# The Origins of Life on Earth



## Brian G Turner (Jul 19, 2019)

A couple of interesting videos on YouTube about the origins of life on Earth I thought I'd share:


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 19, 2019)

No final truth, no highest light, just always more questions, imo ...


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 19, 2019)

Questions are good. 

If there's one thing I learned in school is that science is full of mystery, and to me that's what makes it compelling.

After all, if science had all the answers, there'd be no point studying it because there'd be nothing new to learn.


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 19, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> No final truth, no highest light, just always more questions, imo ...



Does _any_ question have a 'final' truth, other than trivial ones and tautologies? 

A great deal of the questions asked by Greek philosophers over two and half thousand years ago remain unanswerable. So we know that some questions are really _hard _to answer


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 20, 2019)

Brian G Turner said:


> After all, if science had all the answers, there'd be no point studying it because there'd be nothing new to learn.


Of course that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying a couple of these bright young men sound supremely confident that there IS an answer. One of them pastes up a four-point definition of life that includes abiogenesis origin as part of the definition. Absolutely certain. Already decided. But the origin of life may keep receding the closer 'we' get. There may not be a LUKA. No definite certainty. Not ever.

Sure 'we' need to keep looking. These guys assume LUKA is definite and certain, just around the corner, but it may not be. It may be an 'uncertainty principle' sort of thing. Solutions to what life is are never going to be simple. Imo. I find them rather superficial actually, except for the PBS guy. He is much more nuanced in his talks.


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## Dave (Jul 20, 2019)

I admit that I didn't watch all of both those films, I had just skimmed them to see if there was anything that I didn't already know about. Certainly, the idea of the the pre-cellular bodies sharing information rather than replicating themselves is, to me, an additional step back, and is closing the gap between primordial soup and life as we know it. I hadn't heard of LUKA but DNA analyses has advanced so far in recent years that I should have expected that research was going on.



RJM Corbet said:


> These guys assume LUKA is definite and certain, just around the corner, but it may not be.


LUKA is just a name, much the same as "Lucy" the AL 288-1 Australopithecus afarensis. Genetically, as shown in the film, a single progenitor like LUKA must have existed, and would have lived around hydrothermal vents. I thought that was well explained. However, it will no longer exist today, so I'm not sure what you mean by "just around the corner," because there will be no fossil or physical evidence to be found. That genetic evidence (which is compelling) may be the best that we can ever get as far as proof.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 20, 2019)

Dave said:


> LUKA is just a name, much the same as "Lucy" the AL 288-1 Australopithecus afarensis.


Of course LUKA is just a name.


Dave said:


> ... a single progenitor like LUKA must have existed, and would have lived around hydrothermal vents. I thought that was well explained. However, it will no longer exist today, so ...


It means there must have been a point at which life became life, at the end of a process? I'm saying it may turn out to be more like the 'uncertainty principle' -- something can never  by its nature be pinned down?

I'm saying that there's a bit of confirmation bias around hydrothermal vents, etc. It's speculative. Highly speculative, actually. But it's presented as really pretty much certain? Perhaps it's just the 'breezy' You Tube manner of presentation, but I find the speakers' _certainty_ quite irritatingly over confident.

EDIT: Said my bit. I'm outta this one ...


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## Dave (Jul 20, 2019)

I'm sure you understood it, but their confidence is the chemical evidence - that that combination of elements is found nowhere else on Earth.

I'm more astonished by what it is possible to know from the genetic studies but I shouldn't be as this field has advanced more quickly than anything else in the last few decades. Did you know they could take a sample of seawater or river water, and tell you every species that lives there from a DNA analysis? You don't need to wait around or to use any nets.



RJM Corbet said:


> It means there must have been a point at which life became life, at the end of a process?


There doesn't need to be a process with a beginning and an end. It is just random circumstances resulting in one that eventually works. There were thousands of millions of years of trials.

I don't know if there is an equivalent in science, but in history it is called a "Whig Model" - that everything is perceived as a straight line from the past to the present - there is really no such thing, it doesn't exist. History is much more complicated and full of random events. Evolution used to be viewed in this same way, generally because people believed that divine intervention was necessary for "life" to exist. That the addition of some kind of "spark" was a necessary prerequisite before life became "life." So, that point was pushed further and further back in time. Now, scientists are becoming much more open about what "life" actually is. Wouldn't self replicating A I 'Terminator' machines fit all of the criteria of "life?" Stephen Hawking even suggested that a complex computer virus could be viewed as "life." As discussion of religion is not allowed I cannot provide further detail in that regard but I don't believe there is any point where life became life, and so looking for such a point is futile.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 20, 2019)

Dave said:


> There doesn't need to be a process with a beginning and an end. It is just random circumstances resulting in one that eventually works.


I understand this too. I did not say a linear process.


Dave said:


> As discussion of religion is not allowed I cannot provide further detail in that regard but I don't believe there is any point where life became life, and so looking for such a point is futile.


Where does religion come into it?

Leaving aside Stephen Hawking's well known 'life' application to computer viruses and his prediction that _AI_ will push human intelligence aside and take over, there may not be a hairline crossing where non-life became life, but the 'quest for LUKA' implies some defined ... area then ... at which life became life? Isn't that exactly what the guy is saying?

Like you, I disagree.  It'll _will-o-the-wisp _away forever, imo.

@Dave I came back in to correct the idea that I am talking simplistically about a clear linear process (of abiogenesis). However my knowledge is not enough to continue here, although it would be good to hear what other people think because these _Chrons _science discussions are quite educational, at least for me they are.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 20, 2019)

It's not directly on topic to the thread. But this is the PBS latest talk, 18/07/2019. I like the way this guy goes about his business. He isn't making definitive/authoritative statements and he retains the open attitude that properly defines 'the scientific method'. I look forward to the next installment:


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 20, 2019)




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## Venusian Broon (Jul 20, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


>



Yeah, isn't mathematics wonderful


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 21, 2019)

Make Lucas plural, last universal common ancestor, put the s at the end so it reads speculations, but at the same time means more than one. The lucas line that precedes the genetic structure we are aware of is more like a shadow or a silhouette of a large group of entities just like the rest of the tree that comes after it. The tree before the current tree. It probably doesn't make any sense to attach our DNA observations to the tree that came before our tree, and maybe a different tree came before that one. Maybe if the single line used by the charts is seen as a strand of lines that would look better. All too often we look for the single cause when there are multiple causes driving events. If the tree before ours worked like training wheels on a child's bicycle or like booster rockets on a space capsule launch then the training wheels or booster rocket would never show up at the final destination and just looking at the wheels or the booster rocket might never yield any clues as to what the capsule or bicycle looked like even though there is much similarity.

The hydrothermal vents provide a good explanation for where life starts on any planet with a hot core. It is an automated process that is pretty robust and can self start under a wide variety of circumstances. The water is already there, the required elements are in the minerals coming out of the planet's core, a mechanical process that in no way guarantees what kind of results will development but it keeps on pumping. Might not even need a sun close by and is completely independent of things like photosynthesis. The life that eventually forms is dependent on the characteristics of the physically evolving planet. Much the same way history is randomly shaped by peoples discovery of the environment and their interactions with the environment and other people on a personal and impersonal manner. History goes forward the way the tides wash stuff up on the beach, things are going to wash up and you have a rough idea, but the content is never completely predictable. 

I favor the idea that the Earth's water came out of the interior as it cooled down. Supposedly there is at least as much or maybe 2 or 3 times as much water locked inside minerals as there is on the surface. If the water was packed inside the interior as the molten Earth first solidified it would make it very easy for the water to make it's way to the surface by simply being burped out as the Earth matures, No need for comets or other strange things happening in the chaotic dust cloud of formation. Another automatic early life formation process that answers a lot of questions but still leaves the development of the life that comes afterwards completely random.

