Chemists May Be Zeroing In On Chemical Reactions That Sparked the First Life (sciencemag.org) 121
sciencehabit quotes a report from Scientific Magazine: DNA is better known, but many researchers today believe that life on Earth got started with its cousin RNA, since that nucleic acid can act as both a repository of genetic information and a catalyst to speed up biochemical reactions. But those favoring this "RNA world" hypothesis have struggled for decades to explain how the molecule's four building blocks could have arisen from the simpler compounds present during our planet's early days. Now chemists have identified simple reactions that, using the raw materials on early Earth, can synthesize close cousins of all four building blocks. The resemblance isn't perfect, but it suggests scientists may be closing in on a plausible scenario for how life on Earth began. The study has been published in the journal Nature.
Let's watch the creationists squirm (Score:2)
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Why be God when you can be Godder than God?
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I for one welcome our ourselves overlords!
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I sincerely appreciated this comment. Thank you sir!
Re: Let's watch the creationists squirm (Score:1)
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Actually, having an in-universe explanation for how something can plausibly happen while being consistent with understood physical phenomenon doesn't mean that a creator didn't do it in the first place... if it were created, it would only mean that it was created to include all of the necessary ingredients for its creation. This is only deceptive if you are expecting the existence of such a creator to be somehow falsifiable in the first place.
I'm not going to try and convince you a creator exists.... b
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Generally, the most typical retaliation to people that are believed to be off their rocker is to either institutionalize them if they pose any kind of danger to others, or to simply ignore them entirely.
Even bothering to waste the time to have said what you did suggests that I must have struck some kind of nerve. Or did you seriously think that resorting to name calling was somehow going to make you look particularly ingenious?
With that out of the way, let me point out that I wasn't even suggesting t
Re: Ha Ha Ha, not even close (Score:2)
I think by creationist, we mean young earth creationist. A creationist who believes God set up the Big Bang and it's various parameters is not mentally ill. A creationist who thinks the earth is in the range of 10,000 years old is bona fide mentally ill.
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As the thousands of man hours tick up higher and higher as we attempt to understand how to create life, it only re-enforces what the man on the street with basic common sense already knows: Life, including man, was designed by a Designer, not by accident. If it takes 100,000 man hours (already likely spent) figuring out how to create life, and a multi million dollar lab to create it, all that proves is that it requires intelligence and direction to create life, not random chance (I doubt that we will ever
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Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution can happen but it is always devolution (things getting worse not better). Natural selection is the exact opposite of evolution. You may need to understand a little bit here such as evolution is the actual building or increasing of genetic information which is the opposite of natural selection which is the reduction of the genetic information or the selection of existing genetic information.
Look, just because it happened to you doesn't mean it happened to everyone else.
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You're a creationist, and you're squirming. Mission accomplished.
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I didn't see any squirming there. Experiments making the RNA precursors using electric sparks in a "primordial soup" were done decades ago. We're no closer to "creating" life then than now. Suppose one day we did create life, that would be life from an intelligent creator, wouldn't it?
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I didn't see any squirming there. Experiments making the RNA precursors using electric sparks in a "primordial soup" were done decades ago. We're no closer to "creating" life then than now. Suppose one day we did create life, that would be life from an intelligent creator, wouldn't it?
But creating life means we will know how it can happen, and then can assess whether random chance would make it happen and the odds of that. Hint, yes random chance can make life happen as the evidence is all around you, and the odds are greater than most will think.
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yes yes, I agree with you.
But what if life or RNA precursors did some to Earth in the past, say on a meteor or whatever, and it was spread that way by some intelligence somewhere? Is that point of view impossible?
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when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
What if.
We can make a whole series of what ifs. Let's start with "What if life spontaneously started on earth?" It is possible, it is not even improbable, we can't rule it out. That one should be at the top of the list until some more improbable possibility becomes less improbable. This position does not preclude other life originating elsewhere.
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That's the fundamental problem with all variants of panspermia (the idea you're promoting ; no, it's not a new idea,
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If life did not arise here, then the problem is far, far harder to study and that is reality. Plenty of credible scientists are open to the possibility at least life did not arise on Earth. The increased difficulty of studying origins in that scenario is not an argument against it, you are being illogical.
Of course the idea of panspermia is old, more ancient then you know.
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I have no problem agreeing life is "just chemistry" (and physics). Consciousness is in that realm too. What is ridiculous is our fantasy that a purely digital system could have self-awareness. Biological neural networks are not digital.
