Survival of life

spidergoat said:
The first life probably wasn't based DNA, but on a simpler molecule. Have you heard of the Miller-Urey Experiment? They reproduced the electrochemical conditions that were likely present on the early Earth, and they got organic molecules at the end of a week.

There is plenty of evidence that life was not designed by an intelligent creator. There are structures present that no intelligent being would plan, but could only come about as a result of an evolutionary process from previous forms, a necessarily limited kind of design.
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Look, just make the necessary molecule for life from scratch I am going to give you a head start , have a virus and no living cell go and start live . I will be open minded.
 
Show me anything supernatural exists. Go ahead, I'll take a hit of acid and be open minded.
 
timojin said:
I know about the life on the rocks un Australia . But tell me , did it come from some place ?
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It came from Western Australia.

timojin said:
Since 1950 The muller experiment that 65 years ago U am sure there are and there were anxious researcher would like to put some queasy living organism together .
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What??

timojin said:
Let me make something easier , synthesise Ribose from carbon oxygen and hydrogen ., or let see if we can get it from the space.
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What??
 
timojin said:
Are we programmed to carry on life ?
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Yes.

Seems to be a trait of all life forms - multiply and spread. Actually it is one of the key aspects of something to be called life. If it doesn't multiply and spread, it's not living. To be called life, mor requirements must be met, but this really is a key one.

E.g. viruses have no metabolism (-> dead) but they use cells to be multiplied (-> life) which shows that there are gray areas, but still. Viruses show two key aspects of life - to multipy and evolve/adapt, but not a third - they do not consume or produce substances.
 
Write4U said:
timojin,
You really need to watch this. I have posted this in another thread, but in this case I believe it is appropriate to link it again.
This will open your mind, I am sure of it. Trust me on this! If you want to skip the introduction, start at 25:15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlAQLgTwJ_A
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Yes I second this suggestion.

I will repeat here the notes I made when I watched it at Write4U's request on that other thread:-
QUOTE
I watched that section (15 mins, from the 25 min mark) and noted the following points:

- an observation about what he sees as "false dichotomy" between "chance" and "necessity" in the origin of life,

- some interesting findings about the formation of organic molecules in the upper mantle, at subduction zone sites. (Not clear whether this was actual drilling or just lab simulation of the conditions)

- the spontaneous formation of membranes, in water suspensions made from the reaction products of pyruvate with CO2 at high pressure,

- last, and for me most interesting, that the chirality of crystal faces of some common minerals (quartz, calcite) leads to preferential adsorption of different enantiomers (=left and right-handed stereoisomers of the same chemical) of some of the building blocks of life (amino acids etc).

It was good stuff, certainly. The drift of the talk seemed to be to show that, far from the appearance of life being so unlikely as to be almost miraculous, there may have been in fact abundant opportunities for the building blocks to arise, in many different ways and in several different types of site on the early Earth.

UNQUOTE

I have shown the last bit in bold, as I think it addresses the issue under discussion here.

I think the chirality thing is really cool.
 
Yes, and that data was just on a Global scale. Now try to visualize the chemical reactions that take place in the entire universe of stars and planets over a period of 14.5 billion years.
The number of chemical reactions that have taken place throughout the entire universe is incomprehensible. Probability of life somewhere else seems to be almost a certainty, IMO.
 
Write4U said:
timojin,
You really need to watch this. I have posted this in another thread, but in this case I believe it is appropriate to link it again.
This will open your mind, I am sure of it. Trust me on this! If you want to skip the introduction, start at 25:15.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlAQLgTwJ_A
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So I listened for his presentation , in reality there is nothing new. A lot of probability , but that it even for life coming from other celestial body . As far chemistry the inly impression on me was the crystal face that separate right amino acid .
 
timojin said:
So I listened for his presentation , in reality there is nothing new. A lot of probability , but that it even for life coming from other celestial body . As far chemistry the inly impression on me was the crystal face that separate right amino acid .
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Imagine the implications of such selective chemical reactions. For one, it does away with at least one random factor. Chemical reactions can only happen between *compatible* molecules in a permittive condition. And *right-handed* and *left-handed* demand makes evolution a mathematical function.

We need to look only at fractals to see the formation of extreme complexity from a series very simple non- random fractal iterations (such as the Fibonnaci sequence). This is *expressed* mathematical artistry of the highest order, IMO
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it is the very simplicity you dismiss, that allows for such beauty to become expressed through the bio-chemical process.

The universe is like an *open frame computer*, it offers greatest creative potential with only simple fundamental values and functions.

IMO, this is where the probability factor comes into play. Living things of unimaginable complexities are already abundant on earth, which is a rock circling an average star, in an obscure corner of one galaxy, among many. How many rocks (minerals) are there in the entire universe?

Life has to exist somewhere else. It is simply a matter of time and scale.
 
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Timojin said:
Are we programmed to carry on life ?
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Short answer, yes.

Long answer―

Looking from an atheist point.
What does the chemical structure knows about life . It is just a molecule that is broken down into components with in the cell, when the cell dies , and there is no purpose reassemble ....
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―you're being too specific.

The first thing to recognize is that when we strip away all of the sentiment, life is a word that represents a range of outcomes in the Universe. Such as it is, life represents a range of balances 'twixt matter and energy arranged in such a fashion as to bring about what we might describe as living results. The purpose of these balances of matter and energy appears to be perpetuation. In the most general possible terms, a signal expressed in the processes of the universe seeks to perpetuate its broadcast by whatever means possible. No organism lives forever, but entire species struggle to survive in perpetuity.