Bacteria use horizontal gene transfer to fortify the overall structure of the bacterial world. That process resembles data packet transfer protocol that handles old, new, delayed, and random requests to transfer data. If insects and bacteria are inserting genes into our genome on a random basis that could impede or enhance our genetic evolution, probably does both. Maybe it is supposed to be that way.


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## Dave (Jul 21, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Where does religion come into it?


It has the need for a "creator" of "Life" and therefore implies that such a point at which "non-Life" becomes "Life" must exist, because Life was *only* created by the "creator." Many people still believe this and I don't wish to begin a long drawn out argument on something that cannot be proven either way.


RJM Corbet said:


> ...there may not be a hairline crossing where non-life became life, but the 'quest for LUKA' implies some defined ... area... at which life became life? Isn't that exactly what the guy is saying?


I think we are actually on the same page. As I said, I didn't watch the whole video, so if "the guy" implied this then I don't agree with him either. I agree with what @Robert Zwilling just outlined. I think we will increasingly break down any barrier we have artificially created to define "Life" and "non-life" as being different things. I see that sharing on information between 'whatever it is we want to call it' as an important stage prior to self-replication, that fills in one of the gaps between them.

I think that we will come to question "what is Life?" again and again as we delve deeper.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 21, 2019)

Dave said:


> I think we will increasingly break down any barrier we have artificially created to define "Life" and "non-life" as being different things.


Sorry. You've lost me?


Dave said:


> I see that sharing on information between 'whatever it is we want to call it' as an important stage prior to self-replication, that fills in one of the gaps between them. I think that we will come to question "what is Life?" again and again as we delve deeper.


Late edit. Ok, I understand.


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## Dave (Jul 21, 2019)

Without labouring the point, the reason I think this is important is only because we blithely talk about "The origin of Life" and try to discover if there is "Life on other planets," and on these missions to other planets, false positives have been found that were dismissed as merely "chemical reactions." However, we might discover at some future point that the problem of finding Life lies with the setting of our actual question itself, particularly in regard to these underwater hydrothermal vents.


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## BAYLOR (Jul 21, 2019)

Dave said:


> Without labouring the point, the reason I think this is important is only because we blithely talk about "The origin of Life" and try to discover if there is "Life on other planets," and on these missions to other planets, false positives have been found that were dismissed as merely "chemical reactions." However, we might discover at some future point that the problem of finding Life lies with the setting of our actual question itself, particularly in regard to these underwater hydrothermal vents.



If life evolved here then,  given the size of the universe and how many  possible earth-like planets  , there's a more than reasonable  chance  that it exists elsewhere.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 21, 2019)

BAYLOR said:


> there's a more than reasonable chance that it exists elsewhere.



If life exists here, then either:

1. Life is an ordinary expression of the physical laws of the universe, and will therefore arise wherever conditions favor it across the universe,
2. It was a miraculous event that goes against the physical laws of the universe, and therefore can only exist on Earth.

I definitely favour #1.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 21, 2019)

There's a third:

Life originated here, against incredible odds, is not at all ordinary, and therefore is quite possibly unique to our world? Or at least to our galactic cluster, or whatever?


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 21, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> There's a third:
> 
> Life originated here, against incredible odds, is not at all ordinary, and therefore is quite possibly unique to our world? Or at least to our galactic cluster, or whatever?



That's certainly a very empirical point of view. After all, a lot of scientists refused to accept the possibility of other planets around other stars until we saw them, for probably the same reason. 

However, IMO it contains the same bias - that we are somehow special and miraculous, and an exception to the laws of the natural sciences that otherwise govern our universe. 

Some will disagree.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 21, 2019)

Brian G Turner said:


> That's certainly a very empirical point of view. After all, a lot of scientists refused to accept the possibility of other planets around other stars until we saw them, for probably the same reason.
> 
> However, IMO it contains the same bias - that we are somehow special and miraculous, and an exception to the laws of the natural sciences that otherwise govern our universe.
> 
> Some will disagree.


Special, does not imply 'miraculous and an exception to the laws of the natural sciences that otherwise govern our universe.'

EDIT: But if we keep throwing numbers at the thing, we end up with countable and uncountable infinities, and monkeys on typewriters, etc. No-one wants that?


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 22, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Life originated here, against incredible odds, is not at all ordinary, and therefore is quite possibly unique to our world? Or at least to our galactic cluster, or whatever?



I would say the process that starts the whole life formation thing into existence on new planets with similar characteristics probably has very common methods that get played the same way at the start of things. For our way of life, maybe this corner of the universe, built in water and hydrothermal vents are standard operating procedure. The startups don't always have to succeed. The contents of the core and the crust add their own flavor. After awhile it probably takes on a unique turn of events which could make the end product pretty unique for each planet. Maybe we are a product of the universal smoking institution. The radioactive content of the core might go a long way towards shaping the life that develops. The percentage mix of 100+ elements on a planet could be infinite. There might be a practical way to limit the expansion of possibilities that exist into a smaller number of groups.

On older planets, water and life from comets could be what starts the process. We could end up being the source of life on the Moon and Mars by accidentally contaminating them.

Then we have the moons of Saturn and Jupiter with plenty of water and organic compounds, little sunlight but plenty of energy and motion from gravity and magnetic fields, probably lots of tidal driven activity under the surfaces. There must be lots of planets and moons operating under similar circumstances. I think it is just one of plenty of different channels that can lead to the formation of life that probably doesn't resemble the hydrothermal route.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 22, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> The startups don't always have to succeed.


Indeed they do not. The number of all the elemental particles in the universe is 10x90 -- but just the interacton protein/protein combinations in a single yeast cell are 10 x 79 billion (we are told). There are hosts of numbers like this. One impossibly huge co-incidence upon another.

Ok, perhaps given enough time, it _has_ to happen, by increments. This is the wisdom -- dogma almost -- of the second decade of the 21st century. But it does not _have_ to happen, imo. However life originated, it is probably pretty rare, imo. I think sometimes we need reminding of it.


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## Dave (Jul 22, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Ok, perhaps given enough time, it _has_ to happen, by increments. This is the wisdom -- dogma almost -- of the second decade of the 21st century. But it does not _have_ to happen, imo. However life originated, it is probably pretty rare, imo. I think sometimes we need reminding of it.


But "given enough time" - this is key. There has been an unbelievably long time in geological terms for chemical reactions that take a matter of minutes. It is difficult to comprehend just how much time when compared to our short life-spans of 60+ years. So, I believe that it does _have_ to happen eventually, given the existence of the same circumstances, and Water and Hydro-thermal vents will be common. However, I agree with you that actually trying to put that into some equation like Drake or comparing infinite probabilities won't produce any real answers, and yes, it will be rare. It may be so rare that it is too distant for us to ever find it, which in effect, is much the same as it not existing.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 22, 2019)

Dave said:


> So, I believe that it does _have_ to happen eventually ...


Which brings us back around to monkeys on typewriters, lol?

Sorry, before anyone 'corrects' me: I am not saying that life has to be the goal of the process. The fact life came out of it may have just been one of those things. But that does not reduce the unlikelihood of it happening.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 27, 2019)

Here's another interesting video that follows this topic, but more specifically about just how far back the beginnings of life could go - and the results are surprising:


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 29, 2019)

Going with the 3 to 1 carbon ration being indicative of life it would seem that life was present on the planet long before the surface was hospitable to anything. 4.1 billion years ago life deep underwater would be well insulated from whatever was happening on the surface, and have no need of anything from the surface. 