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I have scientific basis to say they may not possibly be digital, as all extant self-aware systems are decidedly analog. Not even conscious effort on the part of an analog self-aware system to make a digital one has born any effort in the last 80 years.
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Re:Let's watch the creationists squirm (Score:5, Informative)
the creationist argument that it is impossible will have to be thrown away forever.
That's very naive. They believe in magic, so they can change the argument in literally any way that they can imagine. If you demonstrated abiogenesis, they'd stop saying it's "impossible" and start saying, "See? You needed an intelligent being to set it all up!"
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As Hawking (and no doubt many others) have said: God is unnecessary. Occam's Razor applies; it is part of the foundational principles of Science. We no more need to invoke god to "set it all up" than we need pixies to push each atom in the direction of the net gravitational force. I'd be quite inclined to believe in the supernatural in a world where bad things didn't happen to good people. This is not such a world. My fundamental problem with the supernatural is 1. it explains nothing about ultimate causes
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Ack. Hit "submit" when I meant to hit "preview." Stupid mobile site... :-P
Anyway, that's "differently abled," you infrasensitive clod!
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I think that many/most "anti-creationists" are guilty of what they accuse the creationists for: religious fundamentalism
Of course we are. Except that only our "religion" (we would call it a philosophy) can produce reliable predictions about the natural world. We make absolutely no attempt to describe the supernatural, and are very happy to leave that to religion.
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I don't follow. If "what started the whole process" is natural, the philosophy with the best track record in understanding the natural world is the most likely way to find it. If it is not natural, it is outside of the domain of science and you can have it.
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To be clear, we believe an intelligent, extra-dimensional Being created all things in this universe. It is not necessarily magic, but the mechanisms are currently unknown to us (and thus appear supernatural to our perception and understanding). This Creator also left instructions for how to act and there are many people out there who strongly dislike these instructions and are willing to go to great lengths to pretend that the Creator does not exist...
Even if you manage to spend 100,000 man hours in a mul
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It is not necessarily magic, but the mechanisms are currently unknown to us (and thus appear supernatural to our perception and understanding).
Right, so science makes no claim to deal with that at all. It's impossible to use science to explore that realm.
Your above assertion is like saying that because cars are built in a factory, setting off a bomb in a junk yard can also create the same exact car...
At least I'm using a philosophy with a demonstrated record of success to try and understand how the car was actually built, whereas you are content knowing that it was conjured by an unobservable sky pixie.
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It is not necessarily magic, but the mechanisms are currently unknown to us (and thus appear supernatural to our perception and understanding).
Right, so science makes no claim to deal with that at all. It's impossible to use science to explore that realm.
It is not impossible to explore that realm, we just don't know how yet. It was impossible to explore the moon or Mars for medieval man, that didn't mean it was actually impossible in the absolute sense.
Your above assertion is like saying that because cars are built in a factory, setting off a bomb in a junk yard can also create the same exact car...
At least I'm using a philosophy with a demonstrated record of success to try and understand how the car was actually built, whereas you are content knowing that it was conjured by an unobservable sky pixie.
No, I am relying on the eyewitness accounts of tens of thousands of historical, real people who have had first hand interactions with the supernatural. You can blow it off all you want, but that means you are ignoring thousands of years of recorded history (or revising it to fit your bias, which a true scie
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Please check all that apply to your personal belief system:
By answering this survey, you help us identify the whackadoodliest of the whackadoodles. Thank you for your participation.
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Adding:
That should help improve the efficiency.
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Obviously you have no clue about evolution, just like every other creanutter. Look up polyploidy, horizontal
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Re: Let's watch the creationists squirm (Score:2)
That's like saying astronomy can't be true because if you cant see what's happening inside the room next door right now how can we see what's happening in a galaxy one billion trillion zillion miles away.
Re:What about hardware ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't go pushing bad analogies - you'll be talking about cars next.
The fun thing about nucleic acids is that they can hold data (genetic information) and act as catalysts by folding into specific shapes. RNA in particular can fold into complex 3D structures by itself or paired with some simple molecules like ligands. The "RNA Hypothesis" generally holds that an RNA - like molecule both encoded information to repeat itself
All a primitive 'living' structure had to do was make more of it's primitive self and in the process make enough errors to allow for evolutionary change. You don't really need an 'interpreter' - it is a function of the molecule itself. Yes, evolutionary drive pushed the creation of all sorts of ancillary functions, but in the beginning it may well have just been a nucleic acid string trying to make a nucleic acid string.
