Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
5 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Has there been life for 1/4 of the age of the Universe?
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 27 of 114 (369306)
12-12-2006 1:58 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by RickJB
08-01-2006 4:44 AM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
quote:
RickJB writes:
Well, last I read, animo acids had been detected in the gaseous remains of supernovae...
At the least, perhaps. For all we know it might be a common consequence of the formation of heavy elements.
If I may jump in here...
Heavy elements, amino acids, and macromolecules certainly are necessary for life to exist, but so are many other physical props and conditions. And they are ubiquitous. Indeed NASA has reported finding polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on remote space dust, suggesting that fairly complex organic molecules are universally available. This leads many biologists to conclude that life is inevitable wherever friendly conditions prevail. Either it generates spontaneously in the "warm ponds" of friendly planets or it is imported as vital seeds from space by way of panspermia.
These, to me, are awfully brave assumptions. They are embedded in a master assumption that life can be explained as a phenomenon of physical analogs (i.e., chemicals, heat, electromagnitism). Furthermore, they often assume that life sprung up originally on planet Earth. I see this as a measure "pre-Copernican" thinking in biology”geocentrism again.
If the universe actually is pregnant with biological life, or at least carrying around its seeds, then why are new life forms not springing up all the time on a planet like Earth, with its many ponds so fertile and warm? Wouldn't you expect to see fresh life spontaneously occurring all over the place? And why only ONE kind of life? We know of only DNA/RNA life”there is no evidence of a single "Betamax" competitor that ever lost its bid for biological hosting.
All of this leads me to conclude that something more than physical analogs is essential (vital?) to a living enterprise. That is why I am bothered by the role of the gene, which is not a physical analog but instead a digital code. Richard Dawkins calls a gene "pure digital information." Genes obey rules of language”a "symbolic" language, it appears, because DNA configurations are not stereochemical with the proteins they build. Thus the digital genetic code comes with a "dictionary" of symbols. And genes are much more durable than the analogous organisms they occupy. If I regard durability as a measure of biological significance, then I have to conclude that genes relegate their organisms to ephemeral ships of opportunity. Some of the genes we carry around are >500 million years old!
So, my POV allows genes their superior roles in this unexplained enterprise called life. When we understand how such a non-analogous structure in nature”the digital genetic code”came into existence we will discover the secret of life. Then I think we can go make it from scratch in the laboratory.
”Hoot Mon

The most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it is comprehensible. ”A. Einstein