The hydrothermal vents would have come into operation once there was plenty of water to sufficiently cover them. If the high pressure underwater was needed to facilitate certain chemical reactions that wouldn't normally happen at a few atmospheric pressures, the oceans would have to be relatively full, which provides some kind of early time marker. The life that started at the hydrothermal vents would be chemotroph life that would have no need of sunny blue skies or any kind of established pecking order that is the hallmark of life as we know it. Free chemicals for life. 

While none of this says that the creation of life is automatic, it does seem like it is and it could point to carbon being an element that has many different faces. One of which is that under the right conditions which aren't too hard to create on a newly formed rock planet with a radioactive metallic core and water bearing minerals packed in the crust, carbon is an enabler of chemical reactions that leads to the formation of life.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 29, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> 4.1 billion years ago life deep underwater would be well insulated from whatever was happening on the surface



That was my thought as well. 

It also explains why in the opening post one videos suggested it - it makes more sense in context with that third video.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 29, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> While none of this says that the creation of life is automatic, it does seem like it is


Again, we are talking about the 'automatic' piling of one hugely unlikely coincidence upon another. Now, the fact that it did happen on our world is one thing. As Feynman said: "A huge coincidence happened to me today, I saw a car with numberplate such-and-such; out of all the millions of cars on the road, how likely was I to see that one?"

But the same false reasoning can also be used in reverse, to say that, because it happened here, it is likely to be a common occurrence everywhere else. If we start looking at all the enormous coincidences that enabled life to come into being, I don't believe it is justified to assume it should be automatic.

Of course the occurrence of life on Earth does not mean that life was the _goal_ of the process. Perhaps life just happened, and so here we are. In the same way the electron/proton charge turned out to be exactly equal and so enabled the formation of atoms, etc.

It doesn't have to be a miraculous intervention with the goal of forming our universe, which may be one of many -- it just turned out that way. But it is still the result of scores of coincidences on the level of 10x79billion (as in the yeast cell protein interaction) piled upon another.

We may well be unique, imo.


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## Vertigo (Jul 29, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Again, we are talking about the 'automatic' piling of one hugely unlikely coincidence upon another. Now, the fact that it did happen on our world is one thing. As Feynman said: "A huge coincidence happened to me today, I saw a car with numberplate such-and-such; out of all the millions of cars on the road, how likely was I to see that one?"
> 
> But the same false reasoning can also be used in reverse, to say that, because it happened here, it is likely to be a common occurrence everywhere else. If we start looking at all the enormous coincidences that enabled life to come into being, I don't believe it is justified to assume it should be automatic.
> 
> ...


I agree with you @RJM Corbet, this assertion that "it happened here and there are so many other planets it _must_ have happened in lots of other places" is, to me, very sloppy logical thinking. The one simply does not follow from the other and the more we fail to find _any_ firm evidence of life elsewhere in the solar system or in any other star systems the more unlikely that reasoning is.* And it is also made less likely because, as far as we can tell, it only happened here _once! _In 4.5 billion years there does not appear to have been _any _successful second abiogenesis. _All_ life on Earth is, as far as we can tell from the DNA evidence, related.

But I have made this argument before and I have been argued down before. To my mind the belief that the galaxy/universe must be teeming with life is just that - a belief - and as such is more in the realms of religion than science.

* Note that this is absolutely not the same thing as saying it is impossible.


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 29, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> But the same false reasoning can also be used in reverse, to say that, because it happened here, it is likely to be a common occurrence everywhere else. If we start looking at all the enormous coincidences that enabled life to come into being, I don't believe it is justified to assume it should be automatic.



What 'enormous coincidences' do you mean? 

However going forward, just to back up Vertigo, at the end of the day, at the bottom of a chain of questions, all we have is belief. I assume this for all science - although on occasion, yes, you do get some people talking as if they are absolutely sure. (It's odd that we can clearly accept this as wrong, but for religious belief the opposite position of sceptism is deemed wrong...however I digress, not a topic for this forum.)

So I_ believe_ in the Copernican principle, namely that we humans are not privilged observers of the universe and that our surroundings are not special. It is just a _belief_, although we always continue to generate data on observations of all sorts to see if this is the case or not. To test it out and see if it is the case.

And because of this, and because of our current knowledge of carbon chemistry and other areas of science, I _believe_ that there should be many other areas of the universe, like the earth and it's system, where abiogenesis has occurred and will occur. I can't tell you exactly how abiogenesis can occur (perhaps there's huge numbers of different ways of it happening) but there are a large number of interesting ideas about how it might. And these can potentially be tested. 

Of course just finding a single alien lifeform, even just something like a bacteria in, say, the ice of Europa or deep in the rocks of Mars, that can be demonstrated to not have any links with life on Earth would be a great step forward. I am cautiously optimistic that we _may_ (may - not will! ) find fascinating new forms of life just within our solar system.

But what about your belief? Why do you believe life to be uniquely founded only here? What are your rationales for such a position? Is it purely just 'monkeys hitting typewriters' and they just happened to type out the right script here, lol?


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## Vertigo (Jul 29, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> Of course just finding a single alien lifeform, even just something like a bacteria in, say, the ice of Europa or deep in the rocks of Mars, that can be demonstrated to not have any links with life on Earth would be a great step forward. I am cautiously optimistic that we _may_ (may - not will! ) find fascinating new forms of life just within our solar system.


That's the key isn't it. We just have to find one other form of life, unrelated to our own, and suddenly the probability of there being loads out there becomes massively likely. As for intelligent life or even just advanced life that's a whole other story, but once again just discover one instance and suddenly the likelihood of there being loads is again massive. It's interesting because I suspect it's one of two extremes; either life is ubiquitous or extremely rare.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 29, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> But what about your belief? Why do you believe life to be uniquely founded only here? What are your rationales for such a position


No. Sorry, no offense, but imo you are following a wrong line of reasoning. My belief or lack of belief in anything should not affect the facts of my argument. I'm careful to avoid any such line here. I mean even if abiogenesis happens all the time, 'God' could have arranged that.


Venusian Broon said:


> What 'enormous coincidences' do you mean?


Ok. I'll have to google up some fine-tuning stuff and post it later. It seems to be quite common knowledge, though? I have already mentioned the protein interaction thing: out of odds of 10x79billion, the cell chooses the one that works? If anyone wants to dispute the number, I will accept their figure, because mine is simply quoted in good faith from another source.


Venusian Broon said:


> ... purely just 'monkeys hitting typewriters' and they just happened to type out the right script here, lol?


The odds may be about the same. But that -- the fact it has happened once-- does not assume that life or the existence of our universe is/was the goal of the event. It's back to the music analogy, in a way. As soon as you have the exact balance between the proton/electron charge, then everything else falls into place. In another universe it might be different?


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 29, 2019)

This is a very generalized statement not directed at any one, but it is a curious observation. The idea that life on Earth is the only live in the universe and if it isn't the only life in the universe than it must be very, very rare. Out of all the different kinds of life on Earth, only human life is considered to be the pinnacle of development. While at the same time, this sacred life force, that exists in living things, like trees, is treated like it is absolutely worthless of respect, like it is so common place that it can be completely destroyed without any kind of thought about what is being done, it is just something people are using to make their lives more comfortable. If it is so rare than the only conclusion that seems to illustrate the actions would be a bunch of children having a great time while vandalizing a greenhouse with a lot of rare plant and animal life in it.

The precursors of the DNA life and RNA life that could have been generated by the hydrothermal vents 4 plus billion years ago probably have so little in common with todays life that it probably has no connection to DNA, evolution, and anything else we know about life. In order for this process to work it most likely has to be highly automated and more than likely the life that develops afterwards is based solely on unpredictable chance happenings and fantastic odds.