The process that made the individual nucleic acids is presumed to be abiotic - just a series of chemical reaction that managed to take place with some frequency on primordial earth (or wherever). TFA is the first (according to them, don't really follow this line of research) proposed reaction to make both types of RNA precursor bases. While not strictly necessary - billions of years allows for several distinct unlikely processes to happen simultaneously (think bowels of petunias, or rather, don't) it seems 'cleaner' to have a single, tweak able pathway to create the pool of chemicals that will turn into RNA, then the underlying precursor to all like, then slime molds, then politicians.
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Like the guy said: it ain't evolution, its devolution, if its getting worse!
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Please make this happen. I'd save a fortune on air freshener.
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Something in my brain keeps advocating for the application of additional pressure and temperature to these experiments. That same something thinks that life did not evolve in primordial oceans but in the mid to deep lithosphere. Higher pressure and temperature require less catalysis. Temperature gradients abound. Worth a look at least.
The most fascinating thing about the whole issue is that all life and even the "non-life" we see is not a result of random chance. It is a direct result of the fundamenta
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At the very least the Carnegie Lab in Washington are conducting regular experiments in this field. Possibly others, but I don't follow it closely either. I'd be pretty surprised if they were alone, but given that hint, you should be able to get the current researchers by reading the reference lists in a handful of their researcher's papers.
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Actually, these guys are probably overthinking the point, but it's good work, regardless. But IIRC the amino acids needed to create something RNA like have been found in clouds of dust out in space. The sugars needed to bind them may be something else. But *I think* those may require a watery environment. And until there was something to eat them those could just pile up until they reached thermodynamic equilibrium.
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RNA (and DNA) do not contain amino acids. But yes, several amino acids have been found by spectroscopy of molecular clouds.
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Sorry, my slip, you're right. But I believe they've also found nucleic acids.
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The functional information is easy. To summarize, start out by making a bunch of random junk and then filter for things that increase on their own faster than they fall apart. Do this for millions of years.
For an explicit version of this check out evolutionary programming. This will show you some of the problems that need to be solved, and how simple most of the steps are. And do it in a way where you can examine every step of the process...if you've got enough patience and lifetime.
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Actually, sample simulations indicate that there is a superfluity of time for the process when particular limited characteristics are examined. And you've got to have those limits or current computers can't run the simulation (at least within budgets allocated for the experiment). This has, admittedly, only been done a few time, but every time it has been done the result has been that not only is there enough time, there's hugely more than is needed.
Now there have only been a few of these simulations done
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Will This Work In Bars? (Score:2)
Because I've been trying to pick up women in bars to help me demonstrate the chemical reaction that sparks life. They just don't seem to grasp the significance of the scientific breakthrough that we could make together. I'd be willing to share the prize money 50/50, no problem.
I've always wondered... (Score:2)
... why did the random spontaneous generation of "life" apparently only occur 1 time in the history of the known universe. DNA analysis seems to indicate a common genesis for all known Terran life forms, why has there been no discovery of evidence for another bio-genesis event here on Earth? Is the known RNA/DNA based life the only possible form of life?
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Yep, the probability is so low in fact that it is just a total SWAG theory and has never actually occurred at all, either in the lab under artificial, ideal circumstances, or in the wild. The Evolutionist argument that it must have happened once because we exist is flawed in that it excludes all other explanations, and an extra-dimensional alien being creating life on earth is much more likely than an impossible event of spontaneous generation, which was disproven centuries ago. The Evolutionists just exc
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We have only closely examined one planetary system (actually, the one we live in), which gives us a 100% hit rate for planetary systems being hosts to life.
It seems to, yes. But since we've only been looking for other systems for at best a couple of (scientist) generations, it remains possible that there are
Chuck Missler (Score:1)
I'd like to see some of you try to refute Dr. Missler's observations and analysis... I've been reading and studying for 30 years and find his work revelatory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I'd LOVE to see some of you realize that there are things going on with our universe that science will just never explain. "The wisdom of men is foolishness to God, and the wisdom of God is
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That you cash a check made entirely out of science and logic work is where we already won our argument, down voting is just taking out of
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My God is rational and logical. (Where do you think logic and mathematics comes from in the first place? It is inherent to the existence of the universe.) He created a universe filled with laws that can be observed and understood, both physical laws and moral laws (where do those laws come from, by the way, if there is no Creator?). If you violate either, there are consequences, whether you like it or not. That is the harmony of my worldview as an applied scientist. You seem to harbor a false sense of
Re:Still has problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Success is often just a bunch of the right kind of failures strung together.
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