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Just so we're all clear, no one has any idea how life could have emerged on Earth without external help. It's a long way from amino acids to life -- like the d

Just so we're all clear, no one has any idea how life could have emerged on Earth without external help. It's a long way from amino acids to life -- like the distance between the squiggles that make up the letters of the alphabet and Milton's Paradise Lost. I mean, why not just declare Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen to be "precursors for life" and then declare "the ingredients were already there!" For those who are genuinely interested, check out the book The Stairway to Life: An Origin-of-Life Reality Check by Tan & Stadler.

roughly 2y ago
There's quite a number of different theories for how life could've emerged on Earth. Currently most popular, as I understand it, is the hydrothermal vent hypothesis, which uses the energy gradient provided by the heat from underwater hydrothermal vents as the motive power for the kind of self-assembly required and uses things like RNA, which still today creates its own transcriptive mechanism as well as several other utility enzymes, but the basic requirement is an energy gradient - beyond that, an awful lot of the chemical precursors to life seem to be self-assembling in the right conditions. Now, if you want to argue about where exactly that transitions from self-propagating chemistry to actual Life occurs, that's a question for the philosophers - things get a bit muddy at that scale, but mechanistically, I'm not aware of a "missing link" in the early story of life.
- jononomo 2y ago
  I'm sure that if we put the word out we could get another two dozen theories. But "science" needs to mean more than "speculative theories that adhere to my philosophical presuppositions".
  - roughly 2y ago
    Right, usually it's "speculative theories that we can assemble evidence for by building upon prior work and known facts about the world", which the hydrothermal vent theory is. "Science" when talking about "how did life form" will always be "speculative theories" until we crack the time-travel nut.
    - jononomo 2y ago
      Science also requires a plausible mechanism and an understanding of statistics. "It must have randomly happened even though the chance was less than 1 in ten to the five hundred and twelfth" is about as far as these speculative theories have gotten so far.
      - roughly 2y ago
        The entire field of biology rests on the maxim that improbable things become probable with enough time and opportunity.
        jononomo 2y ago
        It has to be grounded in statistical reality. What do you think the sum total is of all the organisms that have ever lived on Earth?
TheBlight 2y ago
Interesting looking book. I'll have to check it out. In my experience, discussing this material online tends to devolve into an atheist/theist debate. Both sides are very sure of themselves and it isn't about exploration and curiosity so it tends to turn off us more agnostic-minded people (or just those both open to abiogensis as well as other creative possibilities).

roughly 2y ago

There's quite a number of different theories for how life could've emerged on Earth. Currently most popular, as I understand it, is the hydrothermal vent hypothesis, which uses the energy gradient provided by the heat from underwater hydrothermal vents as the motive power for the kind of self-assembly required and uses things like RNA, which still today creates its own transcriptive mechanism as well as several other utility enzymes, but the basic requirement is an energy gradient - beyond that, an awful lot of the chemical precursors to life seem to be self-assembling in the right conditions. Now, if you want to argue about where exactly that transitions from self-propagating chemistry to actual Life occurs, that's a question for the philosophers - things get a bit muddy at that scale, but mechanistically, I'm not aware of a "missing link" in the early story of life.

jononomo 2y ago
I'm sure that if we put the word out we could get another two dozen theories. But "science" needs to mean more than "speculative theories that adhere to my philosophical presuppositions".
- roughly 2y ago
  Right, usually it's "speculative theories that we can assemble evidence for by building upon prior work and known facts about the world", which the hydrothermal vent theory is. "Science" when talking about "how did life form" will always be "speculative theories" until we crack the time-travel nut.
  - jononomo 2y ago
    Science also requires a plausible mechanism and an understanding of statistics. "It must have randomly happened even though the chance was less than 1 in ten to the five hundred and twelfth" is about as far as these speculative theories have gotten so far.
    - roughly 2y ago
      The entire field of biology rests on the maxim that improbable things become probable with enough time and opportunity.
      - jononomo 2y ago
        It has to be grounded in statistical reality. What do you think the sum total is of all the organisms that have ever lived on Earth?

TheBlight 2y ago

Interesting looking book. I'll have to check it out. In my experience, discussing this material online tends to devolve into an atheist/theist debate. Both sides are very sure of themselves and it isn't about exploration and curiosity so it tends to turn off us more agnostic-minded people (or just those both open to abiogensis as well as other creative possibilities).