101–110 of 212 posts
I think the title is pushing it a bit. When I see "life-sparking energy source", I think of an inextricable property. Get that and you can spark life. But we have and we couldn't. They're merely ingredients, building blocks, fuel to sustain life as we understand it on Earth, as the article more sensibly admits. The "life-sparking" source itself remains a mystery.
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idk, I think if we see even simple life at multiple points in our own system that we can increase our expectations for the prevalence of life very significantly. And of course given how vast and indifferent to life the universe is, life would still be vanishingly rare in the universe. It's going to be always precious and a gem.
Why? That could just mean our solar gave rise to life and not earth alone. Still don’t see why that increases the odds outside of our solar system
I think the title is pushing it a bit. When I see "life-sparking energy source", I think of an inextricable property. Get that and you can spark life. But we have and we couldn't. They're merely ingredients, building blocks, fuel to sustain life as we understand it on Earth, as the article more sensibly admits. The "life-sparking" source itself remains a mystery.
E.g. snowpack melt -> mountain stream -> waterfall
A waterfall is a vastly simpler system than a living organism, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the origin of life has a flavor similar to waterfall formation.
I like the idea that all phenomena we observe are emergent in a similar way.
The fact that there is something, just something can drive me crazy. Why is there something and not just nothing.
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Where did you get 10 billion years of random chemistry? The articles I read assert that life began just 500 million to 1 billion years after formation of earth. 3.5-4.1 billion years ago with an earth age of 4.5 billion.
The universe is about 15 billion years old, and chemistry didn't start with the formation of Earth.
Are you suggesting that abiogenesis didn’t start on earth, but self-replicating molecules started evolving in earths protoplanetary disc?
Serious question, haven’t encountered that theory before. It’s kinda panspermia-lite.
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> I think it’s highly likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life Out of curiosity, if you reject religion, what other possibilities are there?
Just inorganic material combining at random and eventually, over about 10 billion years, randomly creating something that self replicates in some way, beginning the process of evolution through natural selection and inevitably progressing to life as we know it. I don't think religion is needed at all for this. I also don't think this has to be a common thing (after all, here on Earth it only happened once, but it's a…
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Just inorganic material combining at random and eventually, over about 10 billion years, randomly creating something that self replicates in some way, beginning the process of evolution through natural selection and inevitably progressing to life as we know it. I don't think religion is needed at all for this. I also don't think this has to be a common thing (after all, here on Earth it only happened once, but it's a…
Sorry, I meant possibilities other than "an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life"
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> It’s worth remembering that there is not one single shred of evidence that life has ever existed anywhere in the observable universe but Earth. It is hard for me to believe that in the mind boggling vastness of space and time, we are the sole singularity in the history of the universe.
When Everest was first measured, it was exactly 29,000 feet. They figured no one would believe this, so they told people it was 29,002 feet Sometimes things just are, regardless of what we expect.
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I agree it’s an open question, but I think it’s highly likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life. We already know that’s the case in highly controlled environments. We don’t yet have confidence about the exact mechanism on Earth but based on those experiments it’s likely (& generally currently accepted as the most likely…
>Our type of society is probably much much rarer because you need access to mineral and energy deposits to go through each technological phase. For example, because of all the mining we’ve done, if humanity were to disappear it’s highly likely the Earth would not sustain another technological society because all the “easy to get to” deposits of crucial metals & things like oil are gone and there’s no way to bootstrap…
This is intriguing and I’m very happy this exploration is being done. But, for decades, I’ve been reading reports of the discovery of evidence for the trappings of life elsewhere: water and organics and “habitable” exoplanets. These are valuable discoveries, but the tone of the reports suggest they imply life is about to turn up. It’s worth remembering that there is not one single shred of evidence that life has ever…
The lack of interest in abiogenesis in most circles is truly outstanding.