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by RickJB, posted 08-01-2006 4:44 AM RickJB has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by Chiroptera, posted 12-12-2006 2:44 PM Fosdick has replied
 Message 33 by fallacycop, posted 12-12-2006 11:10 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 29 of 114 (369374)
12-12-2006 6:22 PM
Reply to: Message 28 by Chiroptera
12-12-2006 2:44 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
Thanks for the welcome, Chiroptera. You wrote:
The conditions on the current earth are very different from the early earth. We won't necessarily see the precursors of life being able to form in today's chemical environment. Oxygen, especially, will destroy most of the suspected precursors of life very quickly. Also, there is already life all over the place; they, too, would quickly eat up the energy-rich percursors.
If making artificial life were a relatively simple matter of duplicating the right physical conditions, I suggest that we would have done it by now. Why should it be so difficult to duplicate that bio-sparking admixture of heat, radiation, and chemicals? Shouldn't it be only a little more trouble than Miller-Urey experiment? Is it just the right admixture that makes all the difference? For me, too much is left to raw chance by using this concept. It requires me to make a leap of faith so brave that I call it the "Bingo! hypothesis"
Maybe there were several kinds of life, but our kind was more successful and drove the other kinds to extinction. Or maybe our kind arose first and dominated before any other kind could get a chance to form. Or maybe there were many kinds, but through exchange of metabolic and hereditary mechanisms (like lateral gene transfer), many of the different kinds kind of ended up homogenizing, so that we are the descendents of several different, independent kinds.
From my POV these are big maybes. Metabolic networks are one thing and hereditary mechanisms are another. And I'm not sure at all what hereditary "mechanisms" mean. Doesn't that invoke a machine metaphor? There go those analogs again.
This, I think, is the wrong way to look at it precisely because it does seem to cause some kind of confusion. Despite the use of the usual analogies to explain how heredity works, DNA is not a language, it is not a code. It is simply a chemical that takes part in chemical reactions. in This, I think, is the wrong way to look at it precisely because it does seem to cause some kind of confusion. Despite the use of the usual analogies to explain how heredity works, DNA is not a language, it is not a code. It is simply a chemical that takes part in chemical reactions. In the right chemical environment (like in our cells) it can catalyze its own reproduction. It can also, in the right chemical environment, catalyze the production of proteins.
DNA of course is a chemical, but the genes themselves amount to quaternary digital code with a geometrically "symbolic" (i.e., non-stereochemical) language . If this view is wrong then I need a radical re-education in genetics.
I have never really understood the "DNA is a code" or "DNA is a language", except as a metaphor that kind of, sort of explains how heredity and embryonic development work. I think the best thing to do, if you really want to understand genetics, is to rid yourself of those conceptions. But I'll let the actual geneticists and biochemists weigh in on how useful the metaphor is.
I do agree that metaphors are risky. Machine metaphors were all the rage in the Industrial Age; now we have computer metaphors in the Information Age. I don't think science can operate without metaphors. I wish it were different. I'm even bothered by the common suggestion that natural selection is a "force," which could be interpreted by some as mass times acceleration. What? Why couldn't evolution be a stochastic gambit of alleles that allows them to outlive their organisms and selfishly strive for immortality. Opps, now I have digital codes "striving selfishly" in nature, which seems more like something an analogous organism would do. I just don't know what to do about those metaphors.
”Hoot Mon

The most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it is comprehensible. ”A. Einstein

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by Chiroptera, posted 12-12-2006 2:44 PM Chiroptera has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by Chiroptera, posted 12-12-2006 8:06 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 31 of 114 (369407)
12-12-2006 9:10 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by Chiroptera
12-12-2006 8:06 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
Chiropter,
In replying to my statement: "If making artificial life were a relatively simple matter of duplicating the right physical conditions, I suggest that we would have done it by now." you wrote:
Why do you think that? Although very quick by geologic timescales, the first origin of life on earth was an experiment that took place within a planetful of oceans and perhaps over several million years. Why do you think it should be easy to do within a few months in a laboratory beaker? We're talking about events that happened in rapid succession on planetary scales and in geologic time but would be improbably to ordinary humans working with a tankful of materials over a few months.
I'd say you are at least tacitly invoking the Bingo! principle: Let it cook long enough in the right soup at the right temperature with right amount of radiation and, POOF!, there it is. Only a matter of time before that happy Bingo! event happens (even though we know absolutely nothing about it). I don't know of a single principle respected by natural scientists that accounts for THAT kind of magic.
And to my statement: "I just don't know what to do about those metaphors," you responded:
That's easy. Don't take them literally.
Well, I wish I could. But even the most trivial thought worth recording about life and its origin is, after all, a literal enterprise.
”Hoot Mon
Edited by Hoot Mon, : typo

