Developing Life

[blueeyes]

3.9 Billion Years ago - Earth begins to form into a solid.
3.85 Billion Years ago - Life begins.

A mere 50 million years between the first real floor and life popping up out of nothingness. An interesting fact, particularly if you consider that just creating basic amino acids relies on chance events and a reactive atmosphere that many scientists think was really replaced by one with far too much nitrogen.
50 million years after it first became possible, entire organisms came around. Nothing as complex as what you'd see today, none even knowing what O2 was like, and none with complex cellular structures, but still an incredible accomplishment.
Why? Because of how complex the building blocks of life are. First, 20 amino acids, all complex chains, must pop out from electrical strikes of certain mixtures of chemicals. Those alone, given probablility, would take hundreds of millions of years to produce.
Then you get to the hard part. The human English alphabet has 26 letters, the amino alphabet only 20. But while it only takes 8 letters to spell the word collagen, to make it requires 1,038 'letters'. And collagen is one of the most abundant animal protiens out there.
All of those numbers and chances collapsed together within 50 million years.
For a comparision, if a computer running at 2.8 Ghz tried to calculate just collagen, starting today and running nonstop til it finished... the sun would have died, the universe would be so expanded that the sky would have no stars in it, not that any would still have enough energy to burn left, and the universe would have long died from heat death.
But your computer wouldn't be a hundredth of the way to finding collagen.

And this life is adaptable. There are bacteria that can not only survive, but thrive, in radioactive material up to 3 million rads. There are complex organisms swimming around undersea vents that live in a strange combination of 150+ temperatures and ice cold tides, swimming from boiling to freezing. There are bacteria that can survive in acid and temperatures so hot that metal melts.

But the strangest thing happened to me today. I ate at a food court.
And that's the strangest part, when you really think about it; not that it did happen, as anything can be strange, such as the food court, when you think about it as such.
It's that it hasn't happened again. At the same rate the world should have 79 different births of entirely seperate life, and be one fifth of the way to another such occurance. We should be swimming, for lack of better words, in alternate paths, on this planet so accepting of life.
But there are only twenty amino acids, plus another two that we see so rarely most labs don't even count them. Most scientists find that the whole world comes from one evolutionary path, forever trimmed and pruned as they fight with each other. And there are no signs of other paths trimmed as they took root, no left over protiens or signs of life.

So, what's that mean to you? Proof that some diety formed the universe, perhaps, or just a strange coincidence. Maybe it's not even that. After all, it's hard for life that doesn't exist to wonder about such things. Was life, this sort of life, destined to be, or just a galatic accident of moons and electric fields that just happened to come together?
What's your take?

[FMtRIS]

I think it all comes down to competition for resources and that everything depends on that. Certainly given the numbers, there could be a divergence explosion and to an extent earth is replete with divergence, but there has to be a purpose for that species and if it doesnt fit in the natural scheme, then it doesn't survive.

There are answers within the nature of your question. Biologically, the study of life, certain parameters exist that either something occurs in nature or in the confines of a man made environment. However, humanity is dependent on that same environment; an environment we have yet to control. So we attempt to analyze with our very human tools and therefore they are already biased but its within our nature to analyze our environment. This is a good thing because any attempts at understanding further the development of our space in the scheme of things, I would hope. But, we must realize that we are not infallible. Even nothing is now something according to quantum physicists. There is no naturally occurring vacuum because there will always be something there, some particle.

If I were to speak scientifically about your query I would say that science can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a divinity but because we have culture, history, and self acknowledgement then we can attempt to support a divine theory. However, that statement I just made seems unscientific unless we then go into theology, philosophy, or psychology, which is where this section is now and someone else can take it from here.

[Blazer]

I don't know enough about biology or evolution to be able to comment on this... But I know a girl who does.

I showed Blueeyes's post to a friend of mine who replied:

"I had to write my end of course assessment on this subject last year.

As far as I know no-one has yet managed to prove the link or development of self-replicating forms from the primordial soup that some guys called Miller and Urey managed to re-create in a lab in about 1953. This was a test using lightening in the atmosphere that is believed to have been around at that time and all the other stuff available at that time.

This book was recommended to us in case we had any further interest in the study.

The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup
by Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada

Personally I think there was too little time for it all to happen as life is far too complex. There must have been something that brought it all together. Like a catalyst attaching to different substrates to make sure they are in the same place and can react together!!"

[Cephas]

For a comparision, if a computer running at 2.8 Ghz tried to calculate just collagen
Just what of collagan? Probability, structure, weight, what??

[blueeyes]

The structure from its amino acids.

[Cephas]

Rubbish, here's (http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/chemistry/bio/amino-acids_en.html) a list of amino acids. According to you, collagen is simply 1,038 of some combination of those. Seeing as my computer loaded that list in less than three seconds, seems like the universe doesn't have much of a future...

[blueeyes]

20^1038 = 2.94*10^1350 combinations
ans/2.8*10^9 = 1.05*10^1341 seconds
ans/3600 = 2.92*10^1337 hours
ans/24 = 1.22*10^1336 days
ans/356 = 3.42*10^1333 years

That's a long time.
That's a bit of an exaggeration, though. For one thing, many protiens are far less complex, like insulin, which only has 51 amino acids and therefore only 1.55*10^66 combinations. And who knows, maybe the universe got lucky.
But it's still impressive that such an incredibly small chance, particularly when you consider not only the chemicals but also the conditions required, came to pass. And came to pass very, very fast.

[Cephas]

You said the computer had to work out the structure of collagen, not the probability.
The structure from its amino acids.
Working out all possible combinations would take a while, yes. But so does working out weather patterns, hence they use supercomputers of many terrahertz of power.

