that wasn't exactly the case and I think that set off the panic that got the research criticized so much.
Re:An Application? (Score:4, Insightful)
People like me are concerned about at what specific point does a person turn from a pile of cells to a "human".
What distinguishes a homo sapiens sapiens from another ambulatory pile of cells, like a bovine for instance?
I know that wasn't the exact point you were trying to make but I just wanted to voice that not everyone is opposed to something because of religious reasons.
You're opposed to research into abiogenesis because you're afraid it will take away our "humanity"?
If you can define what this valuelable "humanity" thing is without invoking religious concepts (like souls), then I'd think there would no longer be a worry about research like this taking it away. I'd suggest it's something to do with sentience/consciousness and the different levels of it possessed by different people (and other animals)
Some people have moral questions, separate from religious beliefs, that question how we treat living things.
I don't think secular moral and ethical systems have much to worry about from scientific research.
Though he seems to be reviled in some quarters, perhaps reading Peter Singer [wikipedia.org] is a start?
science answers how (Score:2)
religion answers why
science can never answer why as a simple consequence of what science is
religion can never answer how as a simple consequence of what religion is
as soon as you get those two strands of thought separated in your mind, you notice that science and religion never meet, and there is no conflict even possible
therefore, anyone who sees any conflict between science and religion simply doesn't understand the definition of science and/or religion
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Religion constantly attempts to answer how. Ever read a page from the bible? It is full of "hows".
This inherently brings forth conflict.
there are "scientists" (Score:2)
who try to build perpetual motion machines. this doesn't mean they should be seriously considered or considered part of the definition of what science is
the same observation applies to certain "religious" folk
any "how" in the bible is to be taken figuratively not literally. of course there are some who take it literally. these are fools, not people you should point at as valid representatitives of a religion. of course they posit themselves as that, of course there will be fools who follow them. just like t
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I agree that research should be allowed on this stuff but some of the opposition isn't crazy Christians. People like me are concerned about at what specific point does a person turn from a pile of cells to a "human".
Well, there's no specific point, and even any unspecific point is totally arbitrary. I think the reasonable range is from the fertilization of the egg to the birth, or possibly even to a point where a baby recognizes him/herself as separate being (somewhere between 6-12 months old, IIRC), or whatever.
I personally would pick some point in pregnancy when the fetus can have some kind of thoughts in the most basic sense of the word. But there's a large gray area between the absolutes (from no brain cells to wel
Actually this is totally wrong. (Score:2)
There's a committed portion of the US population who don't need to "head..towards understanding the origins of life" because they are absolutely certain that they know exactly how life came about because some Bronze Age scroll tells them so. They're not going to take kindly to anything that could challenge their certainty.
Actually, you are totally wrong with this one. The very idea that man can create life would bolster, in their mind, that an intelligent being did in fact make all life. It's somewhat dif
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I wouldn't be so sure that ten years from now this kind of research will be allowed
Whatever the rules are in 10 years means very little in the hindsight of one or two centuries from now. Like those who believe the Earth is flat, when the facts are verified about how life can take hold in the environs of large quantities of hitherto nonliving matter (or perhaps about how divinity exists and creates matter), people who still don't want to believe the truth, whatever that truth will turn out to be, can just be
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Those scrolls were written during the IRON age. Pfft, those bronze age people were crazy, worshiping any little idea that popped into their heads. Iron age people were FAR more sophisticated. They only worshiped things that were WRITTEN DOWN. Big difference.
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I suspect (suspect being a code word meaning "do not have proof and am too lazy to find it"), that America is headed more in the vague deist direction. Of course, we tend to play loose with terminology, so we will just tie this belief in a vaguely defined and unknowable superhero in with Christianity, thus rendering the label "christian" more useless than it currently is. When Fred Phelps and Nancy Pelosi both claim to believe in the same God, and get their values from the same book, then what does that say
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Trying to follow your logic... it used to be illegal to do stem cell research, but now it isn't. When it was illegal, the grounds were religiously inspired. So it sounds to me like religious influence is on a down-tick, at least in regard to supressing science.
As popular as it is to bash the modern religious establishment, and imperfect as its relationship to science is, in a longer-view historical context the trend is toward less religious disruption of research. Today they sometimes try to limit what s
Re:An Application? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mods can have my karma if they want it, its still a purely religious assertion to say that life spontaneously arises.
There's no definitive reason why it couldn't have happened, we observe life on this planet, and there is no real competing hypothesis, so it seems a reasonable, though speculative, hypothesis to entertain. Not certainty like the "God did it" crowd seem to have, but a rational inference from the data :-)
It's unobserved and there's good reason to believe its impossible (e.g. the chirality problem).
I wasn't aware the chirality problem was evidence towards abiogenesis being impossible, more that it presents a very interesting and challenging question as to why one particular handedness become dominant.
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It's unobserved and there's good reason to believe its impossible (e.g. the chirality problem).