The human species is apparently unique among life forms it recognizes; it has the capacity to manipulate its relationship with nature in a way other living results―i.e., species―cannot.

Perhaps this is most simply expressed as a potential.

How long will the human species last on Earth? Barring self-destruction, we still won't last as long as the planet itself.

If we get off this rock, we will last a little longer.

If we manage to spread out to another star system, we can last even longer.

There is in the Universe somewhere a lightning strike a hundred thousand light years long, that will burn for millions of years. And we hear the echoes of the biggest bang since the big one; that should have erased a galaxy.

Can our genetic lineage survive and evolve long enough to reach another galaxy?

Can this lineage, an expression of that range of results called life, last as long as the Universe itself allows us?

Do we get to see the end of the show?

This, and nothing more, is what life is for.

Life lives. That is its basic existential purpose.
 
timojin said:
So I listened for his presentation , in reality there is nothing new. A lot of probability , but that it even for life coming from other celestial body . As far chemistry the inly impression on me was the crystal face that separate right amino acid .
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I think the point the speaker makes is a highly significant one. It is that we should not assume - as so many people do - that spontaneous origin of life is intrinsically unlikely.

But yes the chirality thing was particularly interesting, I thought. I have read a few reports in recent years that adsorption on mineral surfaces is thought by many to have played an important role in the primordial chemistry leading to life. This effect of chiral selection by mineral surfaces fits rather well with that and points a way to explaining the chirality of biochemistry, which has always been one of the harder aspects to account for.
 
exchemist said:
I think the point the speaker makes is a highly significant one. It is that we should not assume - as so many people do - that spontaneous origin of life is intrinsically unlikely.

But yes the chirality thing was particularly interesting, I thought. I have read a few reports in recent years that adsorption on mineral surfaces is thought by many to have played an important role in the primordial chemistry leading to life. This effect of chiral selection by mineral surfaces fits rather well with that and points a way to explaining the chirality of biochemistry, which has always been one of the harder aspects to account for.
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So fine about the crystalline surface which might align levorotatory amino acids in nature the sugars are dextrorotatory and the sugar come out of a plant , which is a living organism which does not have to be separated on a crystal, So next you need for an DNA deoxyribose which is unstable . So you might argue I will go for RNA were ribose is more stable . Then my question how do you make without a plant.
 
timojin said:
So fine about the crystalline surface which might align levorotatory amino acids in nature the sugars are dextrorotatory and the sugar come out of a plant , which is a living organism which does not have to be separated on a crystal, So next you need for an DNA deoxyribose which is unstable . So you might argue I will go for RNA were ribose is more stable . Then my question how do you make without a plant.
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Well, nobody knows, obviously.

The whole subject of abiogenesis is fascinating but very poorly understood, due to the lack of direct evidence from epochs in the Earth's history that are so early that almost all the Earth's crust has been recycled since, destroying any evidence it might have contained. It is one of the final big puzzles in science - which is what makes it interesting. (On another thread we have been discussing new evidence that life may have been present as early as 4.1 bn years ago, i.e. a mere 400 m years after the planet was formed. This relied on finding rare outcrops of very ancient rocks in Australia)

But that is why insights into individual aspects of it, like the problem of how chirality arose in biochemistry, are so significant. One has to be patient and tackle the problems one by one, in manageable pieces. That's what science does.
 
exchemist said:
Well, nobody knows, obviously.

The whole subject of abiogenesis is fascinating but very poorly understood, due to the lack of direct evidence from epochs in the Earth's history that are so early that almost all the Earth's crust has been recycled since, destroying any evidence it might have contained. It is one of the final big puzzles in science - which is what makes it interesting. (On another thread we have been discussing new evidence that life may have been present as early as 4.1 bn years ago, i.e. a mere 400 m years after the planet was formed. This relied on finding rare outcrops of very ancient rocks in Australia)

But that is why insights into individual aspects of it, like the problem of how chirality arose in biochemistry, are so significant. One has to be patient and tackle the problems one by one, in manageable pieces. That's what science does.
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If you want to be open minded read Genesis 1 first 6 verses . There is somethiong interesting to wonder in your mind . If you want to be a snob and not to believe so be it
 
timojin said:
If you want to be open minded read Genesis 1 first 6 verses . There is somethiong interesting to wonder in your mind . If you want to be a snob and not to believe so be it
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So if we do not believe your holy book we are snobs? Do you believe the Vedas? Does that mean you are a snob?
 
timojin said:
If you want to be open minded read Genesis 1 first 6 verses . There is somethiong interesting to wonder in your mind . If you want to be a snob and not to believe so be it
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Look, pal, I was brought up a Catholic, went to a Church of England school and still even now attend mass fairly regularly (I am a choral singer), so I am well aware of the Old Testament allegory of creation.

But that is all it is - an allegory. And that is what the Catholic Church, the Church of England, The Methodists, the Church of Scotland and just about all other major denominations of Western Christianity have taught, for the last century, at least. Nothing to do with snobbery - it is just common sense and standard theology.

You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of_Genesis

You and I can discuss this further if you like under the heading of religion - it does not belong on this thread.
 
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