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"Life === multi-cellular organisms" is also a rather antiquated take on the matter. This headline is misleading. In fact we don't even have a solid definition o
by uoaei 3y ago
"Life === multi-cellular organisms" is also a rather antiquated take on the matter. This headline is misleading. In fact we don't even have a solid definition of "life", which leads to multivarious hypotheses on how the various stages arose.
The subject of the article itself is interesting, I just wish science writers were more precise in their language to reflect the precision and specificity of the scientific hypotheses being explored.
- hotstickyballs 3y agoDo you have a better definition?
- lazide 3y agoI’m guessing that he’s asking that they write down/define the definition explicitly that they’re using in articles like this so we have some idea what they’re advocating for or testing/exploring exactly.
- adr1an 3y agoI was about to complain on the title too. They say that a theory is being challenged on how life on earth started and then all of a sudden in the first 2 paragraphs jump a couple million (if not billion) years straight to multicellular organisms. I didn't read any more, I do hope they started discussing how multicellularity arose and only the title was amiss.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoConsider the authors of papers and studies don't write the articles and headlines. The headline is written as a click-hook, to get PR, because, well "publish or perish" and that's how the funding comes in. It sucks, but also if you just published the paper with a dry summary, it would also get ignored. Also, the bias is old. "Eukaryote" means "true cell"! It's right in the name, this bias about what "real" life is. Of course it's our anthropocentrism, I guess, but... I also think, on the broader point about abiogensis... it's quite likely that the cosmos is rather full of things that look like our prokaryotes. But eukaryotes and complicated multicellular life is either going to be extremely rare or non-existent within anything observable in, say, our galaxy. I say this because prokaryotes arose almost as soon as the earth cooled and developed a liquid ocean, and have been here almost as long as the planet. But eukaryotes have only been here for maybe 15% of the planet's existence or less, and seem to have basically arisen as kind of a 'fluke' event, and only once, and seem to have something to do with the very particulars of cell energy dynamics, mitochondria, and the fusion of archaeobacteria and bacteria, etc. Just really weird stuff. Putting it yet another way... prokaryotes have existed for almost the entire life of our planet, compose most of the life and biomass of the planet, and shape it in its most fundamental ways but are much the same as when they started, because they have rather strong intrinsic physical limits on energy and complexity. So, yes, life != multicellular organisms, but maybe it might turn out that eukaryotic and/or multicellular life is the only real "interesting" kind of life from the most broad perspective.
- uoaei 3y agoThe concern is that "origins of life" is a distinct issue from "origins of multicellularity". You rightly point out that origins of life per se is of more cosmological/physical significance, whereas multicellularity is primarily (exo-)biological in nature. However I vehemently disagree that multicellularity is the "only interesting kind of life". We don't even know yet if life of computational origin exists so as to be able to call it life per se. We don't know lots of things. It's just hubris to act as if we have enough information to make such strong claims.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoOh, I agree it's absolutely hubris.