How did life start? No creationists please

[Anomalocaris]

I don't know. The Ulrey-Miller experiments in the early 50's fired electricity through what they thought was a prebiotic atmosphere and came up with amino acids and stuff.

But a comet/meteor impact would provide an energy boost on steroids compared to lightning.

Miller Urey experiment was interesting but now generally regarded as having taken origin of life research down the wrong path for 50 years. The simple insuperable problem is what they thought was a reasonable approximation of prebiotic atmosphere wasn't, and miller Urey experiment is impossible to duplicate in what is now regarded as what prebiotic atmosphere was really like.

There is also an enormous gap between amino acids and a self contained, self replicating organism. The idea that some massive zaps of energy would cause amino acids to climb up enormously steep thermal dynamic gradient and not fall back down is hard to swallow. There must be some sustained source of chemical and thermal energy, and even more importantly some very long lasting mechanism to contain and concentrate the results of the occasional thermodynamically possible but unlikely reactions for there to be progress. Otherwise the fruit of each rare and unlikely step towards life would dissipate long before circumstances and chance become favorable again for there to be the next step.

Hence the porous rocky accretions around energy and chemical rich Geothermal vents form such excellent candidates for the site of the actually origin of life.

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Lately it seems that there have been breakthroughs along this line of investigation.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/201...144326.htm


Again, the amount of energy released in an impact is mind-blowing.

Of course this all drives the creatards up a wall but then, what doesn't?

Do we need an external energy source? It seems that a young earth would be an extremely energetic one. Even now under the deeps of the ocean there is constant seismic and volcanic upheaval.

Once the seas had formed it would probably be only a matter of time before the right chemical reaction took place to produce an RNA chain capable of replicating.

As the earth seems to have been about 500 million years old before life started that, I would guess, is all the time needed.

An equally interesting question, of course, is why, about 3.5 billion years later multi-cellular life started in the Cambrian explosion.

Actually that is 2 questions - why did it take 3.5 billion years to happen and what caused it?

1. There are hints that life existed on earth 4.2 billion years ago. So life may have taken less than 300 million years to arise from the accretion of the earth. Since the earth during her first hundred million years and more must have been truly hellish place, and utterly inhospitable to any life, life may have in fact taken far less the 300 million years to arise starting from the first moment when earth's environment first became suitable for giving rise to life.

2. The notion that multicellular life arose with Cambrian explosion is wrong. As matter of fact, there was a diverse pre-Cambrian multicellular fauna called the ediacrean fauna that left a rich fossil legacy. But Before ediacrean fauna there were another 300 million years of clear trace fossil records of complex multicelluar animal life such as worm burrows, crawl marks, etc. More ambigious trace fossils suggests some mobile complex multicellular life may have existed over a billion years ago. All Cambrian explosion really represented was a major change in sea water chemistry that enabled the development and preservation of mineralized body parts, hence extensive preservation of actual body fossils. The fact the Arthropods at the very beginning of Cambrian explosion already possessed the full suite of highly evolved, specialized adaptive features that distinguish different branches of anthropod family tree down the ages to today, shows that not only did some form of complex animals exist before the Cambrian explosion, but specific forms of highly evolved complex animal life clearly distinguishable as belonging to still extent phyla, and directly ancesteral to existing classes and orders of those phyla, must have existed since before the Cambrian "explosion".

[Minimalist]

Miller's specimens were found and subjected to modern testing methods in 2007. The results....


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7675193.stm

"We found not only did these make more of certain amino acids than in the classic experiment, but they made a greater diversity of amino acids."

Miller, using the old methods, had found five amino acids; Jeffrey Bada and his teams tracked down 22. What is more, the overall chemical yields were often higher than in the first set of experiments - the mixture appeared to be more fertile.

Professor Bada points out that today, almost all volcanic eruptions are accompanied by violent electric storms. The same could have been true on the young Earth.

[Polaris]

I liked Ulrey-Miller's theory (I actually wanted to do it myself as a child), but it's not the best explanation anymore.

[Fruity]

1. We are the pets in an ant-farm type globe, owned by a baby alien. We were conceived at the pet store.

2. An evil being is feeding us. He cooks us a bacon once we're dead.

3. We are nothing but someone else's dream. Since I feel, I must be the only real person here and anything you say you feel is false and only part of my imagination. I got here because I am part of someone else's dream. So on.

4. We are a cartoon for demons.

5. We are actually shit. Gods shit us in this potty we call Earth and somehow we feel all mighty, when in reality we're nothing more than shit. Smart shit. We are to the gods what germs are to us.

6. I don't have a clue how we got here, I'm just pretty darn sure that no Allah, Jehovah, Jesus, Thor, Santa, etc., brought me here.

[JesusIsAlive]

How do you think life on earth started? What do you believe? No explanations involving deities please. Do you believe in Abiogenesis or something else? e.g. My grandfather believes we were created by an advanced race of aliens.

Land Animals and. MAN. God made man in His own image. God saw everything that He had made, and it was very good. But soon the picture darkened. God must have known before hand that it would, and some have regarded his whole work of the creation of man as but a step toward the glorious world that will yet issue from it, as toldvin the closing chapter of Revelation. Read your Bibles. It is essential that you do.

[max-greece]

Do we need an external energy source? It seems that a young earth would be an extremely energetic one. Even now under the deeps of the ocean there is constant seismic and volcanic upheaval.

Once the seas had formed it would probably be only a matter of time before the right chemical reaction took place to produce an RNA chain capable of replicating.

