mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Interesting development in the old 'how did life on Earth start?' question:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23872765
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23872765
We are all Martians
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I want a Passport.
Food for thought, but until we can get a team of scientists to land on Mars and dig in, we will never know for sure.
Interesting. But, as there is currently not even a theory of the origin of life, it's just something to keep reporters employed.
Ignoring Creationism and Intelligent Design as off topic, there are still several theories.
One is a "hot rock" theory - naturally formed amino acids preciptated from the protoatmosphere were agitated by hydrothermal vents, and said agitation produced a few self-replicating molecules. Those, through continued thermal agitation, accidentally/incidentally coalesced into longer chain nucleic acids, and the best began to have structures which bound lipids... and into cellular biology. That theory goes back to the 1950's or before.
A close variant is that it was shoreline interaction, not hydrothermal vents.
Yet another is that nice shallow pools of amino acids got shocked with falling rocks for the agitation (Higher energy, less frequent).
Neat thing about all three variations: It only takes ONE successful instance.
Another is that it was prions that were self replicating from naturally occurring amino acids by scaffolding them into replication - with prions, it only takes one to do it. The issue there is that you need at least two competing prionic forms to get anything other than a stable state.
There is no singular widely accepted theory, but that's not the same as "currently not even a theory of the origin of life."
Actually, not. NONE of those you listed are actual scientific theories. They are not testable. They aren't even, strictly speaking, a hypothesis. For one to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it.
What you listed were simply ideas...
I'll give you an example:
Origin of a cake. (recipe). If you "test" the recipe, you either get a cake or, you don't. Thus, no current SCIENTIFIC theory on the origin of life.
FACT
They CAN be tested - the formation of amino acids from the reducing atmosphere has been tested, and shown. It's also known that amino acids are the precursors to proteins and nucleic acids. It's also known that random mutation of proteins into prions happens (look up Kuru and CJD).
But testability is NOT the definition of Scientific Theory (otherwise, large chunks of the standard model fail to be theory, including most of astrophysics).
Many sciences are observational, not experimental. The experimental model is not the be-all of science.
And to use your example, in it's glorious ignorance, the recipe for a cake doesn't prove that the cake yesterday had the same recipe. It merely proves that the recipe to hand will make a cake, not that it was the same recipe used to make yesterday's cake, nor the first cake.
That's NOT a theory of the origin of life but of of SOME of its components. Saying I know the soil conditions to grow wheat doesn't mean I know how to make a cake. I'm sorry but you're not even CLOSE on this.
More study needed.
I thought I read that they proved in a lab that amino acids can bond when electricity is applied and thus proving that lightning is a contender for starting life.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
How do you make the cake when there is no spoon...
And if you take your cake change the levin and reduce the sugar you can get bread. Heck remove any levin and sugar and you still can get a type of bread.
So cake is a bread.
[and this is where I will stop]:toast:
And, with the excess humor, this also is where the thread will end.
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