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Or is that the joke and I'm missing it?
Should be "Life left mineral substrate at least twice" or some such. The research is interesting, but they're playing word games in the telling of it by saying the most recent common ancestor of all life wasn't alive (because it was dependent on a mineral surface), but two of it's children gave rise to lineages that were.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the...
Origin of life on earth is not very interesting to me. Origin of life in the universe is where it is at...
Until we get any tangible proof of life outside Earth, there is no difference
To me, these are clearly not independent paths, but rather the branching of proto-life into two of the great kingdoms of life. It’s a stretch to call this two origins rather than a branching.
Then a couple billion years later, one of em ate the other, and rather than destroy it, they both started a symbiotic relationship, and we were off to the eukaryotic race. This is all the same web of life. Not two independent streams.
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unfortunately the field of abiogenesis, just like extraterrestrial life, is a lost cause. The reality we will never be able to replicate creation of life nor find life on other planets (except via contamination). it's why we've never gotten any closer. and i'm not even religious
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a big universe and there are a lot of years, so chemical evolution seems like a decent tool for God to use. Much like General Relativity is a more efficient way to rule the world than assigning angels to push the planets thru the sky. And a passing familiarity with birth defects will prove to most hard hearted people that each specific fact of biology is not designed by a loving creator. Unless you believe this…
I'm not a biblical scholar, but I think the "loving creator" thing was invented by people and not necessarily in the Bible. I'm pretty sure Old Testament God is pretty vengeful. Theistic Evolution is wide-enough belief, especially with Protestants.
Origin of life on earth is not very interesting to me. Origin of life in the universe is where it is at...
Until we get any tangible proof of life outside Earth, there is no difference
But high level life was likely a series of complex accidents that is not reproducible or would be radically different than us
One of my absolute favorite PBS Space Time on the subject
The link the site points to seems like a better source (no ads, cites DOI etc, affiliated with AAAS rather than random aggregator website): https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1138775
> “When we react phosphite, a form of phosphorus that naturally occurs in hydrothermal vents, with organic compounds, we get metabolic phosphorylation reactions overnight in water. Phosphite and palladium replace ATP and enzymes; it’s amazing, and it makes early evolution a lot easier to grasp” says Schlikker.
As far as I know, there are no palladium enzymes ... checks ... ok, no _natural_ ones (that we know of). Which is interesting, as other enzymes in metabolism that use metals seem to have 'adopted' the metal(s) as a cofactor - like nickel, iron, molybdenum, even vanadium in at least one case.