As the earth seems to have been about 500 million years old before life started that, I would guess, is all the time needed.

An equally interesting question, of course, is why, about 3.5 billion years later multi-cellular life started in the Cambrian explosion.

Actually that is 2 questions - why did it take 3.5 billion years to happen and what caused it?

1. There are hints that life existed on earth 4.2 billion years ago. So life may have taken less than 300 million years to arise from the accretion of the earth. Since the earth during her first hundred million years and more must have been truly hellish place, and utterly inhospitable to any life, life may have in fact taken far less the 300 million years to arise starting from the first moment when earth's environment first became suitable for giving rise to life.

2. The notion that multicellular life arose with Cambrian explosion is wrong. As matter of fact, there was a diverse pre-Cambrian multicellular fauna called the ediacrean fauna that left a rich fossil legacy. But Before ediacrean fauna there were another 300 million years of clear trace fossil records of complex multicelluar animal life such as worm burrows, crawl marks, etc. More ambigious trace fossils suggests some mobile complex multicellular life may have existed over a billion years ago. All Cambrian explosion really represented was a major change in sea water chemistry that enabled the development and preservation of mineralized body parts, hence extensive preservation of actual body fossils. The fact the Arthropods at the very beginning of Cambrian explosion already possessed the full suite of highly evolved, specialized adaptive features that distinguish different branches of anthropod family tree down the ages to today, shows that not only did some form of complex animals exist before the Cambrian explosion, but specific forms of highly evolved complex animal life clearly distinguishable as belonging to still extent phyla, and directly ancesteral to existing classes and orders of those phyla, must have existed since before the Cambrian "explosion".

Great stuff there Chuck although even if multi-cellular life is actually a billion years old that still leaves a 3.2 billion year gap if life started even further back.

Do you have any source material for the pre-cambrian? Everything I have seen starts from the Cambrian explosion and only makes reference to fractal life forms before that which appear to have simply died out.

[Fruity]

JesusIsAlive wrote:

Read your Bibles. It is essential that you do.

Yeah, it's essential that YOU do.

No, but really read it. I already did. twice. YOU read it. Pay attention. Then come back and change your username if you like. You're welcome.

[max-greece]

How do you think life on earth started? What do you believe? No explanations involving deities please. Do you believe in Abiogenesis or something else? e.g. My grandfather believes we were created by an advanced race of aliens.

Land Animals and. MAN. God made man in His own image. God saw everything that He had made, and it was very good. But soon the picture darkened. God must have known before hand that it would, and some have regarded his whole work of the creation of man as but a step toward the glorious world that will yet issue from it, as toldvin the closing chapter of Revelation. Read your Bibles. It is essential that you do.

So God has 98% commonality of DNA with Chimpanzees and Bonobos - interesting theory.

[Anomalocaris]

Miller's specimens were found and subjected to modern testing methods in 2007. The results....


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7675193.stm

"We found not only did these make more of certain amino acids than in the classic experiment, but they made a greater diversity of amino acids."

Miller, using the old methods, had found five amino acids; Jeffrey Bada and his teams tracked down 22. What is more, the overall chemical yields were often higher than in the first set of experiments - the mixture appeared to be more fertile.

Professor Bada points out that today, almost all volcanic eruptions are accompanied by violent electric storms. The same could have been true on the young Earth.

No one doubts Miller Urey experiment worked well to show amino acids can be effectively manufactured under relatively simple conditions provided there is high concentrations of ammonia, methane and hydrogen. If these are present in quantity, addition of nitrogen and carbon dioxide would make miller Urey experiment go even better. But unfortunately mineralogical evidence shows while the icing of carbon dioxide and nitrogen was there, the cake of ammonia and methane wasn't. The earth's atmosphere was never rich in ammonia or methane, at least after the moon forming impact stripped away earth's original crust and atmosphere 4.56 billion years ago. Repeat experiment using only trace amounts of methane and ammonia, and production of amino acids come nearly to a stop.

Miller Urey experiment shows lightning can make amino acids arise out of organic soup in warm little pond as Darwin called it. Mineralogical evidence suggests the warm little ponds had precious little organic soup.

The only thing going for miller Urey experiment is, while it can't convincingly show how amino acids can be made in early earth environments, it could show how environment conducive to making amino acids can be prevalent elsewhere in the early solar system, where amonia and methane were and still are available in high concentrations.

It doesn't matter, amino acids can be brought to earth on asteroids. Now the question is how amino acids climbed the incredibly steep thermal dynamic ladder to form a self replicating molecule, which is essence of how life, as opposed to life's raw materials arose. Here zapping things with lightning only makes things worse, not better.

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Do you have any source material for the pre-cambrian? Everything I have seen starts from the Cambrian explosion and only makes reference to fractal life forms before that which appear to have simply died out.

ediacaran pre-canbrian multicellular fauna

Evidence of multicellular organism 2.1 billion years ago:

El Albani, Et al (1 July 2010). "Large colonial organisms with coordinated growth in oxygenated environments 2.1 Gyr ago". Nature 466 (7302): 100–104.

[Bad Wolf]

Land Animals and. MAN. God made man in His own image. God saw everything that He had made, and it was very good. But soon the picture darkened. God must have known before hand that it would, and some have regarded his whole work of the creation of man as but a step toward the glorious world that will yet issue from it, as toldvin the closing chapter of Revelation. Read your Bibles. It is essential that you do.

There was always going to one.