6 ms·

A rock that might hold the oldest form of complex life on Earth

92 points by jayhoon 2y ago

EdwardDiego 2y ago
I love that an entire scientific career could be founded from one interesting rock picked up on a field trip.
- copywrong2 2y ago
  Life can be awesome
- optimalsolver 2y ago
  Runs the risk of the Anteater Epiphany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXD9HnrNrvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXD9HnrNrvk
- space_oddity 2y ago
  The story is both inspiring and a testament to the serendipitous nature of scientific inquiry
tetrisgm 2y ago
A little bit of a side here, but I'm impressed with the page's presentation. It's a university website, but the layout and overall design is really polished. Great work.
- ordu 2y ago
  The presentation has one of the most annoying things I know, it quotes itself. And it quotes a lot. It is like watching sports game when commentator says you that there will be a home run in a while, and the final game score will be such and such. You lose all the intrigue of the game this way.
  - iftheshoefitss 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - latexr 2y ago
    This one is particularly egregious. It has a quote, then a few lines down (if not the line immediately after, like in the first case) has a paragraph which is just the quote. Why is it making us read the same thing twice in a row?
  - mannykannot 2y ago
    This has become a pervasive journalistic practice, and I am mildly curious as to why. Has it been found to encourage a subset of readers to keep on reading, and maybe become subscribers? Maybe some readers routinely scan these teasers to decide whether they will read the article. Is it a form of SEO? (I would guess not, but it's not my field.) It is almost as if some junior editor (or LLM, though I think this practice predates them) has been given the job of dividing the article into sections with headers, but can't be trusted to use their own words for the headers (though they can still, of course, both divide and quote out of context.) Here, this appears to have been applied after someone else (the author, perhaps?) had already divided it into sections with traditional summaries for headers. That said, I felt this article is much more engaging than the average university press release, and presents a genuinely significant discovery without, as far as I can tell, another now-commonplace annoyance: the excessive exaggeration or misrepresentation of that significance (though one might quibble over "...and could rewrite our timeline of complex life on Earth altogether.")
    - Keysh 2y ago
      Pull quotes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote) have been used in magazines for decades; they’re not exactly new.
      - mannykannot 2y ago
        I should have known that, as I have been reading magazines for decades, so the question now (for me) is why I have only recently found them to be intrusive - is it me that's changed?
- gomoboo 2y ago
  At the bottom of the page there is a credit for Shorthand (https://shorthand.com/ https://shorthand.com/). It seems to be the tool that produced such beautiful results.
- space_oddity 2y ago
  A well-designed website can significantly enhance the user experience indeed
blueflow 2y ago
[flagged]
whimsicalism 2y ago
frankly i don’t trust university reported news articles
rwmj 2y ago
Does anyone know the smallest features preserved by fossils? For example, would cellular machinery like the ribosome be preserved? The shape of DNA? (Both assuming this cell had these)
- gilleain 2y ago
  I've no idea about fossils, but I suspect macromolecules like ribosomes or DNA might have too small features to fossilise? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfossil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfossil > A microfossil is a fossil that is generally between 0.001 mm and 1 mm in size Which is a bit vague, but 0.001mm is 1000nm while a ribosome is in the range of 20-30 nm diameter. So a whole ribosome is around a 1/50 below the lower end of the microfossil range. Even though DNA can be a lot longer (1000 base pairs is 3.4 nm - I think? - so a hundred kilobases would be 300-400 nm) the atomic features are too small to fossilise would be my guess.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
maitola 2y ago
The origin of life remains a profound mystery. The more we investigate, the further we push back its beginnings, suggesting that we may eventually need to search beyond Earth for answers. Since the Miller-Urey experiment, which successfully synthesized amino acids, we have made little progress in understanding the exact processes that led to the emergence of life. How were RNA and DNA formed? How did the first cell come together? What were the necessary timelines, energy sources, and chemical conditions? Is Earth uniquely capable of generating life, or is life, in its most basic form, a common feature of the universe? The formation of water involves processes akin to supernovae; perhaps the genesis of life requires a similarly extraordinary scale of events, or even more? We need to find out.
- Jedd 2y ago
  This sounds a bit defeatist, and seems to ignore a large swathe of work that has happened since 1952 (the Miller-Urey experiment). For example - this experiment was conducted a year before the structure of DNA was discovered / published - so it's quite a bold claim to say 'origin of life' research stalled in 1952. To your first, second, and third questions - I can highly recommend Nick Lane's book 'The Vital Question' [0]. To some extent, I think he also spoke to your fourth question in that book - but I read 3 or 4 of his books around the same time, so my memory is fuzzy. Either way, his hypothesis around alkaline thermal vents is hugely persuasive & compelling. I'm really struggling to understand what you mean by the claim 'formation of water involves processes akin to supernovae' - do you just mean you need a star to explode before you get heavier elements (including Oxygen)? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vital_Question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vital_Question
  - maitola 2y ago
    I completely understand your struggle and wonder why this fact isn't more widely discussed. The vast majority of water on our planet (and in the solar system) was formed through either stellar formation or supernova events. During these events, an outward wind of particles collides with nearby material, forming new molecules such as water. Any other process of water formation is negligible in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water (see Distribution in Nature) https://web.archive.org/web/20000116054013/http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/04.23/DiscoverofWater.html https://web.archive.org/web/20000116054013/http://www.news.h... Thank you for the books recommendations, I’ll check them out.
nknld 2y ago
[flagged]

