Abiogenisis by the Numbers

What would be "unscientific" would be presenting calculations based on evidence so incomplete that you can't set starting conditions. That's exactly the spot that origin-of-life researchers find themselves in, and I'll bet that they will freely admit it. Each passing year, though, seems to bring us closer to having a better handle on those early reactions. The recent discovery that a volcanic gas, carbonyl sulfide, is a potent "catalyst" for connecting up amino acids (in water solution....) to make polypeptides is just one more step.We may well never know all the steps that led up to the "first replicator" - it was nearly four billion years ago in an environment very unlike ours today, and we will likely never be certain about the fine details of that environment. But they're working on ideas, and making progress.

Huh? "Dissolving" doesn't do that! Egg white is a solution of a whole protein in water! You might want to check your sources, or take a chemistry class.But welcome aboard!

Well, it was only published within the last month or so. Perhaps you had prior notification?

Not correct. Amino acids, sugars, and a very large array of other smallish biomolecules dissolve in water with no bonds broken at all.

Where did you get that bizarre factoid? I'll bet a 30-pack of Keystone Light against a single bottle of Guiness that there's enough carbon in the sun alone to equal the mass of the entire Earth. Anyone know the carbon abundance of ol' Sol off the top of their head?

But I'll repeat the bet that he doesn't mention carbonyl sulfide, and again that you didn't know carbonyl sulfide's chemical formula prior to today.

In those cases, their hydrogen atoms hydrogen-bond to water molecules, and their nitrogen and/or oxygens form hydrogen bonds with hydrogens on other water molecules.Oh, and the carbon currently in the Sun amounts to about 109 earth-masses. Lessee, times 10^11 solar masses in our galaxy alone, times....And Crash, I doubt there's any need for either you or I to be tacky with our new friend. He/she is rapidly weaving the web that he/she will soon be trapped in, and doesn't appear to even need any help doing it.This message has been edited by Coragyps, 11-12-2004 10:33 PM

Are you getting all your info from Answers in Genesis, or something even worse? Miller is still active in the field, and his group is still making discoveries! There have been several "breakthroughs", including the COS reaction I mentioned above.

Show your work.

You seem familiar enough with his work, and I'm a very cheap individual. Give us a summary of how he got a google to one odds, and we'll all be grateful.

Clarify what you/Behe are saying here, please. RNA is much easier to assemble than a protein because its building blocks are more complex??

But you're still willing to make it the centerpoint of your argument? That's....er.....brave.

Amen, Brother Sasquatch! Ask any of us that got even as far as Organic Chemistry 255, laboratory, one credit hour for nine hours a week in Stinkville.

Life very well may have arisen from other combinations of "stuff" than those we have today, but was eaten by our ancestors. The RNA/DNA/our 20 amino acids system was perhaps more efficient or luckier than some alternative system. There are, after all, a few organisms around today that use slightly different DNA codes than we mammals do.

Hi, new person! Welcome to EvC!What's wrong with that first, accidental 8-mer of self-replicating RNA as the "sender?" And it failed to always "send" with perfect accuracy, and some of its "mistakes" turned out to be even better replicators? That's pretty much how the evolution game works today - I see no need to posit something fundamentally different just because it was 3,500,000,000 years ago.