Some kind of life is going to develop but it takes a long time, say 3 or so billion years, to know what the large scale life might begin to look like. The carbon that came out of hydrothermal vents is just a small part of the output. It is the starter mechanism but it is not the fuel. The latest ideas I have seen about the carbon life that is here today is that it happened the way it did only because some large mass collided with the early Earth and supplied the carbon that made all this carbon based life possible. If you go with that idea, then the automatic DNA precursor life might be perfectly willing to work with whatever is available, which might not always be carbon. It is entirely possible that some planets, due to their physical locations, never get past the slime stage. There are some really beautiful colorful fantastic sights in the far away universe that we can see with telescopes but around that color and beauty are forces of energy that cans sterilize an entire planet in 30 seconds or less.

Parrots being able to mimic speech means that their brains are capable of producing speech. There is a lot of overlapping between dinosaurs and birds. Parrots arrived 50 million years ago. Perhaps if a huge asteroid hadn't struck the Earth 15 million years before the arrival of parrots, perhaps these conversations we are having would be carried out by a bunch of talking dinosaurs. Or maybe the asteroid strike itself made it possible for the existence of parrots which could have the capability of speech as we know it. I can only wonder what the initial contact between people and parrots was like.


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## Dave (Jul 29, 2019)

As I already made the point, I'm not convinced by the "odds are too high" argument given the large timescales involved. As for the Earth being unique; yes, it is still unusual, as far as we have explored, but much of the oddness is itself, as a result of life existing here - O₂ atmosphere, soil - and much that we think is necessary for the precursors of life to exist - plentiful water, carbon meteorites, hydro-thermal vents, electrical storms - which we once thought were unusual, we now commonly find elsewhere. So, it isn't a question of "belief" for me, it is just "monkeys on typewriters," and I don't think the universe or some higher being has a goal to create life, I just think that if it could happen once with the right conditions, then somewhere else, given enough time, we cannot be so special that it cannot happen again. I do agree, however, that scientifically, this is a case of "do more research." No one can say, "eureka, this proves life exists!" So, yes, at the moment it is a case of personal belief.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 30, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> What 'enormous coincidences' do you mean?


Ok. I have not checked whether or not this video comes from a creationist source. It probably does. But to me that is not the issue, if the information is true:






I am informed that if you make just six molecules of the carbohydrate D-Pyranose there are going to be more than a trillion ways they can assemble. And only one of them works. There are many more than six molecules of it in a single cell, and many other carbohydrates too, all with the same possibilities in the trillions of successful combination. Altering or eliminating any one of the carbohydrates results in cell death.

To give an idea of the numbers: a million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is 32 years and a trillion seconds is 32 thousand years.

There is more stuff to illustrate the 'enormous coincidences' involved in abiogenesis, but these should serve the purpose?


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## Vertigo (Jul 30, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Ok. I have not checked whether or not this video comes from a creationist source. It probably does. But to me that is not the issue, if the information is true:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I take your point but I would have to balance it with the question how many chemical reactions, or even just organic chemical reactions, do you suppose happen every second of every day on the whole planet? Remember that organic compounds and organic reactions are just ones involving carbon. I think you might find that balances the numbers a little.

Regarding comments about carbon being provided by a large collision. Remember that carbon is the fourth most common element in the universe. I don't think any big collision is required to provide a sufficiency of it.


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 30, 2019)

Vertigo said:


> Regarding comments about carbon being provided by a large collision.


That is from a scenario that is saying that the geocehmical activity of the early planet's mantle was changed by the collision with the small planet embryo that produced the Moon. The core of the object merged with Earth's core, the mantle of the object merged with Earth's mantle. The added material to the mantle changed the way carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen were behaving in the early mantle. 

This replaces the idea that the nitrogen, carbon and sulfur came from the early meteorite bombardment of Earth. Supposedly the early Earth's crust was too hot and would not have had as much carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur readily available. Originally it was proposed that the meteorite bombardment delivered those elements to the surface as Earth was cooling. The idea now is that the bombardment delivered much less than originally thought. 

The embryo planet collision does not explain how the water got on the surface which is okay by me because I am saying the water was already here packed inside the mantle and came out as the Earth cooled. If the set up for the development of life as we know it on Earth is helped by a newly formed planet colliding with another smaller body, then this mechanical act is what could be setting the odds for the formation of life as we know it. Early on there is a lot of stuff flying around so collisions are more than quite probable. According to the vent theory, life is more than likely going to form, but in Earth's case, the impact changed the crust and added a moon which has a big impact on the behavior of the water on the surface. Both of which shaped the life that developed, but weren't what caused the life to initially develop.


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 30, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> No. Sorry, no offense, but imo you are following a wrong line of reasoning. My belief or lack of belief in anything should not affect the facts of my argument. I'm careful to avoid any such line here. I mean even if abiogenesis happens all the time, 'God' could have arranged that.



No, I feel your position is very relevant - it's the opposite of what a lot of us are arguing. Why? If you have evidence to explain why you take offence (Which I have to be fair, you do, so that's good) or have a better proposition (this point about the uniquness of life on earth, you've made many times. Surely you have something more than 'just a feeling' ???). Perhaps they are worth exploring and thinking about. I dunno, sometimes I get a bit tired of cleaning up constantly after getting mud slung at me from people not willing to get dirty . Oh and god is usually never the answer, IMHO 



RJM Corbet said:


> Ok. I'll have to google up some fine-tuning stuff and post it later. It seems to be quite common knowledge, though? I have already mentioned the protein interaction thing: out of odds of 10x79billion, the cell chooses the one that works? If anyone wants to dispute the number, I will accept their figure, because mine is simply quoted in good faith from another source.
> 
> The odds may be about the same. But that -- the fact it has happened once-- does not assume that life or the existence of our universe is/was the goal of the event. It's back to the music analogy, in a way. As soon as you have the exact balance between the proton/electron charge, then everything else falls into place. In another universe it might be different?



FIrst, the probability thing. Oh dear, that hoary old chestnut. I quote (my italics):

"Naive estimates of probability focusing on the probability of individual chemicals or organisms suggest that abiogenesis is vanishingly improbable: the chance of a specific 300 amino acid protein being created from a set of atoms may be 2.04 x 10^390 to 1 against, but this ignores the fact that the process was _almost certainly more incremental_ _than that,_ and that _you're not looking for the probability of a specific protein_ but that of _any _protein that can be called alive. The same problem arises with creationists' use of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's argument that the probability of all the chemicals in a bacterium arose by chance is around 10^40,000; (_but) nobody (is) suggesting that bacteria appeared by chance with no simpler precursor_. 

Estimating the actual probablity of life_ requires a knowledge of not merely the precise conditions of the world at the time of life's origin, and the precise chemical path followed, but the sum total of the probabilities of all possible paths that could produce life._ Any estimate must also consider the number of life-supporting planets in the universe, as we are here because abiogenesis occurred on one world, possibly one of billions of candidates. _Hence it is incredibly difficult, perhaps impossible, to accurately calculate the probability of life_.

Creationists commonly use the improbability of abiogenesis as a disproof of abiogenesis relying on a misapplication of Borel's Law*. Intuitions about improbability_ ignore the difficulty of estimating the (correct) probabilities _and the _failure of our intuitions to handle the vast numbers of molecules and vast time frames available_."

Right, back to your main comments: 

*As for current cells...they don't choose.* There is a mechanism involving DNA/RNA that is activated in the cell that makes proteins. The DNA code essentially code a specific string of ammino acids that _deterministically _fold into the same shape. As long as the sequence is the same the same protein and therefore shape will pop out. I'm not sure this is what you are meaning, but it's my understanding of how things work now. It's amazing nano-machinery. 

