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

Ringo, re: Yes, you're probably right. I may have gone to the woo-woos out of desperation, I'll admit it. But I have a good excuse: we do not know”to my satisfaction, at leas”what life or where it came from. Sure, we know an awfully lot of mechanical things about it. But all that wonderful knowlege amounts to nearly nothing when it comes down to explaining WHAT LIFE IS AND WHERE IT CAME FROM. Perhaps I am too impatient for the answers. (I think I admitted in my first post that I've even taken to parallel universes for the full woo-woo effect.)”Hoot Mon

What life is and where it came from are not the most important questions though. We're more interested in how it works, so we can fix it when it doesn't (and so we can manipulate it in sometimes more sinister ways).What's more important to know about your car - every step along the assembly line that made it, or what to do when it won't start?And how much time do you waste asking, "What is a car?"

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If you're a philosopher then you waste considerable time contemplating the meaning of, "What is a car?" If you're a politician you waste considerable time contemplating what the meaning of the word "is" is. It all works out in the end. Badly, but it does work out.Sorry.

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WHAT LIFE IS...

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A collection of organisms each of which possesses self-contained metabolic processes by which they take resources from the environment and make copies of themselves.

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...AND WHERE IT CAME FROM.

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From the capacity of this complex universe for self-organization.

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

So be it. “Must have” is a bit strong. “May have” is indeed more realistic. Having said that, the data points we do have indicate “homegrown” as being more than a “weak” probability. Almost sounds like an article of faith, Hoot? Given our history with geocentrism skepticism is warranted, but, at this point we cannot discount the probability and it appears to be a rather strong probability at that. I agree that some of the more enthusiastic statements are not warranted. We still have much to discover before we give in to hyperbole. Yet, it appears from recent data that the l parameter of Drake could use a bit of an increase. I’ve been doing that for years. I thought I actually found one once, but before I could get it out of the pond some amoeba came along and devoured it. On a planet already full of life such an event (probably still happening, BTW) would quickly become an h’ors d'oevres.In speaking of abiogenesis you said, What does this mean? How would that have been encrypted? By whom? Actually, I’m a Republican. (ducking)And a mighty disappointed one at that.To be verbose or not to be verbose, that is the question -
Whether ”tis nobler on the thread to suffer
The slings and arrows of outraged Admins,
Or to wax poetic against a sea of philosophers,
And by opposing, disparage them.Top-down is fine for programming in C++, but for describing the formation of natural bio-systems it sucks.I am a hard-core reductionist. Synergy be damned, we are only the sum of our parts without meaning and with only the one purpose - to procreate. We, and all life we see, are the evolved survival and replication vessels for that self-replicating chain of molecules that kicked off this whole “Life” thing billions of years ago.That we have used our evolved survival advantage of sentient intellect to posit meaning and music and metaphysical gods only serves to make the journey that much more fun.I actually remember what a phenomonologist is. I had to look it up to remember the specifics though. Strange how those memory circuits, unused for decades, spring back to life when the right cells are fired.I know that a chair is not really a chair until we see in our minds the utility, the concept, of “chairness.” I know phenomenology is much more than this simplistic explanation. And, finally, I know that, just as decades ago, I still don’t give a flying flip.Edited by AZPaul3, : Why? What do mean by asking why? Cause I wanted to that's why. Go away!

Chiropter, re: Oh, thank you! With explanations like those I have no further need for the woo-woos. Reminds me of when a Northwest Indian was asked how he makes a cedar canoe. He said, "You chop down a cedar tree and cut away everything that isn't a canoe."”Hoot Mon

AZPaul3, re: my statement that your POV seems too geocentric to me, you wrote: I find this interesting, because it strikes ME as an article of faith. I'm thinking it takes less faith to believe in a more-ubiquitous abiogenesis than it does to believe that only Earth hosted it. A single-earthly abiogenesis does not seem to me as far away from the Creation myth as the alternative. I find that VERY funny (J. of Irreproducible Results material!), but your predation model requires a stretch I can't make for the lack of any evidence. I would certainly think that at least one or two of those sneaky attempts at abiogenesis should have been discovered by now. What BREAKING NEWS that would make! I'm sorry. That's worse than the woo-woos.”Hoot Mon

