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NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

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Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#91

Post by borissk »

sz4kerto wrote: post #27
FL33TW00D wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of interest in abiogenesis in most circles is truly outstanding.

There's quite a bit of interest; e.g. ex-colleagues of mine have spent lots of effort on refining the 'chemoton' model. I think it's a fascinating subject. "The basic assumption of the model is that life should fundamentally and essentially have three properties: metabolism, self-replication, and a bilipid membrane.[3] The metabolic and replication functions together form an autocatalytic subsystem necessary for the…

Bilipid membrane is not necessary for life - life may have evolved inside naturally occurring bacteria sized pores inside inorganic material.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#92

Post by superposeur »

renewiltord wrote: post #62
superposeur wrote: post #6

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…

Is it actually worth remembering? I don't know, man. It kind of sounds not worth remembering if I'm honest. It's kind of like telling us that there is not one single shred of evidence that artificial flight has ever existed or that exoplanets have ever existed or anything of the sort. Sure, that's the base case. It's not "worth remembering" at all. It's as much worth remembering as the fact that my clothes are in the…

I think it's "worth remembering" precisely because it seems not to be the base case anymore! To see this, just look at all the expressions of confidence in life's ubiquity throughout the rest of this thread!

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#93

Post by borissk »

superposeur wrote: post #86
mcfig wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are reacting negatively to your comment, the reason is that however accurate your complaint may be about most such reporting (IMO you are correct), you have chosen to attach it to this article. I find no evidence in this article of “tone implying life is about to turn up”. I think you have misread the tone. The article certainly has a tone of excitement throughout. But it’s excitement for further knowledge, in…

Fair enough. On the other hand, to my ear the title "NASA finds life-sparking energy source and molecule" sets the tone, as though life was sparked, or that we even know could be sparked by the presence of these ingredients with some degree of confidence.

Life is much more than a mix of ingredients. A dead bacteria cell has all the ingredients needed for life, but is not alive.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#94

Post by wingspar »

seszett wrote: post #89
throwaway0b1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#95

Post by borissk »

725686 wrote: post #24

For anyone interested in the origin of life, and the origin of complex life I highly recommend Nick Lane's Books. You can start with "The Vital Question". There are also some fantastic videos of him online.

Yes, Nick Lane has done a great job of popularizing the metabolism first hypothesis of origin of life. What his books and videos don't address is the biggest problem of metabolism first - once there's a proto cell (say inside a pore within a white smoker) with working metabolism that turns H2 and CO2 gases into sugars and other organic molecules - how are the proteins that make the metabolism work translated and encoded into an RNA code.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#96

Post by itishappy »

ianai wrote: post #18
FL33TW00D wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of interest in abiogenesis in most circles is truly outstanding.

And here’s another thing. With how difficult it is to probe new physics, we stand to do a lot more research by simply inspecting all the observable universe than trying to build colliders.

Inspecting the universe can be a lot harder than building colliders. Observing some of the short-lived high-energy particles would require shipping detectors to a high-energy location like the sun, then pulling a signal from all that noise.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#97

Post by wredue »

edgyquant wrote: post #83
henry2023 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe is 13 billion years old. Planet earth is 4.5 billion years old. Life on earth started 3.7 billion years ago. We sent our first radio wave just 125 years ago. Probably life is not than unusual and we just don’t have a way to verify this (yet).

What is this probability based upon?

The probability is based on the fact that everywhere we look, we find building blocks of life, life started on earth basically as soon as it could have, life exists at all and is capable of asking said question, life is remarkably adaptable, we estimate billions of earth like planets just in our galaxy.

I know that there is a burning desire to think we’re special, but the truth of the matter is that we’re almost definitely not.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#98

Post by superposeur »

TheGRS wrote: post #32
superposeur wrote: post #6

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…

Sure, I don’t think that’s lost on anyone. The headline of “life found outside earth” is going to be a big deal. But I also think we are zeroing in on the inevitable outcome. The math of probability and the simple components to life make it seem pretty likely we’ll get there unless there is something more fundamental that hasn’t been seen yet. We haven’t reproduced proto-life yet, but we also don’t have millions of y…

Don't mean to pick on words, but your statement that "the math of probability and the simple components to life" makes life elsewhere an "inevitable outcome" proves my point that the dialogue around this topic is currently distorted. The probability of life arising from simple components is totally unknown. Equally likely, sparking life requires a combinatoric threading of a needle to the tune of 10^-25 even when all ingredients are gathered in proximity.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#99

Post by seszett »

wingspar wrote: post #94
seszett wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Re: NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at Enceladus

#100

Post by itishappy »

junofan wrote: post #39
superposeur wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and I’m glad we’re doing it! No life or fossilized remains of life of any kind has yet been found.

Have we sent up any archeological tools for sample prep and whatnot? Can’t find what we don’t look for, no?

Yup! We've sampled the Moon a number of times, and we're currently trying to figure out how to get one back from Mars...

https://mars.nasa.gov/msr/

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