> the majority of the biomass of the earth is water The figure I cited is the carbon biomass. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-biomass-of-earth-in-one

> the majority of the biomass of the earth is water The figure I cited is the carbon biomass. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-biomass-of-earth-in-one-graphic/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/all-the-biomass-of-earth-in... > that is after billions of years of enzyme-catalyzed synthesis inside trillions of living cells Doesn't matter. What matters is the size of the search space that could be explored by the chemistry, and if even a single replicator exists in that search space. The extent to which that first replicator resembles present-day life is irrelevant. The only reason to refer to that at all is to get some idea of what the information content of a minimal replicator is. > Third, does your back of the envelope calculation account for the very short half life of RNA? Again, it doesn't matter. As long as the half-life of the replicator is more than the time it takes it to produce >2 offspring, that's enough to get the ball rolling.