Regarding the possibility of all this happening at the same time to produce life, of course it is amazing. But the question is, is it possible to recreate such an environment?

[blueeyes]

Cephas, it's just a comparision to show just how unlikely it would be that a protien as complex as collagen could be created within 50 million years. The point is that, even with a multi-terrahertz computer, or possibly even with a computer relying on the switching power of every atom in this planet, it would take quite a significant amount of time to come up with the correct combination, simply to come up with the correct structure. Figuring out the probablity is easy : I did that in less time than it took to write it down, and on an old solar-powered calculator, too. But what I'm interested in is the structure.
If you want to think of structure as individual atoms coming together to produce something like collagen, well, even glycine has ten different atoms, and 5^10,380 is even more complicated. What other definition is left? The placement of each atom compared to another? A computer figuring that out has to do each of the above steps and then calculate out each potential arrangment, and that's messy on a quantum level.

Is it possible to recreate the conditions? Sure, you can make amino acids in a glass if you wanted to. But you might want to consider what the earth like 50 million years after it first became solid. What about the even higher percentage of nitrogen in the air sure doesn't make it likely for an Oxygen reliant reaction to occur. And how often does the lowest land (where water pools) get struck by lightning (which tends to aim for high places)? How often does Mother Nature mix things in just the right molarities to prevent an explosion but still get a reasonable reaction? It's quite an interesting concept.

[FocusedWolf]

"Personally I think there was too little time for it all to happen as life is far too complex. There must have been something that brought it all together. Like a catalyst attaching to different substrates to make sure they are in the same place and can react together!!"

I agree with the girl with no name. It just doesn't add up and considering the numbers it probly didn't happen. ;)

Theirs five possibilities:
1. Aliens or A god or gods brought pre-fab life to this planet like what happened in that mars movie...ugh "the red planet" i think.

2. We are just numbers in a computer system.

3. The third possibility is beyond comprehension.

4. Given the adaptability of life theirs a possibility that life came to earth from an alternate dimension of earth. The only evidence to suggest this is life evolved to interact with this form of reality. Maybe their is other other-dimensional life...kinda reminds me of that stargate episode with the bugs that cant be seen unless you touch that weird machine...heh

5. Life is a biological weapon (since it so much like a virus...i.e. adaptability theme again) sent to earth to consume it in order to tick off some invisible beings that inhabit it....or perhaps the delivery system was deflected and hit the wrong planet...Or life was sent to earth to teraform it. Hmm time to goto bed :D

[DarkWolf]

FocusedWolf: Ya know, if you keep believing the movies then at some point the men in white coats will be coming for you with a trendy straight jacket.

The philosophy forum is for serious discussion. If you are seriously suggesting those are your honest theories on the development of life then I strongly suggest you seek professional help.

[WhiteCrowUK]

The philosophy forum is for serious discussion. If you are seriously suggesting those are your honest theories on the development of life then I strongly suggest you seek professional help.

Actually FocusedWolf isnt far off the mark with one of his speculations. There is a growing belief that life on Earth does have extra-terrestrial origins.

The theory is that life on Earth came over on a comet. This isnt subscribed to by some nutter with a "The End Is Nigh" banner, but by Fred Hoyle, a man whose theories we covered time and again in my Astonomy degree.

http://www.gwillick.com/Spacelight/hoyle.html

I know this is a theory and not fact - but its a quite respected theory.

[DarkWolf]

Yes that one isn't far fetched.

But the rest (even the overused matrix one) goes beyond sensible theories and into silliness or just paranoia.

--

Also I must wonder how life began. The big bang theory explains the start of universe and galaxies but not planets or Earth in particular. It could be we were a very large meteor that got pulled into Sun's gravity field. :shrug: But how would life, or the first life begin?

I suppose it could be time to ressurect the abiogenesis theory. ;)

[WhiteCrowUK]

Also I must wonder how life began. The big bang theory explains the start of universe and galaxies but not planets or Earth in particular.

Thats why Astronomy is a 3 year degree which you also have to major in Physics and Mathematics with. There are a lot of theories which lead on from one another - this is all "cosmology" section.

Its quite a fascinating branch of science, because we have only so much hard evidence of what went on billions of years ago. The theories are hung together by observation of how the universe is today, the laws of physics we observe near us, and some scarey maths.

But at the end of the day, each theory is just a model of how the Universe might work. So Astronomy is keeping a lot of contrary theories in your head at once, and deciding which one you feel is the best case. Its also why we learn about Greek theories of flat Earth, and Victorian ideas of volcanoes on the Moon, because a good Astronomy has to have an open mind and be prepared to take on new ideas if evidence leads to new theories ...

[DarkWolf]

Aye. I'm just saying that the predominant theory of the Big Bang doesn't explain how life began.

I can only wonder how life would begin without abiogenesis - the theory that living things can come from a non-sexual based origin (be it asexual or sexual).

But this theory was disproved in 1660 by Francesco Redi.

[Khrystof]

What's stranger still, the earth is (according to this theory) made of dust particles that where drawn together by gravitational force in space.

[FocusedWolf]

Yes that one isn't far fetched.

But the rest (even the overused matrix one) goes beyond sensible theories and into silliness or just paranoia.



Eh...i'm still having difficulties grasping what is real and what isn't...That particular possibility i suggested was sorta a joke...but...i see us not existing at all making more sense then existing...but then that would be assuming that their is such a thing as "not existing"...maybe this is the base form of existence and more advanced forms exist... hmm i don't know.