*Does the universe have goals?* If it proves to be a simulation it could, but I really have no opinion on whether the universe I experience is really just a simulation. If it isn't then I think I'd agree with you. This is, I feel, part of the Copernican principle. We humans (and intelligence and life) are not priviliged and special, not a goal to be attained, just something that 'pops out'! 

I do think there is an inherent *'principle of emergent behaviour'* in this universe. To give an example. One could study the molecule H2O in great Quantum mechanical depth. One could even study how a number of these molecules interact with each other. But all this detailed and (somewhat) fundamental knowledge will not tell you the probability of being hit by a raindrop in a shower, nor does it tell you why, if you put lots of H2O together and with other sets of conditions, they can form whirlpools, say. 

So a system, large enough, with a certain degree of complexity and freedom will give rise to new emergent behaviour, behaviour that cannot be described by describing the 'lower' building blocks. These new emergent behaviours also give rise to a new set of interactions (laws, say) that if they also proliferate and become a large enough sample will give rise to another 'layer' of emergent behaviour etc... Note, there is no goal driven 'pyramid' of emergent forms - they just appear if given the chance. Human consciousness could be seen as emergent from the result of ~100 billion neurons firing away, processing and interacting with the universe. 

Apologies if the above is not clear, but it's a takeaway I took from Chaos theory many decades ago, I'm not sure where to look it up now .

*Fine tuning the universe*. I assume this is your main 'enormous coincidence' argument. Well, if you deem that the various constants of nature** are probabilistic in nature then you surely run into problems. Namely how do you assign a probability to something that is a set of one? You could assume multiverses - although we have yet to see any evidence of them. But what sort of multiverses? Infinite numbers of them? If it was then your enormous coincidence is irrelvant surely - I was always going to appear and write an email in a universe just like this one. (I am being a bit simplistic but I think the point stands.) 

However taking that aside, (and I believe you can do careful probabilistic calculations of infinities, but I digress, note: it's not really 'anything goes') and assuming a multiverse that we can correctly apply statistics to, if there are different unverses with different constants, surely some of these may be able to sustain processes and interactions that we would deem to be 'life' or 'intelligence' and entities with consciousness. But how would one even begin to try and figure this out. (computer simulations of entire universes ???) Not even changes in the constants, but also on how forces operate and other interactions could change and still give rise to life. (Possibly. I'm not up to speed on string theory and other multi-verse theories that may give rise to this.)

However such a probabilistic calculation would be needed, IMO, to give an answer to the question of why the universe seems 'fine-tuned'. Hence, very likely impossible. 

So no, I don't see enormous coincidences. Or to put it another way, I don't need to invoke such a term. 
---------------------------------------------------------------

* "Borel's law" states: Phenomena with very low probabilities do not occur. Or sometimes a corrupted version used is: "Any odds beyond 1 in 10^50 have a zero probability of ever happening." 

It was intended as a rule of thumb for specific scenarios before they happen. Borel introduced it in a book written for non-scientists, as an example of the kind of logic that any scientist might use to generate estimates of the minimum probability below which events of a particular type are considered negligible. It was created for specific physical examples, not as a universal law. 

The probability of an event with odds of 1 in 10^50 is 10^(−50). Small, yes. Negligible, yes — but not zero. _You can observe such events happening to you every night_. Although the probability of a photon emitted in the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.6 million light years from Earth, reaching your eye is only 8.1 × 10^(-51), the galaxy is clearly visible in the night sky. If you roll a fair ten-sided die 51 times, the probability of rolling this particular sequence is 10−51. These observations are impossible according to the proponents of universal application of "Borel's law".

----

** At the moment we _seem_ to have a universe with a set of fundamental principles and laws, with a further set of constants that we use to describe what we see. At least that's our model of how it works. But we know we don't have a complete picture, nor may never know. Further research may find that there is might be that only one equation that fundamentally gives rise to everything else, perhaps just with one constant (or maybe even zero constants, making everything just inevitable and determistic?!). But then again it may not.


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## Vertigo (Jul 30, 2019)

I strongly recommend anyone interested in this stuff to take a look at The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane (recommended to me on here by @Stephen Palmer). I'm not saying this book is the definitive text that will tell you how it all happened, and Nick Lane certainly isn't doing so himself, but it is an excellent chemical description of how it all _could _have happened. And, incidentally, why Lane thinks it is likely to have happened elsewhere. I'm no biochemist and I'm sure if I was I'd have taken even more away from this book, but, for the most part, Lane's explanations are accessible to non biochemists like me.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 30, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> No , I feel your position is very relevant - it's the opposite of what a lot of us are arguing. Why? If you have evidence to explain why you take offence (Which I have to be fair, you do, so that's good) or have a better proposition ...


Again you are sidetracking by trying to make me as some young earth type creationist trying to push 'God did it' on everyone else. I am not. The arguments I am making have nothing to do with a divine hand. They are arguments of probability against the 'dogma' that abiogenesis is so simple and obvious. Please leave religion out of it, in accordance with Chrons rules, ok?


Venusian Broon said:


> ...Surely you have something more than 'just a feeling' ???)


I'm not a complete idiot. I quite understand the fact that a thing happens once involves no probability argument. I'ts elementary. Also I have carefully avoided 'fine tuning' of the universe in general in order to focus on abiogenesis alone.

Again I am asking someone to answer the points made in this video, regardless of the man's religious beliefs:





Points about decay of pre-biotic molecules and running out of material are dealt with in the video. I am not assuming he is right. Any grasp I have of biochemistry is very thin. That's why I'm asking.

Please just allow 22 minutes to hear what he says.

EDIT: I'm quite ok with the principle of abiogenesis. 'God' as previously stated, could have arranged for it to happen, after all. The argument in this thread is that it may be rare, or even unique.


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## Dave (Jul 30, 2019)

Sorry @RJM Corbet but I cannot watch 23 minutes of that. Why is he so angry, if he is so right? Plus he does not make the argument that he says he will make but goes off instead about making bacteria and cell membranes. The earlier posters have answered that already - the precursors to "life" are not around anymore. We don't know how they formed, but we do know that somehow they did, unless you believe it was a by the hand of God. There is only one of those two alternatives, isn't there? Is there some other explanation that I'm missing? 

I agree with him that we cannot even decide what "Life" is. I made that point already and think we may need to alter our definition further.

As for the probabilities, I've said earlier, trying to make some comparison of an event with one infinite improbability to an event with another infinite improbability is pointless. Nevertheless, given a very long time and a very huge number of molecules an event will happen at some point. It only needs to happen once and work. All the other times that it doesn't happen are not important. Also, natural processes are stochastic -  they have a random probability distribution or pattern, that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely. 

(For example, we cannot predict falls and rises in the stock market so that you become a millionaire, but we can say that over a long period of time you will make money on the stock market, and over a short period of time, you could lose it all, or you could make a fortune. It is also the difference between weather and climate change - the weather will have extreme events of hot and cold, wet and dry which we cannot predict, but we can say that over time, due to the increased energy in the system such events will be more frequent and more extreme, and also that the extremes and averages will both be higher.)

In the case of these chemical reaction, the stochastic nature means that random events with random probabilities would allow for extremes to happen. In other words, under certain circumstances the probabilities of an event may be much more likely than would be expected on average. 

The problem is that no one can definitely say other life can exists until it is found, and it may never be found because it lives/lived too far away for us to make contact while it (and we) exist at the same time.


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## Vertigo (Jul 30, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Again you are sidetracking by trying to make me as some young earth type creationist trying to push 'God did it' on everyone else. I am not. The arguments I am making have nothing to do with a divine hand. They are arguments of probability against the 'dogma' that abiogenesis is so simple and obvious. Please leave religion out of it, in accordance with Chrons rules, ok?
> 
> I quite understand the fact that a thing happens once involves no probability argument. I'ts elementary. Also I have carefully avoided 'fine tuning' of the universe in general in order to focus on abiogenesis alone.
> 
> ...


