Cold Start? Origin hypothesis.

AuCanada · 02-15-2008, 08:10 AM

Did Life Evolve in Ice? | Arctic & Antarctic | DISCOVER Magazine
Fascinating.

Environment Man · 02-15-2008, 09:01 AM

More unscientific bullshit posing as science. You cannot get life from any mix of elements over endless time. Life is divinely unique and it is impossible for it to occur by chance.

mentor · 02-15-2008, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuCanada

Did Life Evolve in Ice? | Arctic & Antarctic | DISCOVER Magazine
Fascinating.

Great article. There was another article last year pointing to mica as a possible substrate for organizing long polymeres. Before that scientists thought it might be clay, or mud, like Eman believes. In any case, it is turning out that conditions for the creation of life were probably rather abundant in the early solar system. It looks like an expedition to Europa is called for!

Titanium Cat · 02-15-2008, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Environment Man

More unscientific bullshit posing as science. You cannot get life from any mix of elements over endless time. Life is divinely unique and it is impossible for it to occur by chance.

More unscientific bullshit of yours that doesn't even pose as science.

AuCanada · 02-15-2008, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mentor

Great article. There was another article last year pointing to mica as a possible substrate for organizing long polymeres. Before that scientists thought it might be clay, or mud, like Eman believes. In any case, it is turning out that conditions for the creation of life were probably rather abundant in the early solar system. It looks like an expedition to Europa is called for!

Agreed.
The implication is that there may be much more life in the universe than previously thought.

As for eman's retarded comment, I think it is best to simply ignore it.

Environment Man · 02-15-2008, 10:06 AM

That article is what is retarded. And you have to know that. Life springing from the Periodic Table is a stupid hypothesis. It cant be repeated in the lab. Never has been. Cause its retarded. So warm up some elements and you get life? Ridiculous. But it confirms your worldview and that's why you posted it. But it is ignorance in motion.

Environment Man · 02-15-2008, 10:10 AM

"Over a quarter-century, the frozen ammonia-cyanide blend had coalesced into the molecules of life: nucleobases, the building blocks of RNA and DNA, and amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The vial’s contents would support a new account of how life began on Earth and would arouse both surprise and skepticism around the world."

Note the HUGE jump from nucleobases .................................................. .................................................. .........all the way to the assumption about forming RNA and DNA. Yeah. Easy? Right? They always write bullshit like this.

The jump from that piss he had in the jar to RNA is infinite.

Heretic · 02-15-2008, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Miller’s frozen experiment is a striking testament to the idea. Although life requires liquid water, small amounts of liquid can persist even at –60°F. Microscopic pockets of water within the ice may have gathered simple molecules like the ones Miller synthesized, assembling them into longer and longer chains. A single cubic yard of sea ice contains a million or more liquid compartments, microscopic test tubes that could have created unique mixtures of RNA that eventually formed the first life.

This part is critical, for it requires that a volumn of solution be isolated in order to avoid dilusion and to increase the chances of individual reactants coming into contact with each other. After that, there need only be enough heat that molecules can move and react [meaning not at or near absolute zero].

If he can explain the origins of nucleobases then he's found the final inorganic process initiating the chemistry of life.

Quote:

This is the main argument against Miller’s experiment, and against a cold origin of life in general. But strange things happen when you freeze chemicals in ice. Some reactions slow down, but others actually speed up—especially reactions that involve joining small molecules into larger ones. This seeming paradox is caused by a process called eutectic freezing. As an ice crystal forms, it stays pure: Only molecules of water join the growing crystal, while impurities like salt or cyanide are excluded. These impurities become crowded in microscopic pockets of liquid within the ice, and this crowding causes the molecules to collide more often. Chemically speaking, it transforms a tepid seventh-grade school dance into a raging molecular mosh pit.

Myself not being a biochemist, but knowing a little about chemistry in general [enough to tutor others] I'd say this is sensible enough and simple enough to be the correct process for the origins of life.

Quote:

“Usually as you cool things, the reaction rates go down,” concluded Leslie Orgel, who studied the origins of life at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, from the 1960s until his death last October. “But with eutectic freezing, the concentrations go up so fast that they more than make up” for the difference.

The reason why most reactions slow down is because the molecules themselves are moving more slowly, but when compressed into a tiny and restrictive volume if the molecules move at all that's sufficient for chemical reactions to occur at appreciable rates.

