5 ms·
The seeds of life, but the next step, their germination so to speak, is the hard part. All life on Earth is part of one grand tree, so out of those billions of
by cmiller1 2y ago
The seeds of life, but the next step, their germination so to speak, is the hard part. All life on Earth is part of one grand tree, so out of those billions of years the step from complex organic molecules to life only was completed successfully once as far as we can tell.
- conjectures 2y agoGenuine question: how would we tell/know if it was more than once? Doesn't other life-2 floating around in the primordial soup look like food to life-1? Or wouldn't it be co-opted mitochondria style?
- cmiller1 2y agoThere's a whole wikipedia page answering exactly this question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent From biochemical similarities, the chirality of certain sugars and amino acids, dna similarities, etc. the evidence for a single common ancestor of all life on Earth is fairly strong; however we don't really have evidence that there never were other lifes that simply were outcompeted at their very early stages.
- vlovich123 2y agoOr the environment of Earth is hospitable to only one structure for life. Or all life we’d find anywhere has the same structure. We don’t yet know enough about the phase change transition from inorganic chemistry to biology.
- MrMcCall 2y agoThe speed of light has put a severe limit on what we can "know" about life in the other 1+ trillion (?) galaxies, or even in the other hundreds of billions (?) of stars in our own Milky Way. And it was all apparently very difficult, from our point of view, but that aspect of creation -- and more specifically, its Creator -- are beyond the ken of creatures such as ourselves, even with our vastly superior talents and abilities. Very few of us reach the pinnacle of our ability to commune with the vast information system that is the universe around us. "It is so wonderful, now that I am in in a constant conversation with You." --Rumi (my paraphrase from memory) "The Way goes in." --Rumi
- spacemark 2y agoWho or what exactly is this Creator you speak of? Would love to know.
- exe34 2y ago> Very few of us reach the pinnacle of our ability to commune with the vast information system that is the universe around us. what did you smoke to get this power?
- MrMcCall 2y agoI never said I had it (and in fact don't) but one must learn of an expertise before one can begin the journey fromo apprentice to journeyman to and master craftsman. There are various studies to undertake and many serieses of tests to pass before one gets full access. I know enough to know I'm not there yet, but have made some progress. The feedback system of the universe informs us continually of our progress, it being perfectly correlated with our inner peace and happiness. "You have no idea how little we care about what people say." --Rumi
- exe34 2y ago
- vlovich123 2y agoAs best we know single called life formed about 600M years after the earth (at least the earliest evidence we have for such life). And we don’t actually have evidence as to how many times it occurred. Our mathematical models for defining life and making predictions are just starting to take shape.