Ahh . there we have it! I had a feeling we had a big disconnect in our conversation and now there it is!Please understand I do NOT believe, by any stretch, that abiogenesis is a one-time, single, only, one-per-universe event.My reading of Drake suggests that abiogenesis can and has occurred in significantly more than one venue in our galaxy. One of these occurrences may have been earth.I find nothing that precludes it and I find considerable, though not conclusive, data that leans in that direction. Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it. I enjoyed it when I wrote it. The process of abiogenesis probably does not yield a prodigious mass of self-replicating thingies right away. So the fortuitous creation of one on our present earth would be pretty much a lone event per occurance, in my opinion. True, it would attempt to replicate and may indeed succeed in producing a couple dozen kid-thingies, but, on our planet the ubiquitous nature of life, all looking for lunch, leaves the Thingy Family with not much chance of making it through the lunch hour, let alone long enough to be discovered and certainly well before any significant evolution. Such chance chemical combinations would not happen often, like daily or even yearly, but I find no reason to believe they cannot still be taking place. Speculation? Yes. But not without foundation. Your condolences are appreciated.So just what does it mean for abiogenesis to be an “encryption process?”Edited by AZPaul3, : Like I said last time, the reason for this edit is because I WANTED TO. Let me alone!Edited by AZPaul3, : How many time do I have say this? I WANTED TO! THAT'S WHY!Edited by AZPaul3, : To fix a boo-boo. There. Ya happy?

AZPual3, you wrote: Why wouldn't your Thingy Family include the possibilty of abiogenesis producing new little buggers that come out and eat the old ones? It's actually an even bigger question than that. The language of encryption must also be invented along the way. All I'm saying here is that the mechanical speculations of abiogenesis show me no way to understand how a genetic memory system was formed and communicated for the first time. Maybe Dr. Seuss still has a hold on me, but I see the development of a genetic language as far spooker than that mechanical Thingy that eventually showed up.BTW: What makes you assume that a bio-friendly planet like Earth necessarily qualifies for hosting abiogenesis?”Hoot Mon

Since the early earth was a very different place than it is these days, I doubt that not seeing new life happening today tells us much about our origins.

Woodsy, you wrote: Are you not exercising a key assumption here that abiogenesis REQUIRED those early-Earth conditions? If so, on what grounds? My reasoning on this matter does not necessarily attribute those unknown abiogenic conditions to a different kind of Earth, because I have no clue as to what they were. Why did abiogenesis have to occur on Earth, either for the first time or for the only time? It seems to me, given what little we know, that a cosmic Johnny Appleseed is just as likely as an earthly Mother Of All Living Thingies. If I may assume that, and I do, then the problem of discovering the mechanics of abiogenesis grows to un-earthly, if not un-Godly, proportions. So where do I go from there? I hate to overuse Ringo's apt expression”"the woo-woos"”but...but...but, I'm a scientist and I don't believe in woo-woos.”Hoot Mon

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

Ehh . problem. If the processes of abiogenesis continue on a world such as ours the new species of Thingy Originalus (T.O.) would not be “living creatures,” but merely a self-replicating chain of nucleotides (maybe). Biopoiesis is thought to be that first step to be achieved in the process of abiogenesis. Though fatty acids seem to spontaneously form shells or bubbles, and T.O.s could certainly get themselves trapped within them, these would not really be cells as we know and love them. Considerable evolution would still be necessary for these pre-proto-living T.O.’s to achieve the status of “life” (still yet to be defined). They would, however, make an excellent addition to an appetizer plate for any existing living Thingy Evolveous such as, perhaps, us. My suggestion would be to get yourself a copy of Hazen’s “Gen-e-sis.” He does a good job of intelligently speculating, with logical foundation (still no absolutes here, Hoot), the various chains of events as we presently can see them. He does so with each of the various theories presently considered front runners. Because after studying the literature from Miller,DeDuve thru Schaefer,Fegley adding in Hazen, Orgel, and just a whole big bunch more over the last 25+ years, I still find nothing that precludes such from being possible. And stronger still, I find that as we progress in the science, the stronger appears the probability. All open to change as we progress, of course.