Quote:

Cyanide is a good candidate as a precursor molecule in the life-in-a-freezer model for several reasons. First, planetary scientists suspect that cyanide was abundant on early Earth, deposited here by comets or created in the atmosphere by ultraviolet light or by lightning (once the atmosphere became oxygen rich, 2.5 billion years ago, the process would have stopped). Second, although cyanide is lethal to modern animals, it has a convenient tendency to self-assemble into larger molecules. Third, and perhaps most important, no matter how much cyanide rained down, it could become concentrated only in a cold environment—not in warm coastal lagoons—because it evaporates more quickly than water.

“The strong point of freezing,” according to Orgel, “is that you concentrate things very efficiently without evaporation.” Freezing also helps preserve fragile molecules like nucleobases, extending their lifetime from days to centuries and giving them time to accumulate and perhaps organize into something more interesting—like life.

I'm actually surprised the warm origins theory hadn't been shotdown much sooner based on the above. Openly exposed, nucleic acids tend to break down though not as quickly in the absence of oxygen.

Quote:

Shortly after Miller finished his 25-year experiment, he suffered a stroke that ended his career. His laboratory, with 40 years of samples, was emptied in 2002 to make way for a building renovation. Experiments that had run for years or decades were discarded without ever being analyzed. As Bada rescued a few items from his mentor’s freezer, safety personnel stood by in hazmat suits, sent by university officials concerned about rumors of toxic cyanide. Any sample that couldn’t be identified was incinerated. Miller was present for a few hours of this ordeal, struggling to find words to identify the vials that he had known so well.

FUCKERS!! No one thought to ask this guy's grad students to jump in and grab his journals and measurement records along with what samples they could?

Quote:

If life arose in ice on Earth, then why not on Mars, Europa, or Enceladus? “You’ve got to keep an open mind in this business,” Bada says. “If I were going to make a bet about what we’d find if we discover life elsewhere in the universe, I would suspect it would be more cold-adapted than hot-adapted.”

Okay, I'll call the ball at this point: Life on Europa, extinct life [or a few surviving single celled organisms in metabolically static states] and self replicating chemistry on some moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

mentor · 02-15-2008, 10:15 AM

I wouldn't bet against you on that one H. We may find out soon with the next generation of probes to visit these moons...

Heretic · 02-15-2008, 10:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mentor

I wouldn't bet against you on that one H. We may find out soon with the next generation of probes to visit these moons...

I've been contemplating the possibility of intelligent microbes under Europa's ice that make and use nanoscopic tools. Maybe they're give us a ring.

"Hey! No more reruns of 'I Love Lucy' please!"

02-15-2008, 08:10 AM	#1 (permalink)
AuCanada Doctor of Sarcasm Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 600 My Mood: Thanks: 3 Thanked 13 Times in 11 Posts	Cold Start? Origin hypothesis. Did Life Evolve in Ice? \| Arctic & Antarctic \| DISCOVER Magazine Fascinating. __________________ Don't Panic
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02-15-2008, 09:01 AM	#2 (permalink)
Environment Man Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Catalina Island Posts: 19,983 Thanks: 0 Thanked 37 Times in 33 Posts	More unscientific bullshit posing as science. You cannot get life from any mix of elements over endless time. Life is divinely unique and it is impossible for it to occur by chance.
	Top

02-15-2008, 10:06 AM	#6 (permalink)
Environment Man Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Catalina Island Posts: 19,983 Thanks: 0 Thanked 37 Times in 33 Posts	That article is what is retarded. And you have to know that. Life springing from the Periodic Table is a stupid hypothesis. It cant be repeated in the lab. Never has been. Cause its retarded. So warm up some elements and you get life? Ridiculous. But it confirms your worldview and that's why you posted it. But it is ignorance in motion.
	Top

02-15-2008, 10:10 AM	#7 (permalink)
Environment Man Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Catalina Island Posts: 19,983 Thanks: 0 Thanked 37 Times in 33 Posts	"Over a quarter-century, the frozen ammonia-cyanide blend had coalesced into the molecules of life: nucleobases, the building blocks of RNA and DNA, and amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The vial’s contents would support a new account of how life began on Earth and would arouse both surprise and skepticism around the world." Note the HUGE jump from nucleobases .................................................. .................................................. .........all the way to the assumption about forming RNA and DNA. Yeah. Easy? Right? They always write bullshit like this. The jump from that piss he had in the jar to RNA is infinite.
	Top

02-15-2008, 10:15 AM	#9 (permalink)
mentor Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Northern California Posts: 1,728 My Mood: Thanks: 47 Thanked 86 Times in 63 Posts	I wouldn't bet against you on that one H. We may find out soon with the next generation of probes to visit these moons... __________________ The Darwinian Revolution is over. Darwin won.
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