I wasn't aware the chirality problem was evidence towards abiogenesis being impossible, more that it presents a very interesting and challenging question as to why one particular handedness become dominant.
I've had a similar argument with my parents who aren't out-and-out religious but do believe in some omnipotent being having a hand in things, but specifically as the 'thing' that lit the blue touchpaper on the Big Bang, and being the Architect of all that followed.
They argue that because we don't know how the Big Bang works that the easiest and most obvious solution is that God Did It and I argue that throughout history Man has pondered how things work and attributed events and happenings to divinity in
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its still a purely speculative assertion to say that life spontaneously arises.
There. Fixed that for you.
It is possible to speculate, and even to hold firm beliefs in the absence of evidence, which are not religious (ie. involving some supernatural intelligence) in nature. In fact they might even be scientific, albeit unsubstantiated, in nature. The attempt to equate any kind of unsubstantiated speculation with "religion," is in extremely bad faith. That 'believers' seem to be doing this, involving as
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Likely a troll, but on the off chance that you are legitimate, can you answer a question that has confused me for a long time: why are you here? I don't mean in the metaphysical sense, but rather why are you still breathing? Why aren't you working in explosive ordinance disposal in Iraq while wearing a t-shirt with a giant target on it? I just don't understand how you can be looking forward to eternal paradise basking in God's love and yet struggle so fucking hard to avoid it.
I know why I fight to survive;
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It's an excuse for another round of evolution/creationism debates...LETS GET READY TO RUMBLE!
Re:An Application? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:An Application? (Score:5, Insightful)
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On a cosmological timescale, things like uracil break down into things that aren't uracil.
Over and over and over again. If the elements and conditions for uracil creation exist, then uracil exists. The same for any other building block. Gravity assures that they all get piled together eventually. In billions of years, it likely happens billions of times on billions of planets. It just takes one success, and panspermia can populate the universe.
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Formation of separate parts does not imply that those separate parts will "come together" and actually form RNA, does it? That would be an impressive assumption to make.
LOL: So when we have learned how it was possible that all the parts required could be made naturally and that there's a sufficiently common mechanism that can occur that brings them together and forms RNA what will you rail against next? Do you honestly think we won't work it out?
Throughout the scientific history of Man we have been pushing the religophiles further and further into a corner of their own making to their increasingly desperate chant of "God Did It - God Did It". Railing against scientific e
Re:An Application? (Score:5, Funny)
I mean its cool and all, but I'm not sure I see where this is going. Can someone enlighten me?
Sure. Picture this: you really need some uracil, but don't have a lot of scratch to buy it. You're out of luck, right? WRONG! Got some pyrimidine, ice, and a source of UV light? Guess what? THAT'S ALL YOU NEED!
With all the money you'll save with this, maybe you could treat yourself to some fancypants store-bought cytosine.
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Re:An Application? (Score:4, Funny)
I mean its cool and all, but I'm not sure I see where this is going. Can someone enlighten me?
Much like how Star Trek has helped inspire technology, I believe Arthur C. Clark and Stanley Kubrick pioneered an application that could utilize this. That application would be the orbital baby. How the baby was made and the uses of said baby are left up to the opinion of the viewer. Of course that could be said for the rest of 2001: A Space Odyssey as well.
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That's how basic research works. You don't know where it's going to lead until suddenly you discover germs, or electricity, or proteins, or vitamins, or x-rays. Or just a better understanding of how the universe works--that's pretty valuable in its own right.
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Think of it like this... you like, bacon, right? When people go to colonize the distant stars, it would be helpful if there was already bacon there when they arrived. Bacon is made from pigs, which are living things, and almost all living things of which we are aware are in part made of this stuff.
So the odds have improved that our interstellar colonists will arrive at a place that already has salty, delicious bacon -- which is good, since by then they'll probably be almost already out after a long trip.
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They're refining the variables in the Drake Equation
Apparently the building blocks of life are not so very difficult to synthesize as to make us, the V's, or little green men, LIFE impossible to exist anywhere else.
On the series Cosmos Carl Sagan threw all the ingredients for life (carbon, nitrogen, water, etc) into a vat, stirred it up, and got nothing. I wonder what we will be stirring up in 20-50 years.
Also another direct application of this technique could be them trying out OTHER substances and situati
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I wonder what we will be stirring up in 20-50 years.
You don't have to wonder. The results are here [wikipedia.org]. That's just the wikipedia page, but you can follow the links. I hoped they saved a sample so we can check again in 100, 1,000 and 10,000 years.
They are proving that life as we know it should be common. Life as we don't know it? That's still an open question. It may have been here all along and we didn't see it.
Re:An Application? (Score:4, Funny)
At this point the coffin is made entirely of nails.
It's almost like a crown of nails, or like nails through the wrists.
Ohhhhh... too soon?
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Always look on the bright side of life.