92 points by jayhoon 2y ago

EdwardDiego 2y ago

I love that an entire scientific career could be founded from one interesting rock picked up on a field trip.

copywrong2 2y ago
Life can be awesome
optimalsolver 2y ago
Runs the risk of the Anteater Epiphany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXD9HnrNrvk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXD9HnrNrvk
space_oddity 2y ago
The story is both inspiring and a testament to the serendipitous nature of scientific inquiry

tetrisgm 2y ago

A little bit of a side here, but I'm impressed with the page's presentation. It's a university website, but the layout and overall design is really polished. Great work.

ordu 2y ago
The presentation has one of the most annoying things I know, it quotes itself. And it quotes a lot. It is like watching sports game when commentator says you that there will be a home run in a while, and the final game score will be such and such. You lose all the intrigue of the game this way.
- iftheshoefitss 2y ago
  [flagged]
- latexr 2y ago
  This one is particularly egregious. It has a quote, then a few lines down (if not the line immediately after, like in the first case) has a paragraph which is just the quote. Why is it making us read the same thing twice in a row?
- mannykannot 2y ago
  This has become a pervasive journalistic practice, and I am mildly curious as to why. Has it been found to encourage a subset of readers to keep on reading, and maybe become subscribers? Maybe some readers routinely scan these teasers to decide whether they will read the article. Is it a form of SEO? (I would guess not, but it's not my field.) It is almost as if some junior editor (or LLM, though I think this practice predates them) has been given the job of dividing the article into sections with headers, but can't be trusted to use their own words for the headers (though they can still, of course, both divide and quote out of context.) Here, this appears to have been applied after someone else (the author, perhaps?) had already divided it into sections with traditional summaries for headers. That said, I felt this article is much more engaging than the average university press release, and presents a genuinely significant discovery without, as far as I can tell, another now-commonplace annoyance: the excessive exaggeration or misrepresentation of that significance (though one might quibble over "...and could rewrite our timeline of complex life on Earth altogether.")
  - Keysh 2y ago
    Pull quotes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote) have been used in magazines for decades; they’re not exactly new.
    - mannykannot 2y ago
      I should have known that, as I have been reading magazines for decades, so the question now (for me) is why I have only recently found them to be intrusive - is it me that's changed?
gomoboo 2y ago
At the bottom of the page there is a credit for Shorthand (https://shorthand.com/ https://shorthand.com/). It seems to be the tool that produced such beautiful results.
space_oddity 2y ago
A well-designed website can significantly enhance the user experience indeed

blueflow 2y ago

[flagged]

whimsicalism 2y ago

frankly i don’t trust university reported news articles

rwmj 2y ago

Does anyone know the smallest features preserved by fossils? For example, would cellular machinery like the ribosome be preserved? The shape of DNA? (Both assuming this cell had these)

gilleain 2y ago
I've no idea about fossils, but I suspect macromolecules like ribosomes or DNA might have too small features to fossilise? From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfossil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfossil > A microfossil is a fossil that is generally between 0.001 mm and 1 mm in size Which is a bit vague, but 0.001mm is 1000nm while a ribosome is in the range of 20-30 nm diameter. So a whole ribosome is around a 1/50 below the lower end of the microfossil range. Even though DNA can be a lot longer (1000 base pairs is 3.4 nm - I think? - so a hundred kilobases would be 300-400 nm) the atomic features are too small to fossilise would be my guess.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

maitola 2y ago

The origin of life remains a profound mystery. The more we investigate, the further we push back its beginnings, suggesting that we may eventually need to search beyond Earth for answers. Since the Miller-Urey experiment, which successfully synthesized amino acids, we have made little progress in understanding the exact processes that led to the emergence of life. How were RNA and DNA formed? How did the first cell come together? What were the necessary timelines, energy sources, and chemical conditions? Is Earth uniquely capable of generating life, or is life, in its most basic form, a common feature of the universe? The formation of water involves processes akin to supernovae; perhaps the genesis of life requires a similarly extraordinary scale of events, or even more? We need to find out.

Jedd 2y ago
This sounds a bit defeatist, and seems to ignore a large swathe of work that has happened since 1952 (the Miller-Urey experiment). For example - this experiment was conducted a year before the structure of DNA was discovered / published - so it's quite a bold claim to say 'origin of life' research stalled in 1952. To your first, second, and third questions - I can highly recommend Nick Lane's book 'The Vital Question' [0]. To some extent, I think he also spoke to your fourth question in that book - but I read 3 or 4 of his books around the same time, so my memory is fuzzy. Either way, his hypothesis around alkaline thermal vents is hugely persuasive & compelling. I'm really struggling to understand what you mean by the claim 'formation of water involves processes akin to supernovae' - do you just mean you need a star to explode before you get heavier elements (including Oxygen)? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vital_Question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vital_Question
- maitola 2y ago
  I completely understand your struggle and wonder why this fact isn't more widely discussed. The vast majority of water on our planet (and in the solar system) was formed through either stellar formation or supernova events. During these events, an outward wind of particles collides with nearby material, forming new molecules such as water. Any other process of water formation is negligible in comparison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water (see Distribution in Nature) https://web.archive.org/web/20000116054013/http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/04.23/DiscoverofWater.html https://web.archive.org/web/20000116054013/http://www.news.h... Thank you for the books recommendations, I’ll check them out.

nknld 2y ago

[flagged]