Scientists closer to finding origins of life

[SoylentGreen]

Scientists closer to finding origins of life - World - NZ Herald News

Scientists have developed an experiment which demonstrates how the very first life may have formed about four billion years ago. John Sutherland and colleagues at Manchester University have broken new ground by being able to synthesise almost from scratch two of the four building blocks of RNA, the self-replicating molecule that many scientists believe to be the most likely contender for the original molecule of life. We've made the building blocks of RNA from what was around on the early Earth and is still around in interstellar space and in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan," Dr Sutherland said. "We haven't yet made the RNA molecule itself but we've made two of the four sub-units or building blocks. It suggests that making the molecule is possible," he said. In trying to explain how life began on Earth, scientists have attempted to formulate theories to account for how the first self-replicating molecule came into existence. One of the earliest theories was the "primordial soup", where simple molecules mixed together in a broth that was regularly energised by ultraviolet light and electric storms. Over time, these molecules would have combined to form more complex substances containing the all-important ingredients of life - oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen. Although scientists were able to make the building blocks of proteins in this way, they failed to do the same with DNA or RNA. Thomas Cech at the University of Colorado and Sidney Altman at Yale found that RNA could act as a catalyst by speeding up a chemical reaction and yet being unchanged in the process. This was the first hard evidence that RNA, a molecule that can replicate and store genetic information, could also have triggered the first synthesis of life's proteins.

This is certainly a bummer for the creationists.

[minorwork]

Quote by: SoylentGreen Scientists closer to finding origins of life - World - NZ Herald News This is certainly a bummer for the creationists.

Not all of us. The Instant On creationists embrace and welcome eagerly the news. Of course the "us" is probably just me. And Instant On Creationism is another word for the NOW that consciousness continually presents in the present Instant.

Once Einstein said that the problem of the Now worried him seriously. He explained that the experience of the Now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future, but that this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics. That this experience cannot be grasped by science seems to him a matter of painful but inevitable resignation. I remarked that all that occurs objectively can be described in science: on the one hand the temporal sequence of events is described in physics; and, on the other hand, the peculiarities of man's experiences with respect to time, including his different attitude toward past, present and future, can be described and (in principle) explained in psychology. But Einstein thought that scientific descriptions cannot possibly satisfy our human needs; that there is something essential about the Now which is just outside of the realm of science.

But you are right. I'm eager to see PlatoNot troll over the implications of the formula for life at Creation/Evolution thread. He/she might not see it here.

[Silent Munkey]

Quote by: SoylentGreen Scientists closer to finding origins of life - World - NZ Herald News This is certainly a bummer for the creationists.

They will just say, "God started evolution." hehe

Goodnight (6th...alt f4)

[Jack]

They will just say, "God started evolution."

They will, indeed they have. My thought about that is if that's all a person credits their god with having done, if he just started the ball rolling then bailed, who cares whether we believe in that possibility or not? Not even that god would care if we believed in him or if we credited nature for everything that's happened since then.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: minorwork Not all of us. The Instant On creationists embrace and welcome eagerly the news. Of course the "us" is probably just me. And Instant On Creationism is another word for the NOW that consciousness continually presents in the present Instant.

Trouble is i have never been able to put my finger on the now. Soon as i say it it's gone.

But you are right. I'm eager to see PlatoNot troll over the implications of the formula for life at Creation/Evolution thread. He/she might not see it here

If your referring to C.H.O.N., yes, it would make an interesting read.

[minorwork]

Quote by: SoylentGreen Trouble is i have never been able to put my finger on the now. Soon as i say it it's gone.

Mark Changizi might agree with me that NOW is about .1 second long. That we are the result of evolution that enables a worldview that sees into the future. Illusions are evidence of this that has been automated, so to speak, by inheritated factors. YouTube - Mark Changizi, Illusions of the Future, Channel 10 News It looks like his new book is out. I'm taking up collections for my purchase of it. MARK CHANGIZI CV, www.changizi.com, changizi@rpi.edu

And the book. Amazon.com: The Vision Revolution: How the Latest Research Overturns Everything We Thought We Knew About Human Vision: Mark Changizi: Books

If your referring to C.H.O.N., yes, it would make an interesting read.

I'm not clear on CHON. Lost in fact. My own fault. I wasn't clear either.

[cofu]

So the past of a planet includes two periods:when the planet was in System of planets which has arrived from the Galaxy; and the period when the planet appeared in Solar system, on a site Dynamic model of the globe fatal consequences for giants of an animal and flora which are proved have followed after change of a gravity on the Earth; the gravity has caused changes of radius of a planet, and also the beginning of processes of III natural phenomenon that was consequence of fatal consequences for fauna which lived in a zone(h " ') - before to invent as there was a life on the Earth it is necessary to solve a problem with water and an atmosphere - these factors on planets of Solar system in general are not present; that fact, that the Earth appeared in Solar system - animal and the flora has much lost; on a background of these facts to invent as there was a life on a planet employment very strange, and there is a question and when the life on the nearest planet Mars will appear

[L00zer]

I'm a creationist I suppose, because I believe God created our universe and life as we know it. And I'm not "bummed" over this news at all.