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I guess it's being held together by sheer force of will, then, or possibly faith.
Re:An Application? (Score:4, Insightful)
Full disclosure: I don’t currently believe in such a God, due to lacking supporting evidence. However, as a scientist, I am more than willing to be proven wrong.
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The first part of your argument I might be willing to swallow, since we (humans) are getting close to understanding how to create life. If we can do it, then it is possible that other intelligent life also has done it. This makes "Space alien ID" at least partially plausible.
The latter though-- that the being(s) resposible in an ID creation scenario would go through such extreme lengths to hide all evidence of such creation from their creations is getting well beyond the veil of possible credibility. In or
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Do we hide the fact that we modify corn, from the corn plants? Do we go out of our way to ensure the corn plants, SHOULD they evolve intelligence, never find out they were created?
Um, you mean the ones that Monsanto gave Terminator genes to so they would never evolve into Skynet and kill us all?
Re:Silly scientists.... (Score:4, Insightful)
They just happened by random chance.
Or, as the story shows, by entirely natural processes.
Re:Silly scientists.... (Score:4, Interesting)
This does not show that the basic building blocks of life were made by entirely natural processes. This shows that a component of one of the building blocks of life can be made by natural processes. I don't think we can use induction, in this case, to try to say that since we uracil can be formed with natural processes, all building blocks of life can be, too. Not to mention the difficulty in getting "building blocks" or "components" to end up forming the actual thing that they are components/building-blocks of.
I'm glad they at least included this part, eventually:
Nobody really understands how life got started on Earth.
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I'm glad they at least included this part, eventually:
Nobody really understands how life got started on Earth.
I wish they had gone one better and stated that nobody understands IF life started on Earth.
So Say We ALL!
Re:Silly scientists.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think we can use induction, in this case, to try to say that since we uracil can be formed with natural processes, all building blocks of life can be, too.
We can't use induction as proof, because this is not mathematics.
We can use induction to say that we can reasonably expect to discover that other building blocks can form from natural processes as well, though. At the very least, this reduces -- again -- the number of things we know can be formed naturally. The trend is pretty obvious, and if you're holding out on something coming up that can't be formed naturally then you'll probably be disappointed.
Re:Silly scientists.... (Score:4, Interesting)
This shows that a component of one of the building blocks of life can be made by natural processes.
The Miller-Urey experiment [wikipedia.org] was also fruitful here. Over modest timescales in likely primordial Earth environments it appears that the building blocks formed are the ones commonest to all forms of life-as-we-know-it. The leap from "could have" to "did" is getting more manageable every few years.
The experiment in TFA goes further - finding methods for synthesis of the components not on a primordial Earth, but in space. This is a net positive for the panspermia theory. Oh, and BTW: you left off an important part of that quote.
Our experiments demonstrate that once the Earth formed, many of the building blocks of life were likely present from the beginning. Since we are simulating universal astrophysical conditions, the same is likely wherever planets are formed," explained Sandford.
We'll know more when we start dissecting comets, and even more when we dissect comets that orbit other stars. The tricky thing about life is that it takes darned little of it to make all of the life that we see.
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And now the Creationists will come out of the woodwork with dishonesty and fallacies galore. The reality is that they are stark raving terrified.
Re:Silly scientists.... (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is saying that this discovery somehow is some giant leap, but it sure makes the likelihood of the chemistry being more tenable. At any rate, at least us "evolutionists" come up with testable hypotheses. I mean, how do you falsify "God did it"? Or do you even bother as your movement spends more time trying to trick dimwitted school boards and judges into buying the pure crapola that is ID?
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What if god does it in a way indistinguishable from random chance? Sure most reasonable people would realize how stupid that argument would be but we ARE talking about christians=)
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You can't falsify "God did it." What you can do is move further back in time the moment when He set the wheel in motion, or didn't.
"You" maybe can, but the creationists can't. They have a wheel that started rotating 6000 years ago, end of discussion (but preaching can continue).
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This is, however, one more piece of evidence to support evolution and one more bit of knowledge that we can use to understand where we came from.
There is no scientifically tenable theory for human origins except for evolution from a common ancestor. It's been that was for about a hundred years. Get over it.
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This is, however, one more piece of evidence to support evolution and one more bit of knowledge that we can use to understand where we came from.
That's one more piece of evidence in a long line of pieces of evidence to support evolution ... ...
Now, let's look at the list of (new?) evidence for Creationism. Hmmmm. Do you all have your lists? Then I shall begin
In the beginning was the void, and the void was our knowledge, and some power hungry people saw that void and thought that it was good ...
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Exactly, my first though: "Oh shiznit, Jesus is gonna be pissed at NASA".
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Re:first post (Score:4, Funny)
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It doesn't but since it is an Agency it can have more than a single mission? What you think the FBI or CIA should ONLY investigate a single case at a time?
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Somebody mod down every post by this user
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