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Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

phys.org

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Re: Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

#151

Post by tengbretson »

nikolay wrote: post #107

So what?! This does not prove anything! There are stones all around us, but they don't assemble themselves into beautiful, majestic stone buildings! All ingredients of concrete are around us, but we don't see them turning into concrete and pouring themselves into freeways, bridges, and all kinds of much less complex than living organisms!

I just walked into a room and everywhere I look, everything I see is made up of the same basic building blocks.

The only thing left to figure out is how did these legos learn to assemble themselves.

Re: Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

#152

Post by qsera »

jibal wrote: post #143
qsera wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, Multi worlds is the only way this impossibly random event can occur on its own.

Sorry, but nothing you have said here is true or makes sense. Multi worlds are universes, not worlds within our universe. The multiworld interpretation is one of several interpretations of quantum mechanics of the exact same evidence--one or the other interpretation being "true" has no empirical implications. And it is an interpretation of quantum mechanics, which has nothing to do with the distribution of nucleotide…

Ok, what is the mystery in the origin of life? As I understand, it is how all the required molecules came together in the right configuration spontaneously? Is that the question that we are trying to answer?

If this is the question, I think the Multi Worlds Interpretation provides the answer. Because it says that there is some worlds where any given random event will manifest.

So it follows that there is some worlds, where this random event that we call the "origin of life" manifested. And it is just that we are part of one such world.

>multiworld interpretation is one of several interpretations of quantum mechanics of the exact same evidence

I think we might think the other way around. That the origin of life, as well as the fact that we seem to be alone in the universe, as a proof of the MWI..

About the latter, I think we have an overwhelming chance to be alone, because while it is true that there can be universes where random events have lead to origin of life in multiple places, the universes where there is only a single "origin of life" event will vastly outnumber such universes that the chances of us finding oursleves in one such universe (where life has originated independently more than once) is vanishingly small.

Re: Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

#153

Post by CryptoBanker »

Citizen_Lame wrote: post #145
stouset wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most asteroids have slowed to terminal velocity by the time they impact. It’s not nothing, but it’s mostly going to be relevant to physical processes and not chemical ones. You might consider that scientists advanced enough in their field to be launching missions to retrieve dust from asteroids are actually aware of basic facts relevant to their field of study.

Quality of comments massively dropped on the HN. It feels like Facebook now.

The Redditors have arrived

Re: Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

#154

Post by Supermancho »

lazide wrote: post #124
Supermancho wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems implausible at first glance that these things would develop or survive in open space rather than here. I don't think "organics developed in the vacuum of space" is implied. Survived? Well we have samples now confirming, if I'm understanding the basis for the discussion (the article).

We have some organic ‘building block’ compounds confirmed frozen on some asteroids. But what we don’t have is any examples of them surviving re-entry. We also have a massive amount of those same compounds already here on the planet. Causality is… tenuous. But not impossible.

I was under the impression that the ejection of these compounds demonstrates that organics (blocks) can escape a gravity well, which implies they can likely re-enter another.

Re: Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

#155

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #74

I'm in the middle of reading Peter Brannen's The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything —it's excellent and goes deep into the (bio)geochemistry of Earth—and he presents a good case for a metabolism-first development of life, taking advantage of "a disequilibrium that needed to be relieved at the vents, an unending stream d free energy to dissipate," rather than the RNA information-first theories. It fits his overal…

This is similar to Nick Lane's books, and the research he references as well. The necessity for disequilibrium, the emphasis on life as the movement of energy across a barrier, etc.

I'm no expert but it seems most reasonable to me. The continual talk about pre-biotic soups of ingredients seems profoundly misplaced.

Re: Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

#156

Post by pfdietz »

adrian_b wrote: post #133
pfdietz wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no source of energy Asteroids early in the solar system would be very radioactive due to short lived isotopes formed during the formation of the solar system. The existence of these isotopes is known from the patterns of decay products found in asteroids. The current guess is the early protoplanetary disk was bombarded by intense GeV-scale protons accelerated in the shock of a nearby supernova, causing large scale…

There is no known way in which nuclear radiation could have been the source of energy for the first living beings. While a little radiation might have been beneficial at a later stage in the evolution of living beings, by increasing the frequency of random mutations, for a faster evolution, for the early living beings the only effect of radiation would have been to destroy them and prevent them for having descendants…

> There is no known way in which nuclear radiation could have been the source of energy for the first living beings.

Nuclear energy is a source of energy for some current living beings, though. Underground ecosystems live on hydrogen produced by radiolysis.

Re: Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

#157

Post by pfdietz »

kmaitreys wrote: post #50
0x000xca0xfe wrote: post #8

One longstanding theory is that life first began on Earth when asteroids carrying fundamental elements crashed into our planet long ago. I'm no expert but this sounds strange. Surely those fundamental elements would also form in vast quantities on their own on an entire planet with volcanoes and oceans? Wouldn't a couple asteroids be the literal drop in the ocean in comparison? The missing part is how do they form se…

Why are you assuming couple of asteroids? Life first appeared 3.5 billion years ago. The frequency of an asteroid impact on Earth is ~500,000 years.

> The frequency of an asteroid impact on Earth is ~500,000 years.

Surely you could make this figure be anything you want just by scaling up or down the size of an object you call an asteroid. So as stated it's meaningless.

Re: Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

#158

Post by pfdietz »

kakacik wrote: post #149
pfdietz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Good"? Ok, if it makes you feel better. But scientifically, it doesn't do much.

Whats your problem with this topic? Highly confronting posts about nothing. Iterative approach to science seems foreign here.

There's a tremendous amount of confidently stated bullshit on the issue of OoL that I have long since lost all patience with.

What's your problem with the debunking of falsehood?

Re: Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks

#159

Post by pfdietz »

johnsmalles wrote: post #27

Fascinating that all five nucleobases were found in Ryugu samples. The fact that these formed abiotically in an asteroid environment strengthens the case that the building blocks of life are common throughout the solar system. The amino acid findings from the same samples were already compelling, but having the complete nucleobase set is a different level of evidence.

Ryugu showed an estimated ~20,000 different organic molecules. It's not that surprising that the nucleobases would be among them, along with all sorts of chemicals not relevant to life.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn9033

In the reference from the link for this HN entry, we see the nucleobases were present at concentrations of about 1 nano-mole per gram (< 1 ppm). They are minor constituents present in a sea of mostly non-biologically relevant compounds.

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