Live data from Hacker News

Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

sciencealert.com

31–40 of 116 posts

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#31

The metabolic science is really cool. The conclusion that life arose twice requires you to buy that proto-cells that grew on these vents and needed those metallic surfaces to survive didn’t count as “life”. Then, free living cells, bacteria and archea, could maybe be argued as having independent paths as they plugged the gaps in their metabolism independently. Same DNA/RNA, same proteins. Same broad rules of metaboli…

the Great Oxidation Event caused all kinds of crazy stress = crazy mutations/adaptations where one eventually started our path

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

one of my absolute favorite PBS Space Time on the subject

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abvzkSJEhKk

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#32

[flagged]

> As I see it life was clearly designed by God. Which one? There are so many to choose from... And what created that God? I know it's turtles all the way down but still want to know.

The dogma in many religions is that nothing created God or at least, there's no way to know. He exists outside our time and space. So from our perspective, God has always existed. If you believe that free will is true, then he can see all outcomes of the universe at once. If you don't believe in true free will, he sees the single timeline at once, from the big bang to the heat death of the universe.

Personally, I don't believe in any religions. They were all developed before we had a much clearer idea of how our world works and there's just too much folklore mixed in with actual, yet primitive, philosophical discussions to abide by any of it. But like with the simulation theory, we have no way to know what exists outside our time and space so you shouldn't worry. If there is some bored extra dimensional teenager simulating our universe on their GPU, it ultimately doesn't matter because we'll never know.

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#33
I was already under the impression that life on Earth has had several "Game Over -Play Again?" periods.

I assume that the difference here, is that it went completely to zero, before restarting. The other times, there was a bit clinging on, that seeded the restart.

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#34

The metabolic science is really cool. The conclusion that life arose twice requires you to buy that proto-cells that grew on these vents and needed those metallic surfaces to survive didn’t count as “life”. Then, free living cells, bacteria and archea, could maybe be argued as having independent paths as they plugged the gaps in their metabolism independently. Same DNA/RNA, same proteins. Same broad rules of metaboli…

You would think there would be some isolated places where proto-life still exists for this to be true.

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#35
post #34

The metabolic science is really cool. The conclusion that life arose twice requires you to buy that proto-cells that grew on these vents and needed those metallic surfaces to survive didn’t count as “life”. Then, free living cells, bacteria and archea, could maybe be argued as having independent paths as they plugged the gaps in their metabolism independently. Same DNA/RNA, same proteins. Same broad rules of metaboli…

You would think there would be some isolated places where proto-life still exists for this to be true.

Hash competition from life might cause them to go extinct, and even if it happens again it just gets out-competed to extinction fast.

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#36
post #34

The metabolic science is really cool. The conclusion that life arose twice requires you to buy that proto-cells that grew on these vents and needed those metallic surfaces to survive didn’t count as “life”. Then, free living cells, bacteria and archea, could maybe be argued as having independent paths as they plugged the gaps in their metabolism independently. Same DNA/RNA, same proteins. Same broad rules of metaboli…

You would think there would be some isolated places where proto-life still exists for this to be true.

I always found it odd that there's only one single origin of life point or even just a single common ancestor considered in history. Shouldn't entirely new life develop all the time on earth? I mean the ingredients and building blocks are still there, the environmental situation still should work out, like availability of water, temperatures, etc. We should see a constant emergence of new life all the time. Why would that process stop, just because some other life already exists? Maybe we just can't detect this, because whatever new life happens to appear —more or less— resembles life that's already there.

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#37
post #7
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren’t saying two totally different independent life creating event, they are saying that the earliest life depending on some external chemicals for parts of what is now covered by metabolism, and the tree of life diverged before those metabolic paths evolved inside the organism, so not totally the same emergence of life twice, but more stuff that reproduces and evolves but doesn’t meet modern standard for life.

Honestly just more “biology has enormous areas without enough data that need filling in” causing previous generalizations (e.g. the central dogma of information flow being replaced by protein regulation of gene expression, non-coding DNA, even neurons and egg cells being produced thru life) to be overthrown, more than anything, IMO.

I have absolutely no doubt that the next LLM/ML startup will be able to confidently, rapidly, productively and correctly fill in the missing data. Onward science!

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#38
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think there would be some isolated places where proto-life still exists for this to be true.

I always found it odd that there's only one single origin of life point or even just a single common ancestor considered in history. Shouldn't entirely new life develop all the time on earth? I mean the ingredients and building blocks are still there, the environmental situation still should work out, like availability of water, temperatures, etc. We should see a constant emergence of new life all the time. Why would…

It has to survive though in the sense that it has to live long enough for us to see it. If we think of life as "spontaneously" (roughly speaking) emerging from the right conditions reasonably rarely, it has to outcompete other existing life for some time. And then there's the chance that we might not recognize it as "new" at all.

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#39
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think there would be some isolated places where proto-life still exists for this to be true.

I always found it odd that there's only one single origin of life point or even just a single common ancestor considered in history. Shouldn't entirely new life develop all the time on earth? I mean the ingredients and building blocks are still there, the environmental situation still should work out, like availability of water, temperatures, etc. We should see a constant emergence of new life all the time. Why would…

> Shouldn't entirely new life develop all the time on earth?

The fact that it doesn't is a pretty simple solution to the Fermi Paradox.

Re: Radical Study Suggests Life on Earth Arose Twice

#40
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think there would be some isolated places where proto-life still exists for this to be true.

I always found it odd that there's only one single origin of life point or even just a single common ancestor considered in history. Shouldn't entirely new life develop all the time on earth? I mean the ingredients and building blocks are still there, the environmental situation still should work out, like availability of water, temperatures, etc. We should see a constant emergence of new life all the time. Why would…

I'd imagine the bar for becoming new life is much higher now, because it requires finding a niche that isn't already filled by an existing organism or requires being immediately competitive with existing life.
Post reply on HN