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It's thought that life on Earth started with RNA mayhem, not with vessels to isolate from it.
by jojobas 1y ago
It's thought that life on Earth started with RNA mayhem, not with vessels to isolate from it.
- andrewflnr 1y agoRNA world is mainstream, but a few scientists have proposed that something like cell membranes, such as these vesicles, came first and provided the environment for more complex chemistry.
- evrimoztamur 1y agoLife exists at the boundaries of density changes. It makes absolutely no sense that the code would precede the hardware, and the hardware needs shielding.
- fooker 1y agoFunny that code did predate hardware.
- cmrx64 1y agotransmembrane proteins are complex hardware of their own…
- andrewflnr 1y agoIn defense of RNA: you know about ribozymes, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme Life does not really respect a code/hardware divide.
- oh_fiddlesticks 1y agoThe source code of life is recorded and transmitted using physical matter. Physics very much matters to matter. For development of any information storage systems made of molecules, there must be a supportive development environment. To even start the process of doing anything like what we see happening in a cell, homeostasis must be achieved first, and not inelegantly, its not good enough to have a complete cell wall if it has no ports for entry and exit of nutrients and waste product, thats also known as a coffin. Both the walls and the gates and the information / physical systems to reliably exploit those features must be present at the same time to enable abiogenesis.
- tomrod 1y agoI see where you're coming from, but I think you're thinking across too far over the boundary. Quantum mechanics aren't ordinarily affected by non-sentient life, they're just primitive to the environment at the macro level.
- root_axis 1y agoQuantum mechanics has no relationship to sentience.
- tomrod 1y agoCorrect. My apologies that my comment was unclear such that from my comment's content one could not distinguish particle accelerators built by sentient life and woo-woo New Age claims of "The Secret" or manifesting.
- parineum 1y agoThat's a pretty strong statement considering both facts that quantum mechanics affects everything and sentience is not understood.
- root_axis 1y agoQuantum mechanics is a well defined theory and sentience, however you define it, has nothing to do with it. Your reasoning is akin to saying "gravity affects everything so you can't rule out it has some connection to sentience". It's a meaningless statement.
- bongodongobob 1y agoI think the idea is that if you have a nice bubbly froth and some proteins/RNA type thing end up inside and help reinforce the bubble wall through electrostatic forces you get a symbiotic relationship. The soup inside reinforces the bubbles around it.
- dsign 1y agoAnd everything that we hold dear happens after that. I don't object to this explanation of the world, but I reckon it's an uphill battle convincing people that all of the living natural world, and all of human history, their culture, their religions and their science and all the beliefs in-between had their origin in some electrostatic forces. I'm of the opinion that even well-informed people of science haven't had time to fully adjust their world-view during the handful of decades we have known this much.
- igleria 1y agoDunno about everyone else, but if that is the origin of everything that lives on this planet, I'd find relief. One less question in an ever increasing sea of questions is better than just an ever increasing sea of questions.
- codesnik 1y agobut actual code preceded the hardware!
- anonzzzies 1y agoindeed, people like Dijkstra wrote quire a bit of code on paper before the hardware to run that code existed.
- Gravityloss 1y agoWell, there existed ware, the code ran on wetware
- rollcat 1y agoThis. Ada Lovelace wrote programs for Babbage's analytical engine long before anyone succeeded at constructing one.
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoIt doesn’t have to make sense. It’s all a case of dynamic equilibrium in complex systems and emergence. Finality doesn’t really come into it.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoPart of what makes RNA world so compelling is the RNA is both code and hardware. Yes, central dogma is not the end all be all. RNA structures can be catalytic just like enzymes.
- IAmBroom 1y agoThere are a lot of different opinions on how life on Earth started, even amongst scientists studying it, and none of them are strongly supported by substantial, reproduced evidence.
- griffzhowl 1y ago> It's thought that life on Earth started with RNA mayhem, not with vessels to isolate from it. They're not mutually exclusive. You could have various kinds of autocatalytic sets of molecules, including RNA, inside and outside lipid vesicles, and some of them might have re-produced better than others. Anything that could have happened in an open ocean of nuleotides and amino acids could also take place within a lipid vesicle, just that within some vesicle maybe the right concentrations of molecules had at some point emerged that could more easily reproduce itself than in the open ocean where the particular autocatalytic set could be washed away by the surrounding molecular chaos.