So I watched it and it seems to me his argument is that if we, with all our technology, can't do it then it must be divine. Which is a fallacious argument. All that says is that we don't have all the answers yet!

As mentioned before I'm no biochemist, so please bear that in mind and I may well get stuff wrong. But... all this complexity he is talking about is in the 'simplest bacteria' and, yes, that does require these unstable organic chemicals to be made. What he omits to mention is that even the simplest bacteria was a long way down the line from the origins. The first chemical reactions that can happen at the hydrothermal vents don't require carbohydrates and such like, they come later and will get produced by the earlier simpler forms. I've seen this argument so often and @Venusian Broon alluded to it earlier. You simply don't arrive at the first bacteria in one fell swoop; it will have been a very, very, very, long time from the first steps to the first bacteria. Tour seems to base all his arguments on our inability to _start_ by creating a bacteria but we need to go way back from there to get to the true start and then stuff moves forward to that first bacteria in incremental steps.

As said before, take a look at that book which explains the simple chemistry that _may _well have lead on to the more complex chemistry that eventually produces the first bacteria.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 30, 2019)

Vertigo said:


> So I watched it and it seems to me his argument is that if we, with all our technology, can't do it then it must be divine. Which is a fallacious argument. All that says is that we don't have all the answers yet!
> 
> As mentioned before I'm no biochemist, so please bear that in mind and I may well get stuff wrong. But... all this complexity he is talking about is in the 'simplest bacteria' and yes that does require these unstable organic chemicals to be made. What he omits to mention is that even the simplest bacteria was a long way down the line from the origins. The first chemical reactions that can happen at the hydrothermal vents don't require carbohydrates and such like they come later and will get produced by the earlier simpler forms. I've seen this argument so often and @Venusian Broon alluded to it earlier. You simply don't and arrive at the first bacteria in one fell swoop; it will have been a very, very, very, long time from the first steps to the first bacteria. Tour seems to base all his arguments on our inability to _start_ with creating a bacteria but we need to go way back from there to get to the true start and then stuff moves forward to that first bacteria in incremental steps.
> 
> As said before, take a look at that book which explains the simple chemistry that _may _well have lead on to the more complex chemistry that eventually produces the first bacteria.


No he is not talking about immediately creating a living cell. But you watched, even if you have failed to address his points. I'm waiting for someone to do that. Seems people are so sure they're right, they can't even watch it. Cheers. I'll check out the book.
EDIT:


Vertigo said:


> I watched it and it seems to me his argument is that if we, with all our technology, can't do it then it must be divine. Which is a fallacious argument. All that says is that we don't have all the answers yet


He doesn't mention the divine. Where did he even imply that? It doesn't follow. It's an assumption. What has it to do with the facts of his argument?


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## Dave (Jul 30, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> No he is not talking about immediately creating a living cell.


That's exactly what he immediately did at the start. And I'm sorry, I just can't watch someone shout at me for 23 minutes.


RJM Corbet said:


> ...you have failed to address his points. I'm waiting for someone to do that.


Since @Vertigo did watch it all and failed to find them, could you summarise them for us?


Vertigo said:


> ...his argument is that if we, with all our technology, can't do it then it must be divine.


If that really was his only point made, then it does nothing to support @RJM Corbet when he says that these "are arguments of probability against the 'dogma' that abiogenesis is so simple and obvious" and which I thought that I did answer already.


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## Vertigo (Jul 30, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> No he is not talking about immediately creating a living cell. But you watched, even if you have failed to address his points. I'm waiting for someone to do that. Seems people are so sure they're right, they can't even watch it. Cheers. I'll check out the book.


My understanding was that he started by saying we can't even create a simple bacteria, then he went on to say we can't even build a cell wall (the necessary lipids etc.). But he keeps talking about - "even if I give you all the components x, y and z, you can't put them together to make A". But each time the A he is talking about is so far down the line from the initial starting points as to be meaningless. What he is arguing, as far as I can see, is that as the Wright brothers could make a plane that flied but they couldn't make an Airbus it must have been divine.


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## Vertigo (Jul 30, 2019)

Dave said:


> That's exactly what he immediately did at the start. And I'm sorry, I just can't watch someone shout at me for 23 minutes.
> 
> Since @Vertigo did watch it all and failed to find them, could you summarise them for us?
> 
> If that really was his only point made, then it does nothing to support @RJM Corbet when he says that these "are arguments of probability against the 'dogma' that abiogenesis is so simple and obvious" and which I thought that I did answer already.


To be fair he dodges making the actual divine conclusion. But I never quite found any conclusion other than how improbable it is because we can't do it.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 30, 2019)

[





Dave said:


> Since @Vertigo did watch it all and failed to find them, could you summarise them for us?


I'm sorry? Are you asking me to transcribe what's  all there on video?


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 30, 2019)

Apologise for double posting. To me he is a chemist talking about what is involved in producing the prebiotic chemicals necessary to life. Of course he also talks about the problems of combination of them, and of cells, etc. But first the chemicals have to be produced.

"Pre biotic synthesis is before biology so one has to make chemicals, many of the chemicals that need to be made for life are kinetic products meaning that they're not the most thermodynamically stable forms. For example carbohydrates which is the main class of compounds, these are the units that hook together DNA these are the units that have identifying aspects on cell structure, these are the units that the cell is going to need for the energy of life.

Carbohydrates are kinetic products meaning that if they should form, they would decompose … over relatively short amounts of time. The very reactions that make them, unless somebody is there to pull them out, to fish them out, to stop the process, to put them in a bottle under inert conditions in a freezer, and not just one, there's many many different types you have to do this – they end up going through a process of what's known as caramelization, meaning that they polymerize … the very aldol reactions that were used to make them just continue, and you get polyaldols, you get polycondensation reactions and they carmelize, or they undergo, with formaldehyde, which is a presumed prebiotic chemical thy undergo rapid catazarah reactions, so the aldehyde is oxidized to formic acid and this nice carbohydrate that you just made has been reduced, so the aldehyde from the carbohydrate has gone back to an alcohol, so there are competing reactions, so time does not solve the issue

Miller Uri 1952 recemic amino acids by electric arc through mixture of hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde and CO2 – you can get some recemic amino acids out of those – that was in 1952 … much has happened since 1952 in other fields … but we are still exactly where Miller and Uri were: we make a barrage of stereo scrambled chemicals, nowhere close to knowing how to make them and hook them together – they have to get hooked together in the proper order. We are clueless on this because time doesn't solve this, even with all our ingenuity. Time is not going to solve the problem, you let these chemicals that have been made sit around even for months, and you can look, even in the origin of life researchers themselves, when they've let these go for weeks, they show the degradation of these in a period of weeks.

The chemicals decompose. The environment for the production of these chemicals -- rich in ammonia -- is going to turn carboneals into amines, these are going to cause further destruction. The ammonia rich environment itself is quite basic, you're going to have extended aldol reactions coming off. So think that the molecules could be made and sit there waiting for other molecules to come along doesn't happen. Organic chemistry doesn't work that way. Any student that is lazy enough to set-up reactions and go home for the weekend without working them up, pays the price for that, with a depressed yeild, generally. As soon as the reactions are done, or as soon as what you want is the optimized yeild, you have to stop that reaction and get it away from the starting materials or else what happens is it goes on to polymerize product, specially when you're making kinetic products, which is not the most thermodynamically stable product, which is exactly what you get in many of the chemicals that are needed for life, so time is actually the enemy ...

There's more. Is he WRONG? I don't know. That's why I'm asking. Excuse spelling errors for unfamiliar words.


