quote:
Two time Nobel Prize winner, Ilya Prigogine stated that life could never have been formed by chance. "The statistical probability that organix structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero."
I'll take a hack at this one as well. MrJack hit on this as well, but Prigogine seems to be saying that there must have been an underlying mechanism that only allowed certain reactions to take place instead of any reaction at any time. In other words, the production of these chemicals must have been guided through catalyst reactions that prevented random reactions over extended periods. Just to use an example, if you mix hydrogen and oxygen molecules together in a chamber containg organic molecules you will most likely see the oxygen slowly reacting with both the hydrogen and these organic molecules. However, if you add a palladium catalyst, most of the hydrogen and oxygen will react with each other and produce water. It is statistically improbable that the hydrogen and oxygen would react only with each other in the absence of a catalyst, or by chance. This is what Progigone is relating, that these biomolecules are not the product of random reactions but by pathways that reduce randomness and chance.
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