How did life start? No creationists please

[Bad Wolf]

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.

[popeyespappy]

My grandfather believes we were created by an advanced race of aliens.

How did they start?

[Bad Wolf]

How did they start?

Exactly the question I asked him

[Minimalist]

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

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

Lawrence Livermore scientist Nir Goldman and University of Ontario Institute of Technology colleague Isaac Tamblyn (a former LLNL postdoc) found that icy comets that crashed into Earth millions of years ago could have produced life building organic compounds, including the building blocks of proteins and nucleobases pairs of DNA and RNA.

Comets contain a variety of simple molecules, such as water, ammonia, methanol and carbon dioxide, and an impact event with a planetary surface would provide an abundant supply of energy to drive chemical reactions.

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?

[Fidel_Castronaut]

My grandfather believes we were created by an advanced race of aliens.

How did they start?

[max-greece]

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

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

Lawrence Livermore scientist Nir Goldman and University of Ontario Institute of Technology colleague Isaac Tamblyn (a former LLNL postdoc) found that icy comets that crashed into Earth millions of years ago could have produced life building organic compounds, including the building blocks of proteins and nucleobases pairs of DNA and RNA.

Comets contain a variety of simple molecules, such as water, ammonia, methanol and carbon dioxide, and an impact event with a planetary surface would provide an abundant supply of energy to drive chemical reactions.

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?

[Minimalist]

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.

[Polaris]

We still do not know. We know where many of the building blocks came from, but we don't know with any real certainty the mechanisms that produced the first life. Even well-acclaimed theories have recently been seen as invalid.

[rexbeccarox]

I prefer "I don't know" over "I believe..." in this situation.

[TaraJo]

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

Fairy tales. :p