Vertigo said:


> ... how improbable it is because we can't do it.


Im_pro_bable? That's an understatement, lol. And probability is the whole issue, really?


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## Vertigo (Jul 30, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Apologise for double posting. To me he is a chemist talking about what is involved in producing the prebiotic chemicals necessary to life. Of course he also talks about the problems of combination of them, and of cells, etc. But first the chemicals have to be produced.
> 
> "Pre biotic synthesis is before biology so one has to make chemicals, many of the chemicals that need to be made for life are kinetic products meaning that they're not the most thermodynamically stable forms. For example carbohydrates which is the main class of compounds, these are the units that hook together DNA these are the units that have identifying aspects on cell structure, these are the units that the cell is going to need for the energy of life.
> 
> ...


He isn't wrong because all he is actually saying is the biochemistry is complex and we can't do it from scratch ourselves. So yes he is right. Where I say he is wrong is that his starting point is too far down the line. In the book I have suggested you read the initial chemical reactions do not need all of these complex starting chemicals. He shows how the material (I don't remember the right name) that is deposited by the hydrothermal vents can act like a cell wall achieving the necessary potential gradient. So we don't need lipids and such like to get started they can come along later as first byproducts of the emerging life and then components used by the biochemistry that give it better efficiency. In other words bit by bit they evolve.

So no he's not wrong but, in my opinion, he starting way too far down the evolution of life to be really talking about the origin. Just my view. Read that book and you will better understand what I'm trying to explain (clearly not very well!).


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## Vertigo (Jul 30, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Im_pro_bable? That's an understatement, lol. And probability is the whole issue, really?



Well actually, once again in that book, Lane argues that it is in fact probable and _not_ improbable. So long as you start far enough back.

You can pick it up second hand very cheaply: The Vital Question by Nick Lane - AbeBooks


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 30, 2019)

Just in case of interest to anyone, the _Introduction to Astrobiology_ course just started on Coursera - asking the question of how life may have arisen on Earth, and whether it might be found on other planets elsewhere in the Universe: Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life | Coursera

It's free to join (so long as you don't want a certificate at the end), and it's run by Prof. Charles Cockell from the Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh.


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## Dave (Jul 30, 2019)

No, he isn't wrong, the Urey/Miller experiments form amino acids but that is all they do, and they will break down in our normal environment. However, we don't really know what the environment was like exactly. There could have been pockets of micro-environments with different pressures, gas concentrations, pH and temperatures in which very odd reactions were possible that are not possible in what we think of as normal. The stability of the reaction products might be different under these circumstances. Chemicals formed in one pocket could react with chemicals formed in another. Cell walls and membranes provide barriers like this, but I can imagine some other chemical bubble doing something similar before "Life" as @Vertigo explained.

But I repeat again, this *must have happened*, (or else there was divine intervention.) There are no other possible explanations on the table. So, if it happened, it *can* happen, and it is *not* impossible, however unlikely it might be. That we can't explain how it happened is irrelevant.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 30, 2019)

Vertigo said:


> He isn't wrong because all he is actually saying is the biochemistry is complex and we can't do it from scratch ourselves. So yes he is right. Where I say he is wrong is that his starting point is too far down the line. In the book I have suggested you read the initial chemical reactions do not need all of these complex starting chemicals. He shows how the material (I don't remember the right name) that is deposited by the hydrothermal vents can act like a cell wall achieving the necessary potential gradient. So we don't need lipids and such like to get started they can come along later as first byproducts of the emerging life and then components used by the biochemistry that give it better efficiency. In other words bit by bit they evolve.
> 
> So no he's not wrong but, in my opinion, he starting way too far down the evolution of life to be really talking about the origin. Just my view. Read that book and you will better understand what I'm trying to explain (clearly not very well!).


Well thank you! _Chrons_ _Science and Nature _is a valuable educational resource, imo. (Which doesn't mean I agree with all you have just said, lol)


Dave said:


> But I repeat again, this *must have happened*, (or else there was divine intervention.) There are no other possible explanations on the table. So, if it happened, it *can* happen, and it is *not* impossible, however unlikely it might be. That we can't explain how it happened is irrelevant.


Indeed. Who is arguing with you about it? The point, again, is that of course a single occurrence involves no probability.

Al Capone explained it thus: "First time it's happenstance, second time it's coincidence -- third time, it's enemy action."


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 30, 2019)

Sorry @RJM Corbet I did not think you were/are a creationist nor was I thinking you were arguing anything to do with religion or any involvement of a god. The material I took and cribbed from just happened to mention 'creationists' and I just copied and pasted it, just as you had previously mentioned that the video you had posted was probably creationist. 

I was just, niavely, asking the question about your stance because you seemed in other posts to be reasonably confident in your opinion and I was just curious. I've laid out why I believe why these 'spontantoeous generation probability calculations' regarding abiogensis are erronous and misleading, and why it's so hard to actually get to what the real answer might be, so I shall therefore stop. 

Cheers


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 30, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> Sorry @RJM Corbet I did not think you were/are a creationist nor was I thinking you were arguing anything to do with religion or any involvement of a god. The material I took and cribbed from just happened to mention 'creationists' and I just copied and pasted it, just as you had previously mentioned that the video you had posted was probably creationist.
> 
> I was just, niavely, asking the question about your stance because you seemed in other posts to be reasonably confident in your opinion and I was just curious. I've laid out why I believe why these 'spontantoeous generation probability calculations' regarding abiogensis are erronous and misleading, and why it's so hard to actually get to what the real answer might be, so I shall therefore stop.
> 
> Cheers


Sorry, now I feel so bad. But, yes, this is the place where I need to stop as well. We've all made our points. Hopefully it's food for thought on both sides of the table? Best regards


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 30, 2019)

One possible reason why the hydrothermal vents are not producing precursors for life today would be that the material coming out of the vents is being injected into water with a very different chemical composition than what we see now. Compared to today's water, it might be considered to be "dead" water or very heavily contaminated. The oxygen content would be considerably different. There is at least one theory that says that the water temperature when the oceans first appeared was around 100 degrees F. This could also be a factor in the way the vents injected material into the water. Only under these conditions would the precursors appear. Once the ocean water started changing to what it is now, the precursor reactions stopped. This brings up the thought that if the oceans went back to being "dead" water again, might that chemical composition enable the hydrothermal vents, which haven't changed over the years, be able to start creating life precursors again. 

The vents are still active in promoting life in unusual places as they are supporting, perhaps even producing, complete ecosystems that use bacteria to convert chemicals into energy instead of using photosynthesis. Maybe serving as a back up to existing life forms if the surface life should go extinct. If the creatures could convert their energy process from sunlight based to chemical based, perhaps those creatures could also convert back again to sunlight based life if given enough time. If these creatures are permanently stuck there and can't go back to the surface or shallow water this could easily explain how there could be plenty of life on a planet when there was nothing on the surface to detect after all the surface life went extinct somehow.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 31, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> One possible reason why the hydrothermal vents are not producing precursors for life today would be that the material coming out of the vents is being injected into water with a very different chemical composition than what we see now. Compared to today's water, it might be considered to be "dead" water or very heavily contaminated. The oxygen content would be considerably different. There is at least one theory that says that the water temperature when the oceans first appeared was around 100 degrees F. This could also be a factor in the way the vents injected material into the water. Only under these conditions would the precursors appear. Once the ocean water started changing to what it is now, the precursor reactions stopped. This brings up the thought that if the oceans went back to being "dead" water again, might that chemical composition enable the hydrothermal vents, which haven't changed over the years, be able to start creating life precursors again.
> 
> The vents are still active in promoting life in unusual places as they are supporting, perhaps even producing, complete ecosystems that use bacteria to convert chemicals into energy instead of using photosynthesis. Maybe serving as a back up to existing life forms if the surface life should go extinct. If the creatures could convert their energy process from sunlight based to chemical based, perhaps those creatures could also convert back again to sunlight based life if given enough time. If these creatures are permanently stuck there and can't go back to the surface or shallow water this could easily explain how there could be plenty of life on a planet when there was nothing on the surface to detect after all the surface life went extinct somehow.