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by Chiroptera, posted 12-12-2006 8:06 PM Chiroptera has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 32 by Taz, posted 12-12-2006 9:29 PM Fosdick has replied
 Message 34 by Chiroptera, posted 12-12-2006 11:29 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 35 of 114 (369525)
12-13-2006 12:14 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by Taz
12-12-2006 9:29 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
gasby, you responded to my statement:
I'd say you [Chiropter] are at least tacitly invoking the Bingo! principle: Let it cook long enough in the right soup at the right temperature with right amount of radiation and, POOF!, there it is. Only a matter of time before that happy Bingo! event happens (even though we know absolutely nothing about it. I don't know of a single principle respected by natural scientists that accounts for THAT kind of magic.
Which is exactly why scientists freely admit that very little is known about the matter. All they are doing is coming up with scenarios and conditions where they think the event might have occured.
You argument is very close to a strawman.
But on the other hand, I don't know of a single respected principle that says "If we can't explain it right now at this moment, it must have been goddunit."
I might agree, but I don't EVER use the "goddunit" principle, since I am neither a Creationist nor an IDist. MY MO is to work with known or theoretical principles, scientific ones, always mindful of the assumptions they require. What I find so strange is the absence of ANY scientific principles (ones I find credible, anyway) that can be invoked to explain biogenesis. Given this sad situation, what am I suppose to do? Should I blithely assume, for starters, that life must have originated here on Earth? Why? That seems awfully geocentric to me. So, if I have to look elsewhere, that doesn't necessarily mean I'm a deist.
What principle requires an Earthly biogenesis? What principle requires biogenesis to be an entirely thermodynamic/electromagnetic affair? What principle accounts for the origin of a genetic language? In my universe, digital genes are just as real as material objects like molecules and galaxies.
Biology, today, is like what astronomy was before Hubble discovered galaxies. In the nineteenth century the Milky Way was largely a mystery to astronomers. Then Hubble got a better look, discovered galaxies, and saw that the Milky Way was actually a lens effect caused by its whirling distribution of stars. What a step forward! Something like that will happen to biology where biogenesis is concerned...eventually. (But I'll never see it!)
”Hoot Mon

The most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it is comprehensible. ”A. Einstein

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Taz, posted 12-12-2006 9:29 PM Taz has not replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 36 of 114 (369529)
12-13-2006 12:25 PM
Reply to: Message 33 by fallacycop
12-12-2006 11:10 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
fallacycop, your wrote:
That`s odd. Having taken several hundred million the first time around, why would anybody expect it to happen before their eyes a second time?
Why do you assume that biogenesis took "several hundred million years the first time around"? Calculation, please. And why do you invoke the geocentric principle? Wouldn't you expect those wonderfully warm ponds to puddle up all over the universe, and well in advance of Earth's trivial accretion?
”Hoot Mon

The most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it is comprehensible. ”A. Einstein

This message is a reply to:
 Message 33 by fallacycop, posted 12-12-2006 11:10 PM fallacycop has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by ringo, posted 12-13-2006 1:47 PM Fosdick has replied
 Message 40 by AZPaul3, posted 12-14-2006 6:13 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 37 of 114 (369533)
12-13-2006 1:01 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by Chiroptera
12-12-2006 11:29 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
Chiropter, you wrote:
That is a far cry by talking about genes being "codes" or "language" or having "syntax" or whatever it is that some people are claiming. Sure, the word "code" is often used to describe how the nucleotides along a strand of DNA can be divided up into triplets, and these triplets correspond to an amino acid in a protein. But the only people I know who make a big deal about "language" and "syntax" and take the analogy to digital computers, encyclopedias, and blueprints too far are creationists and IDists who seem to be trying to obfuscate the situation.
Do real geneticists really say things like: "...the genes themselves amount to quaternary digital code with a geometrically 'symbolic' (i.e., non-stereochemical) language."
Maybe they do, which is why I wish someone would come in and comment on this; so far the only people that I know who say things like this are creationists/IDists.
Geneticists do indeed refer to genes as code. And I'm sure you know that there is an unambiguous genetic "dictionary" of codonic "symbols," amounting to geometric configurations of codons”digital in actuality, because of the 4^3 possible arrangements of four coding nucleotides (i.e., the digits). Add to that the solid Hardy-Weinberg principle of allele frequency and distribution, which relegates the digital genes to stochastic laws of probability. Geneticists confirm this very often in their labs, by way of stochastic modeling, showing what it means to alter the digital arrangements of alleles, even down to single nucleotide insertions or deletions. Daniel Hartl shows it quite convincingly in his "Essential Genetics/A Genomics Perspective" (2002), but he's not the only one.
”Hoot Mon
Edited by Hoot Mon, : Mispelling

