NOOOOO, Life did not just 'come from nothing'. There is a nice whole field of study called 'Abiogenesis' that is looking a how it might have happened. Much progress over the last 10 years has been done to understand the way simple organic chemicals react to be able to develop more complex organic chemicals. However, because the information about what actually did happen has been destroyed over the last 3.4 billion years, we can only say 'it could have happend this way', rather than saying 'it did happen this way'. There could be multiple paths that the simple organic material became complex enough to be called life. At this point,we don't know.
We do know that it is likely the earth was full of organic material. When they did a space probe to Titan, they found that the atmosphere of Titan actually had a lot of complex organic material in it. This is signifigent, since Titan is the place in teh solar system that scientists felt was the most like the early earth, and they wanted to see what titan was like. Remember, the definition of 'organic' chemicals is chemicals that include carbon. Since carbon is so plentiful, that leaves a lot of organic chemistry to be done.
So, no, at that point, apparently life did not come from 'nothing'.
This message has been edited by ramoss, 02-04-2006 09:58 AM
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