Biogenesis

RAZD is bound to do a better job than I am at answering these but he's not around so I'll sneak in: [qs] Yes. And, personally, I think that the "might" is important. We are finding pathways across the fuzzy, grey non-life-to-life boundary but it may be that the information needed to pick a particular path or be sure that we have found exactly the right one is no longer available.Right now just finding 1 or more likely paths is the aim of research. It think this is just an accident of terminology and our current state. It is like the term "geology" -- it refers to the study of earth rocks. (that's the geo in it). So some might call the study of moon rock selenology for example. We named it without thinking for a minute that we would have other examples to study.But I think that is being pedantic. It's geology if it's rocks no matter where they are.Right now, we only have information about earth and it's life so abiogenesis is restricted to that. If we find something on Mars I don't think it would be a problem to include that in "abiogenesis". People are not always careful when using words. There aren't any thing but hypothoses or speculations on abiogenesis right now. At least that is what you'd call it if you are being pedantic and careful about the use of the words.There is no standard theory or even, in my opinoin, a theory at all.The standard hypothesis was, for a long time, Darwin's warm pond. I don't think there is any standard now. We've learned a lot about extant life and the range of conditions which it can live in. From above you can tell I think not. This is incorrect. If we found life on another planet we might have proof that it wasn't the source of life on Earth if it was too different.If we found life elsewhere that was very like Earth's that would, as you say, not prove it was a source of Earth's life but would help us understand more with a second sample.If we had many, many examples of life in different places and we found that they were all different in some basic way (DNA codes e.g.) from Earth's but we found life on Mars to be very like us then we would have a strong indication that life moved from Mars to Earth or vice versa.None of this is faith based. It can be based on whatever information we have at the time.

But this has little or nothing to do with Abiogenesis, doku. The video that was sited to AOKid days and days ago supplies the kind of evidence that is available.He has never referred to it. One suspects he hasn't watched it (or hasn't understood it).

So AOK, is a tapeworm alive or dead?