The most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it is comprehensible. ”A. Einstein

This message is a reply to:
 Message 34 by Chiroptera, posted 12-12-2006 11:29 PM Chiroptera has not replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 39 of 114 (369541)
12-13-2006 1:53 PM
Reply to: Message 38 by ringo
12-13-2006 1:47 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
Ringo writes:
Why do you keep using the term "biogenesis" when you seem to mean "abiogenesis"?
Good point. I intended biogeneis to mean the origin of life, but I see what you mean.
”Hoot Mon
Edited by Hoot Mon, : just fiddling around

This message is a reply to:
 Message 38 by ringo, posted 12-13-2006 1:47 PM ringo has not replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 41 of 114 (369808)
12-14-2006 7:54 PM
Reply to: Message 40 by AZPaul3
12-14-2006 6:13 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
In all due respect, AZPaul13...
We know the chemistry, we know a bit about the probabilities of certain reactions, we know under what conditions abiogenesis could have occurred. All the above debatable as to specific details. We know that abiogenesis could have occurred under such conditions.
..I must disagree. We do not know the chemistry a abiogenesis. We do not know under what conditions abiogenesis took place. We simply do not know anything technically important about those preconditions. And the assumption that they occurred first on Earth is not suppored by any know scientific principle that I know of. I would like to examine credible evidence to the contrary.
We take a geocentric view because a reasonable assumption, again from the knowledge we presently possess, is that such a scenario is more likely, if the process occurred, to have occurred on this planet.
More likely than what?
For instance, panspermia does not answer the abiogenesis question so much as it pushes it back further in time onto another planet somewhere. Not that this is negated by any stretch, just that we are reluctant to assume that abiogenesis occurred somewhere else, then traveled here over vast stretches of space and time, when we know that the conditions here were already adequate for the process. Without some evidence that panspermia is not just possible, but is a better vector for the existence of life here than it having been “homegrown,” we are reluctant to entertain the more unlikely, more complex scenario over the geocentric venue.
Yes, I do agree that panspermia evades the abiogenic question. But I don't see how it needs to be a more complex scenario. There is no doubt that interplanetary transport happens, and that our solar system is wide open to every kind of space stuff floating around (some of it even carries poly aromatic hydrocarbons).
Those of us who have studied the issue in considerable detail do indeed expect that “those wonderfully warm ponds to puddle up all over the universe” on other planets in this galaxy and many, many other galaxies. This leads to all kinds of off-topic discussions like what terms to put in the Drake equation, the values of those terms, the Fermi Paradox and so on. We’ll leave that to other threads.
For now, at least, the Fermi Paradox trumps the Drake equation. Why are you willing to make those brave assumptions the Drake equation requires? I have no trouble at all making the assumptions required by the Fermi Paradox. I just do not understand how the SETI enterprise can assume that intelligent extraterrestrials are out there signaling to us. I know Isaac Asimov would be trilled, but I could find better ways to spend that SETI money.
”Hoot Mon

The most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it is comprehensible. ”A. Einstein