Ok. But if people are saying, insisting actually, that abiogenesis had to have happened, not only once but often, I am saying that is not entirely a correct approach because, whatever anyone says to minimize, the difficulties are pretty high -- so a correct approach is also to be open to the opposite possibility? _Wherever that leads_. I am playing devil's advocate against the 'dogma'. Sorry, my last 10c worth on this subject, for now.


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## Vertigo (Jul 31, 2019)

All the evidence indicates all life today stems from one single instance of abiogenesis (which incidentally is an incredibly strong argument against panspermia but lets not complicate the issue further!). As to why there have been no more since and indeed why we are not seeing evidence of it occurring at modern vents, there are two possibilities I can think of (I'm sure there are others). The original precursors were incredibly energy inefficient, incredibly slow to grow/reproduce so once one form of life had occurred and got going (and got more efficient) it simply out competed any later attempts at life at those vents and continues to do so today. The other possibility is that such an abiogenesis is so rare that it's simply never happened again. Nick Lane shows that, chemically at least, the vents are still suitable environments for developing those precursors.


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## Dave (Jul 31, 2019)

I'm not sure that your continued use of "Dogma," with it's religious connotations and a need for "faith," is very useful when you keep saying that your argument has nothing to do with religion, and has everything to do with probabilities. Nor the fact that the videos you posted were from creationists. However, if by "Dogma" you simply mean "principles or rules that cannot be questioned" then in science, there are no principles or rules that cannot be questioned. All I am pointing out, ad nauseam, is the certainty that it did happen, so it does happen, and if it can happen, then it can happen twice. I don't understand what Al Capone has to do with that. Clearly, it cannot happen today in our Oxygen rich atmosphere, neutral pH environment, with what we think of as normal temperatures and pressures at sea level. It happened under some very peculiar circumstances and with a chain of events that no one can adequately explain at present. That chain of events was very unusual and unlikely. I'd question everything. I'd even question whether the atmosphere was EVER similar to the conditions inside a Urey/Miller flask. That is possibly not the way that amino acids formed at all. So, keep questioning anything you want, but you asked for explanations of how James Tour's argument might be wrong and therefore suggestions were provided of how such reactions could still happen. They were merely suggestions, but just because we cannot replicate it and do not understand it, does not make it impossible. As I said earlier, it just needs to be filed under "needs further research."


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 31, 2019)

Dave said:


> All I am pointing out, ad nauseam, is the certainty that it did happen, so it does happen, and if it can happen, then it can happen twice. I don't understand what Al Capone has to do with that.


I might win the lottery. I might win it twice. I might win it three times. Whatever. You keep bringing religion into it. Not me. Really, I'm off this thread now Dave.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 31, 2019)

Actually, it's interesting to note that respected astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle also thought abiogenesis was so statistically unlikely that he argued it must only have arisen once in the entire universe, and has since spread among the stars. This was the original idea for Panspermia. However, he basically had to throw out all accepted ideas of cosmology to do so.

As for deep sea vents - it's worth noting that in the early oceans, it is believed there was little if any oxygen in the water. Effectively, it was an anaerobic environment - unlike today's oceans. 

And yes, like Vertigo says, abiogenesis could still be happening today - but competition for nutrients by existing life forms may  prevent that from happening.


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## Dave (Jul 31, 2019)

Brian G Turner said:


> As for deep sea vents - it's worth noting that in the early oceans, it is believed there was little if any oxygen in the water. Effectively, it was an anaerobic environment - unlike today's oceans.


There would be no free Oxygen in those oceans at all. That should only come with the Blue-Green Algae, which were living things with cells and near to the end of the Precambrian, before the Cambrian explosion of life. If the 'pre-life' is living on hydro-thermal vents, gaining energy by breaking down compounds formed there, rather than by photosynthesis, then I'd expect that all the early oceans were totally anaerobic. I did my MSc. thesis on Phosphorus removal during activated sludge treatment. The anaerobic bacteria in sewage sludge are quite unusual, and the conditions are very unusual indeed. Both the chemical reactions that take place in sewage treatment, and the growth of these bacteria, are highly altered by quite small changes in pH, Oxygen level, and temperature, and that can be manipulated. If you imagine the early environment to have many, many separate small pools, each with slightly different conditions and different mixes of chemicals, then you up your chances of winning the lottery considerably. It would be like being in a syndicate rather than buying an individual ticket.


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## Venusian Broon (Aug 2, 2019)

Brian G Turner said:


> Actually, it's interesting to note that respected astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle also thought abiogenesis was so statistically unlikely that he argued it must only have arisen once in the entire universe, and has since spread among the stars. This was the original idea for Panspermia. However, he basically had to throw out all accepted ideas of cosmology to do so.



Well, he wasn't keen on Big Bang at all, given that the evidence available at the time (when he was big in cosmological circles i.e. 1950-early 60s) was limited. We've moved on leaps and bounds now with a whole raft of observations and it's very difficult to argue his position with current evidence, so we would need some completely damning evidence that kills off 'big bang'. So rather than respected, I'd say certain of his views lack credibility. 

With respect to the discussion of abiogenesis, he was also lacking a great deal of knowledge that we know now. Biochemistry was a very young science at the time. We've moved on a lot and to be frank he wasn't really on the cutting edge. 

However he was definitely respected for the pioneering work he did in stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis, but I think he 'backed the wrong horses' with respect to a number of theories that, as I've said, were shown to be pretty discordant with actual observations. 

But, hey, old scientists tend to get stuck in their old fashioned ways. For example, Einstein never could accept modern Quantum theory, but it has been tested to death and the 'Quantum lot' appears to have _easily _'won'.  

With respect to panspermia: I'm not against the idea. Bacteria, say, are hardy buggers and if they were somehow implanted in the middle of a kilometer wide ice ball and propelled across the cosmos perhaps they could thrive. Or at least survive the vast distances between stars. But a number of Hoyles claims are a bit far fetched. (He stated that the 1918 flu epidemic 'came from outer space' - possibly he accepted the literal origins of the word _influenza _coming from the Italian for 'visitation, influence of the stars'. However it seems that this actually came from astrological concepts of illness...so basically poppycock.) 

And, as it was claimed by him, that abiogenisis was exceedingly rare, then panspermia (as the only way we could have life on the planet Earth) via natural means, as you've stated Brian, requires an eternal steady-state universe (which is probably not true, given what we know now). Or possibly, as it appears Hoyle actually stated, 'directed panspermia' was at work. i.e. other beings deliberately targeting all stars with 'dirty snowballs' or some other mechanism to spread life. He was atheist btw, so these were sophisticated ancient intelligent life, I suppose. However there is no sign, at all, of what should be a galaxy full of these 'ancient ones'.



Brian G Turner said:


> And yes, like Vertigo says, abiogenesis could still be happening today - but competition for nutrients by existing life forms may  prevent that from happening.



Absolutely. We now live in a world where cells divide in minutes and can be found _everywhere_. Even if the original process of abiogenesis was quick, say a million years, it would _now _be forever disrupted right at the start by vastly superior cells hoovering up all the material just feeding. I _suspect_ that today's most basic cells are like 'hyper-dimensional USS Enterprises/tardises' compared to the rickety 'Sumerian war waggons' of some form of basic life that a million years of abiogenesis might (just) be able to produce.


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