Me thinks you have the wrong impression of the history, here. The goal is to see if (a big “if”), life could have developed here on this planet. That is why the study of abiogenesis exists. That is the motivation behind the science of abiogenesis. Whether what has become familiar to us as the processes of abiogenesis, can be defined and are real. Not whether some early earth was required for some separately devised thing someone called “abiogenesis.”In the beginning there was the earth with all kinds of life around. “So, like, how did this get here?” we asked. Of the many speculative answers that came forward was one that said maybe, just maybe, it could have originated here. Ok, so how? When? And etcetera.From there we get into what, to our limited experience, seems to be necessary for this to have occurred. What kinds of conditions would be, not just necessary, but conducive? What chemicals would be necessary? What energies? How?We seem to have a lot of water around and we know it’s been here quite some time. What does this do? Does this help or hinder the prospects of life originating here, this planet, our home, earth? It turns out that liquid water is an especially fortuitous matrix upon which to conduct chemical reactions, most especially organic reactions. It’s simple basic chemistry, whether on this planet or anywhere else, for that matter. Water is, of all the fluids, the absolute best at being a host for organic reactions. Bar none. Fact, no maybe’s, no doubts.Ok, that’s good. What else do we need and how do we get it? We need some basic organic molecules, like say, amino acids. The Miller-Urey experiments shocked the discipline. Could it be that right here on our planet, our home, earth, that these molecules existed naturally? After a few decades of “was it really a reducing atmosphere or not?” wrangling, it turns out the early earth had indeed a very good reducing atmosphere and Schaefer-Fegley resulted in quite a few of the necessary aminos from scratch. Again, fact, no maybe’s, no doubts.We also learned that we get organic compounds falling in on this planet every day from way out there. Can we assume this is a new phenomenon and did not occur 4.3 billion years ago? Not realistically, no.Fatty acids form bubbles on their own, RNA can self-catalyze on its own and there is a major thermodynamic excess readily available. All fact, no maybe’s, no doubts.So now we have an excellent host medium, the required chemicals in abundance, a promising self-organizing organic reaction, a pre-proto shell in which keep our booty and lots of free energy hanging around. All in existance on an early earth. Now what?The ultimate question (has nothing to do with “42”). Could life have originated on earth?That’s where we’re at now. How does it all fit together and does it really work? We don’t know . yet. May indeed be. Patience, patience, Hoot. It’s been a long haul, I know, and we have much further to go. Much has been learned in the last 50 years and, if you’re a Ray Kurzwiel fan, ya gotta know that knowledge will more than double in the next 15!

AZPaul3, you wrote: I have not yet read Hazen, but I went to this site for a sample review of it. The review is interesting, the book sounds worthwhile. I am familiar with Thomas Gold's "deep hot biosphere" theory, which is mentioned as being covered by the book. In fact, I like Gold's theory a lot; it brings into play the intense pressures deep in Earth's mantle, perhaps another requirement of abiogenesis. So I need to read Hazen's new book. Maybe it will make some of my questions go away.Are you very familiar with Stephen Wolfram's writings on cellular automata? Along these lines, if I take Conway's "Game of Life" and add Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker" to the mix I get fascinated by what those digital Thingies can do. What impresses me is the ability of certain simple digital arrays, given the right conditions, to morph their way along evolutionary pathways and find structural stability, even dominance. This is computer-world stuff, I know, but it suggests to me that nature may be hiding laws of self-organization from our Newtonian world-view. (I happen to think that there IS such a digital aspect to biological nature that needs more attention.)”Hoot Mon

AZPaul3, you advised: Yes, and I can feel that Singularity crushing down on us like a big, ominous thing, but I doubt if I will live long enough to see what happens when the computers takeover.”Hoot Mon