This message is a reply to:
 Message 40 by AZPaul3, posted 12-14-2006 6:13 PM AZPaul3 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 42 by AZPaul3, posted 12-14-2006 11:16 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 43 of 114 (369900)
12-15-2006 12:29 PM
Reply to: Message 42 by AZPaul3
12-14-2006 11:16 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
AZPaul3, you wrote:
We do not know anything...?
Certainly you are not one to argue from ignorance.
If the body of knowledge surrounding present theories of this subject do not constitute, in your opinion, "anything technically important" then I cannot help you further. And, please, do not infer from this that anyone sees our research as complete or without controversy in details. However, a reasonable person, given the body of knowledge, much of it referred to above in this thread, cannot conclude we do not know anything technically important on the matter. I am surprised.
Well, if scientists know what is technically important to provoke abiogenesis then they would have answers to these questions:
1. At what temperature did it occur?
2. With what kinds of radiation, and how much of it was required?
3. What specific materials were required to bring it about?
4. What combination of these physical conditions was necessary?
5. What brought about the first gene and enabled it to communicate structural information by way of a digital language?
6. What principles of self-organization allowed that first complex life form to emerge from abioic sources?
7. Why did only one kind of life emerge from abiogeneis?
8. AND WHY CAN'T SCIENTISTS DUPLICATE ABIOGENESIS IN THE LABORATORY?
I take the firm position that any technically important knowledge about abiogeneis must include answers to these questions. More simply stated, if we actually do have technically important knowledge about abiogenesis then we should be able to make life from scratch like nylon, computer chips, and Bucky balls. The sad truth is that the first artificial protein was synthesized only a few years ago, and it was a relatively simple one. This leaves a long way for us to go before we have enough technically important knowledge to actually make a whole organism from scratch. (I'd be thrilled to see just a relatively simple RNA microcosm show up from scratch in somebody's test tube!)
You may say that we know a lot of technically important stuff about life's requirements”organic chemistry, biophysics, genetics”but I say we are not even close to explaining abiogenesis. I think that is remarkable, given all the "technically important knowledge" we have accrued from our studies.
You do not see the added complexity of a theory requiring you to travel through eons of space and time versus the same one without having to travel through eons of space and time? Say it ain't so.
Panspermia seems to me, at least, to be mechanically simply compared to abiogenesis. But of course that is a speculative opinion.
AZPaul3, I don't mean to be disrespectful to your research and opinions. I know I'm a butthead about explaining abiogenesis”the greatest of all mysteries of science. For now, I feel the need to stress this origination principle: We will never know what life is, in a technically important way, until we know where it came from. That may seem perfunctory to you, but I think that explaining the "where" or abiogenesis is fundamental to explaining the "how" of it.
”Hoot Mon
Edited by Hoot Mon, : No reason given.
Edited by Hoot Mon, : typos

The most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it is comprehensible. ”A. Einstein

This message is a reply to:
 Message 42 by AZPaul3, posted 12-14-2006 11:16 PM AZPaul3 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 44 by jar, posted 12-15-2006 12:39 PM Fosdick has replied
 Message 50 by AZPaul3, posted 12-15-2006 2:52 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 45 of 114 (369904)
12-15-2006 12:46 PM
Reply to: Message 44 by jar
12-15-2006 12:39 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
jar asks:
Does it really matter if we never find out exactly how the transition happened? Would it not be sufficient if we can find one or more ways that it can happen?
Do you mean making life from scratch in a lab without understanding abiogenesis?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 44 by jar, posted 12-15-2006 12:39 PM jar has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 47 by jar, posted 12-15-2006 12:52 PM Fosdick has not replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 49 of 114 (369937)
12-15-2006 2:12 PM


Bio-friendliness vs. Abiogenesis
There are only two possible abiogenic “master”scenarios”:
1. Abiogenesis occurred only once in the universe”the single-origin theory”and therefore it happened only on planet Earth.
2. Abiogenesis occurs multi-regionally on many bio-friendly planet in the universe with the right start-up conditions.
In the first scenario, we have the obvious advantage of confining our search for abiogenic principles to planet Earth. Homegrown life should be a lot easier to explain than life raised somewhere else. This, I suspect, is the preferred scenario of many researchers.
In the second scenario, we have the obvious disadvantage of necessarily expanding our search for abiogenic principles to many, many other planets that we have no knowledge of at all. I say this because the second scenario is open to the possibility that abiogenesis occurred extraterrestrially, not on planet Earth. There could be a vast difference between a planet with the right abiogenetic conditions and a planet with only bio-friendly conditions that can support life after it is has been made from scratch somewhere else. Noteworthy here is that, in either scenario, panspermia could be actively spreading life around the universe to bio-friendly planets that lack the necessary start-up conditions to host an abiogenic event.
My pick is scenario #2, so I am bothered by too many unknown factors and conditions. Eventually, I think, scientists will have to abandon scenario #1. It seems to me that bio-friendliness does not automatically qualify a planet for hosting abiogenesis. I may be in the minority on this one.
”Hoot Mon

