Has there been life for 1/4 of the age of the Universe?

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: 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: 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

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."

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The thread about this map can be found here.

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?
even if it did happen again, it would get eaten by some of the current life forms that, after a few billion years of evolution, have become much more efficient than they were originally. Any form of life that springing up ab initio, on earth today wouldn`t stand a chance of survival.

Hello again, Hoot.

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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.

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I'm not sure what you mean by this. Scientists aren't just making stuff up. They use what is already known to make hypotheses about the possible scenarios and pathways by which life might have arose. These ideas are then tested in laboratories to see whether they are feasible, and whether the results will shed new light that will allow the scientists to modify and extend their ideas. These are not just random guesses and make-believe. They are testable ideas that are being tested in current research.-

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And to my statement: "I just don't know what to do about those metaphors," you responded:

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That's easy. Don't take them literally.

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Well, I wish I could. But even the most trivial thought worth recording about life and its origin is, after all, a literal enterprise.

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Again, I'm not sure what you mean. Yes, scientists are literally trying to understand the actual, real, literal beginning of life, and they doing so by trying to understand it a piece at a time by doing real, literal experiments in the laboratory.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 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.

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Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied. -- Otto von Bismarck

gasby, you responded to my statement: 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

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

fallacycop, your wrote: 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

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

Chiropter, you wrote: 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 MonEdited by Hoot Mon, : Mispelling

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

Why do you keep using the term "biogenesis" when you seem to mean "abiogenesis"?

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Ringo writes: Good point. I intended biogeneis to mean the origin of life, but I see what you mean.”Hoot MonEdited by Hoot Mon, : just fiddling around

There are no calculations. None that can be called realistic, anyway.
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.Note: I did not say abiogenesis did occur under these conditions.We do not know if the process, if it occurred, took 15 minutes, 15 years, 15 million years, 150 million years or what. An education assumption that follows from the knowledge we do have is that it could have happened and that there appears to be some considerable time (tens of millions of years) for it to have happened.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. Not with any certainty, to be sure, and open to some reasoned and some wild speculation on other venues, all of which present their own additional sets of problems with added complications.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.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.

In all due respect, AZPaul13... ..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. More likely than what? 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). 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

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

Not "took place," but "could have occurred." 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. Did I say "first on earth" or "could have occurred" on earth?
Should one infer that I spoke of all life in the universe or life's presence on this planet alone?Given the alternative theories within the subject, many of them in this and other threads on this forum, Occam's Razor is helpful. Since the conditions for abiogenesis may have been adequate on this planet, and since the technical issues of abiogenesis are the same no matter on what planet it may have happened, then, without further evidence to show a more viable vector, the assumption that abiogenesis occurred here takes precedence over other theories that require additional or unsupported assumptions, such as eons of interstellar travel.Does this "prove" anything? No. But it allows us to lend additional credence to the more viable options. This is what makes Occam’s Razor such a useful scientific principle. From my original post (emphisis added):

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Not with any certainty, to be sure, and open to some reasoned and some wild speculation on other venues, all of which present their own additional sets of problems with added complications.

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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. We will disagree here. No trump. There are as many solutions to the Fermi Paradox as there are forms of the Drake equation.This is also off-topic thus we must let it be.

AZPaul3, you wrote: 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. 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 MonEdited by Hoot Mon, : No reason given.Edited by Hoot Mon, : typos

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

Wouldn't panspermia simply move the question of abiogenesis off planet? Regardless of where the first life originated, at some time there was no life. Later there was life. 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?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

jar asks: Do you mean making life from scratch in a lab without understanding abiogenesis?