I have a question about the article. Can someone explain to me why those self replicating organisms felt the need to self replicate? Why did they not cease to exist?

[minorwork]

Quote by: cofu So the past of a planet includes two periods: when the planet was in System of planets which has arrived from the Galaxy; and the period when the planet appeared in Solar system, on a site Dynamic model of the globe fatal consequences for giants of an animal and flora which are proved have followed after change of a gravity on the Earth; the gravity has caused changes of radius of a planet, and also the beginning of processes of III natural phenomenon that was consequence of fatal consequences for fauna which lived in a zone (h " ') - before to invent as there was a life on the Earth it is necessary to solve a problem with water and an atmosphere - these factors on planets of Solar system in general are not present; that fact, that the Earth appeared in Solar system - animal and the flora has much lost; on a background of these facts to invent as there was a life on a planet employment very strange, and there is a question and when the life on the nearest planet Mars will appear

cofu, my friend, just write. Cleaning up the auto functions of vBulletin takes me a while. Should be yours to do. Copy and paste is not perfect, doggone it. I've had to clean up my own poetry from time to time.

Quote by: L00zer I'm a creationist I suppose, because I believe God created our universe and life as we know it. And I'm not "bummed" over this news at all. I have a question about the article. Can someone explain to me why those self replicating organisms felt the need to self replicate? Why did they not cease to exist?

Don't know about explaining, describing maybe, just maybe.

Is even one of a set of twins a duplicate in every way? No.
The self replicators did cease to exist. The replicants were not the originals. They were in a different place and time, a different world, had different experiences. Life desires knowledge of itself and does so thru a continuum of increasingly complex individuals progressing from a small to a large scale and by interacting with others who also carry knowledge thru time by what you call replication.

[L00zer]

Quote by: minorwork Is even one of a set of twins a duplicate in every way? No. The self replicators did cease to exist. The replicants were not the originals. They were in a different place and time, a different world, had different experiences. Life desires knowledge of itself and does so thru a continuum of increasingly complex individuals progressing from a small to a large scale and by interacting with others who also carry knowledge thru time by what you call replication.

I suppose I can't understand (from a purely scientific point of view) why organisms at the beginning of life, with the intelligence we understand them to have had (very little I suppose), wanted to know of themselves.

[minorwork]

Quote by: L00zer I suppose I can't understand (from a purely scientific point of view) why organisms at the beginning of life, with the intelligence we understand them to have had (very little I suppose), wanted to know of themselves.

It is God that wanted to know of Itself. Life is the response.

[Jack]

Can someone explain to me why those self replicating organisms felt the need to self replicate?

Organisms like that don't cogitate in the way we do. They don't posses a brain like ours, capable of abstract thought. They behave motivated by instinct alone. Whatever they are physically capable of, they do. If they can mate, they do mate; they don't ponder the meaning of procreation, their brains are not capable of it. Everything they do is an immediate response to external stimuli.

Humans, likewise, do all they're capable of. Nature has provided us with capabilities single-celled animals don't posses. Because we can think abstractly, we can wonder why other animals don't. But we're not so perceptive as to know for sure that we're the only animal that can think in abstractions.

[minorwork]

Quote by: Jack Organisms like that don't cogitate in the way we do. They don't posses a brain like ours, capable of abstract thought. They behave motivated by instinct alone. Whatever they are physically capable of, they do. If they can mate, they do mate; they don't ponder the meaning of procreation, their brains are not capable of it. Everything they do is an immediate response to external stimuli.

Uh, you just described me in the '70s.

[Jack]

You'll get to do it all again in your 70s, unless you're genetically favored.

[cofu]

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[Jack]

cofu, you need to do two things to post in accordance with forum policy and present readable posts: quite copy/pasting from an HTML source (HTML does not work on this forum's software) and provide attribution of the source. Judging by the extensive markup, it appears you're copy/pasting this from another source, and that source deserves credit. If these are your own words, quit using whatever program you're using to construct your posts.

I cleaned up your previous post to make it comprehensible. I'm not making that same effort again. If you want us to be able to read and reply to your comments, clean them up and provide proper attribution if they were composed by someone else.

DO NOT RESPOND IN THIS THREAD TO THE PRECEDING MESSAGE. Please contact a member of the staff privately if you have any questions.

[Chinook]

Very interesting, but I think it's important to not rule out the possibility that life, or at least these building blocks, may have arrived with extraterrestrial matter.

I really don't worry about what may be a "bummer" to creationists. Some will accept these findings in stride, others will still insist that, in this case for example, the experiment is flawed or that the constants aren't really "constant." (perhaps they've been touched by His Noodley Appendage).

Quote by: L00zer I have a question about the article. Can someone explain to me why those self replicating organisms felt the need to self replicate? Why did they not cease to exist?

Why did they replicate? At this point, nobody is sure exactly why or exactly which mechanisms triggered this. It is entirely possible that there were organisms which formed and then died without propagating the species. The important thing is that at some point, either right at the get-go or slightly after, this process did happen.