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 51 of 114 (369997)
12-15-2006 5:23 PM
Reply to: Message 50 by AZPaul3
12-15-2006 2:52 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
AZPaul3, you can use all the humor you like when responding to me. I usually have to take pains to keep it out of my naratives for the same respectful reasons.
Yes, indeed we are in disagreement on what constitutes "technically important knowledge" about abiogenesis. I question the assumption that since life occurs on Earth then it must have originated here. That seems too geocentric to me. Then there is the opposite view: Bingo! Life just happens like a chemical reaction everywhere the reagents are availlable. Hence I question that implicit assumption carried in each of these quotes from respectable scientists:
Stuart Kauffman (from "At Home In The Universe," 1995):
"There are compelling reasons to believe that whenever a collection of chemicals contains enough different kinds of molecules, a metabolism will crystallize from the broth. If this argument is correct, metabolic networks need not be built one component at a time; they can spring full-grown from a primordial soup. Order for free, I call it. If I am right, the motto of like is not We the improbable, but We the expected."
and from Manfred Eigen et al., "The Hypercycle: A Principle of Natural Self-Organization," (1979):
"Evolution appears to be an inevitable event, given the presence of certain matter with specified autocatalytic properties and under the maintenance of the finite (free) energy flow necessary to compensate for the steady production of entropy."
To me, these statements amount to unsubstantiated opinions, but many good scientists invoke them anyway. "...a metabolism will crystalize from the broth." Now, really! If what they say is true then I'll checking every little warm pond I come across for evidence on-going abiogenesis.
Moving, on you said:
You seem to be asking for absolutes about inputs and processes and are of the opinion that absence of these absolutes constitutes a lack of technically important knowledge. I agree that such knowledge is important for absolute certainty of the phenomenon.
Phenomenology is not my thing, but that's a philosophical matter. I'm not asking for absolutes, just for evidence that abiogenesis was a mechanical process. We don't know that it was, or is, for sure, do we? Maybe it was a encryption process. If it was an encryption phenomenon then, well, then it was about as spooky as Moses receiving the Ten Commandmens.
As for the simplicity of panspermia, well, I see this: you need a suitable planet, abiogenesis must occur, an impact on the planet surface (as one of many examples) must occur, something living must be hoisted into space intact and unharmed with just enough velocity on just the correct trajectory to fall on earth after traveling many eons without any further impact, radiation exposure, nor anything else that would extinguish that life in transit. That is complex.
If you want to consider some interstellar “Johnny Appleseed,” I’m afraid the complexities there get even bigger since now we must not only posit a suitable planet and abiogenesis, but the rise of intellect, the formation of a society and a culture with the technology and the motivation to spread its seed. Not impossible by any means, but, a more complex vector indeed.
And, since we have, at present, no reason (data/evidence) to suppose either of the above, then these are seen as less likely than the simpler “homegrown” hypothesis.
NASA found microbes on a lunar-landing vehicle that were exposed for several years to those harsh conditions. Astronauts brought them back to Earth and cultured them in a lab”they lived!. Sparse evidence, yes, I know, but evidence none the less that microbes can endure outer space. Your understandable need to test for eons will take a little more time, however.
I’m thinking, however, that you may be looking for more than a mere “definition” of what life is. Are you looking for “purpose,” or “meaning?” Maybe something to justify or refute the metaphysical? If so, I fear any answers you may find in a technical discussion of abiogenesis will leave your questions unsatisfied.
No, I'm not looking for a teleological "purpose" or "meaning." I'll leave that to the phenomologists. Most phenomonologist I know want to impose "downward causation" on abiogenesis and biological evolution. Why? I see both occurring in quite the opposite manner”from the bottom up. Maybe this is one reason why abiogenesis is such an enigma.
So, AZPaul3, I should ask: Are you a phenomologist? And what is your preferred direction of causation where abiogenesis and evolution is concerned?
”Hoot Mon

