3 ms·

Even the most basic life seems super complicated to me, I am not sure the first spark of life has that high probability of happening even under right conditions

by mda 9y ago

Even the most basic life seems super complicated to me, I am not sure the first spark of life has that high probability of happening even under right conditions. But maybe I am over estimating its complexity.

candiodari 9y ago
These days we have an industry that makes DNA "oligo"'s that should be somewhat close to how life would have looked at some point in the distant past. The chemical reactions involved in the entire lifecycle are entirely understandable with university chemistry knowledge. Starting the reactions takes a remarkably small number of chemicals present, and none of these are too far fetched. You have to keep in mind that, on earth, today, life cannot just exist. It must compete successfully with other very complex lifeforms. This effectively imposes a minimum complexity level that any lifeform must attain to survive in the current environment. But, conceptually, there are many things that would count as life even though they have zero hope to exist on earth (outside of labs). Such simple lifeforms today can only exist in places like the clouds of Venus.
PoachedSausage 9y ago
One explanation is that life was seeded from space by spores of some sort, and they may be quite common throughout the universe.
le-mark 9y ago
People have studied this, and basic building blocks (amino acids) arise spontaneously when electric current is applied to chemical soups for example. Also when we look around today, we see the end prodcut of billions of years of evolution, we don't know what truly primitive life may have looked like in the first few millions years, life forms even more primitive than viruses, say.
- PoachedSausage 9y ago
  Some of the chemo-synthesizing lifeforms around volcanic vents might be close.
- low_battery 9y ago
  Still, a few amino acids are far far away from proteins, let alone all proteins that work together and makes a simple living cell. Or mechanisms like: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/mitochondria-14053590 https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/mitochondria-14053... it might still be possible "given enough time".

by mda 9y ago

candiodari 9y ago

These days we have an industry that makes DNA "oligo"'s that should be somewhat close to how life would have looked at some point in the distant past. The chemical reactions involved in the entire lifecycle are entirely understandable with university chemistry knowledge. Starting the reactions takes a remarkably small number of chemicals present, and none of these are too far fetched. You have to keep in mind that, on earth, today, life cannot just exist. It must compete successfully with other very complex lifeforms. This effectively imposes a minimum complexity level that any lifeform must attain to survive in the current environment. But, conceptually, there are many things that would count as life even though they have zero hope to exist on earth (outside of labs). Such simple lifeforms today can only exist in places like the clouds of Venus.

PoachedSausage 9y ago

One explanation is that life was seeded from space by spores of some sort, and they may be quite common throughout the universe.

le-mark 9y ago

People have studied this, and basic building blocks (amino acids) arise spontaneously when electric current is applied to chemical soups for example. Also when we look around today, we see the end prodcut of billions of years of evolution, we don't know what truly primitive life may have looked like in the first few millions years, life forms even more primitive than viruses, say.

PoachedSausage 9y ago
Some of the chemo-synthesizing lifeforms around volcanic vents might be close.
low_battery 9y ago
Still, a few amino acids are far far away from proteins, let alone all proteins that work together and makes a simple living cell. Or mechanisms like: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/mitochondria-14053590 https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/mitochondria-14053... it might still be possible "given enough time".