The most incomprehensible thing about nature is that it is comprehensible. ”A. Einstein

This message is a reply to:
 Message 50 by AZPaul3, posted 12-15-2006 2:52 PM AZPaul3 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 52 by ringo, posted 12-15-2006 5:38 PM Fosdick has replied
 Message 65 by AZPaul3, posted 12-16-2006 3:26 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 53 of 114 (370018)
12-15-2006 6:59 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by ringo
12-15-2006 5:38 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
Ringo, you asked:
Are you saying that encryption is not a mechanical process?
I don't know. Do you?
”Hoot

This message is a reply to:
 Message 52 by ringo, posted 12-15-2006 5:38 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 54 by ringo, posted 12-15-2006 7:32 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 55 of 114 (370045)
12-15-2006 8:36 PM
Reply to: Message 54 by ringo
12-15-2006 7:32 PM


Re: The odds of life are unknown
OK Ringo, re:
What is being changed by the "encryption" process? Are we not just talking about arrangements of chemical elements bonded together into molecules? Wouldn't "encryption" just be a different mechanical arrangement?
You just seem to be trying to overcomplicate the situation by introducing some woo-woo factor that we can never understand.
It's just Tinker-Toys. Lots and lots of Tinker-Toys.
I have one for you.
Please imagine a single-celled organism, let's say a paramecium, with everything it needs to go mechanically on its way. Being alive it also has genes, of course, and so it behaves like a healthy protist under your microscope. Now, let's say you remove this paramecium and alter it in a particular way: you keep everything mechanically intact and retain the same amount of molecules everywhere, including all the nucleotides on the DNA in its nucleus. BUT you remove the genes by changing the order of those nucleotides on the chromosomes. The empirical result is that the organism is materially identical to what it was before...with one exception: its code got scrambled.
Now, put that paramecium back in the water and watch how well it does. It won't be pretty, even though all of its materials remain intact.
”Hoot Mon

This message is a reply to:
 Message 54 by ringo, posted 12-15-2006 7:32 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 56 by ringo, posted 12-15-2006 8:47 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Fosdick 
Suspended Member (Idle past 5500 days)
Posts: 1793
From: Upper Slobovia
Joined: 12-11-2006


Message 57 of 114 (370195)
12-16-2006 11:48 AM
Reply to: Message 56 by ringo
12-15-2006 8:47 PM


Ringo, you wrote:
What do you mean by "remove the genes"?
You say "by changing the order of those nucleotides on the chromosomes" but that's just a mechanical rearrangement. The organism is not "materially identical" - it has the same materials but in a different arrangement.
The "code" is the arrangement of the molecules, is it not?
How is that not mechanical?
Well, you can remove the music from a magnetic tape by mechanically scrambling its recording, too, but that does not make the music mechanical. I would say that a magnetic tape recorder is mechanical, all right, but the music is really something else. If you erased "Jingle Bells" from your magnetic tape by mechanically scrambling its recording, the song will continue to exist. Right? Obviously, "Jingle Bells" is far more durable than those mechanical recording devices, since it was written before they were invented.
”Hoot Mon

This message is a reply to:
 Message 56 by ringo, posted 12-15-2006 8:47 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 58 by ringo, posted 12-16-2006 12:41 PM Fosdick has replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024