Directed panspermy, Nyikos style II
pnyikos
theological discussion thanks to Ray Martinez, so I thought I'd start
a new thread with this reply to a post on the thread, "The futility of
Intelligent Desgin [*sic*]".
On Jan 11, 3:19 am, in
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9cc2c1ead88d9dbb
*Hemidactylus* <ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Isaak has made a critical argument
> relevant to your panspermist
> hypothesis.
Namely, that primitive unicellular organisms were sent to earth by a
species at least as advanced technologically as our own, from another
solar system ca. 3.9 billion years ago, and these evolved into all the
life on earth.
> It breaks down to "who benefits" if I recall right.
Yeah, and so did a number of other people with impoverished ideas of
what constitutes "benefit".
What's the benefit in watching the Super Bowl on the boob tube, eh?
> What's
> the point of the alleged panspermists seeding a planet so far away?
It doesn't necessarily stay so far away. Anyway, they can check up on
it from time to time and see the progress of their grand experiment,
even if they never exploit it for their own narrow economical ends.
>What
> benefit do the panspermists get out of it, given the investment of time,
> money, etc.
One of those planets could be their future home. Apparently it isn't
earth. But that could be due to the fact that our planet stayed very
low in oxygen for billions of years.
And that long delay, if I read an essay [by Isaac Asimov, if memory
serves] aright, could be largely due to the extensive metal compounds
dissolved in the ocean, especially those of iron. Until they were
thoroughly oxidized [along with other iron compounds and metallic
iron] the oxygen given off by photosynthesis got promptly locked up.
Ironically [no pun intended] Howard Hershey objected to the idea of a
technological civilization arising ca. 4 billion years ago, because
[so he thinks, but I disagree] their planet would have been metal-
poor.
But look at it this way: if they arose on a somewhat smaller planet,
with much less water but still enough to cover a fair fraction of the
planet, the oxygen level could have risen a lot more quickly than on
earth, and 2.5 or so billion years might have sufficed from the onset
of abiogenesis on their planet.
The banded iron formations associated with a poverty of oxygen ceased
right around 1.9 billion years ago.
6.5 billion years ago is already a little bit beyond the halfway mark
from the Big Bang to the present day. And by that time, we can be
pretty confident that the requisite amount and variety of metal could
have been present.
If, after seeding earth, these panspermists had come across a planet
more like their own home planet, they might have lost interest in the
earth and focused their attention on the new kid on the block.
>Isaak can refine my memory of what he said, but I remember
> him saying stuff along these lines, which is a problem for your
> hypothesis. What is the motivation for seeding a distant planet when
> there should have been more pressing problems on Xordax or Throom?
"should"? What problems did you have in mind?
Another participant suggested that they did the panspermy to relieve
boredom. After 10,000 Super Bowls have gone by, even the American
couch potatoes of the future might look for other interests.
> Did
> they have a libertarian streak that resulted in the gutting of
> intergalactic seeding programs, thus cutting the funding Zandor
Where does Zandor come into this picture?
> so
> desperately needed to seed Earth. A potential non-deity designer would
> have economic and political realities to contend with.
Sure, and our space program is suffering from political realities
disguised as economic realities. But I'm hoping humanity can solve
its biggest problems in the next millennium, and finally reach for the
stars.
Peter Nyikos
Ray Martinez
> The original thread without the "II" seems to have morphed into a
> theological discussion thanks to Ray Martinez, so I thought I'd start
> a new thread with this reply to a post on the thread, "The futility of
> Intelligent Desgin [*sic*]".
>
>
> �*Hemidactylus* <ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Isaak has made a critical argument
> > relevant to your panspermist
> > hypothesis.
>
> Namely, that primitive unicellular organisms were sent to earth by a
> solar system ca. 3.9 billion years ago, and these evolved into all the
> life on earth.
>
General Reader: Peter Nyikos claims to be a Christian; please do not
confuse him to be an Atheist.
Ray
pnyikos
lack of repentance for some vile libels which he subjected me to when
we last had an exchange of posts. However, this post that he did
almost two months ago illustrates a number of misconceptions that
others have been laboring under, and so I take it as a starting point
for clarifying matters.
On Dec 12 2010, 5:46 pm, hersheyh <hershe...@yahoo.com> wrote in
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/624ab648a2fa44de?dmode=source:
> On Dec 11, 5:02 pm, the late el cid <elcidbi...@gmail.com>, whom I miss very much, wrote:
>
> > The protein takeover from an RNA world
>
> > Peter Nyikos has pronounced his claim that the rise of
> > protein translation from the genetic code is such a
> > problem in postulating earthly abiogenesis that it is
> > wiser to postulate that life was seeded here from an
> > external source. He has declared an estimate of one
> > google years
It wasn't an estimate, it was a challenge.
I did say "google years" a couple of times, but my challenge since I
returned to talk.origins after a decade of absence has consistently
set the bar even lower for the "Mother Earth did it (origin of life on
earth)" crowd, which I believe includes all non-creationists.
I have consistently challenged them to show that it could be expected
to happen more than once in a googol of universes where initial
conditions are as fine-tuned for life as our universe.
> >for natural processes to produce our current
> > biochemistry in an unaided naturalistic manner. This is
> > the same number he used approximately 15 years ago
> > making a similar claim.
I've corrected this misconception on the original thread.
> If our chemistry (based on carbon as it is) cannot produce our form of
> biochemistry in a google years, what sort of chemistry would?
Hershey, as usual, shows no understanding of the issues. My challenge
includes, obviously, those universes like ours which are based on the
same identical chemistry.
But more importantly, if my challenge WERE to say "once in a googol
(10^100) years" then those years would be spread out over ~10^89
universes like ours, inasmuch as I don't think the conditions
favorable for life will last much longer than 100 American billion
(10^11) years.
I think Hershey is intelligent enough to figure out what I mean here,
even if he posts a misunderstanding, as happened so often not only
with me but also with Julie Thomas.
> Or,
> more interestingly, how does one determine an estimate of a google of
> years.
And here he acts as if this were an acutal estimate by me, rather
than an arbitrary setting of a bar for my critics, deliberately set
low so they have a good chance of clearing it.
"el cid" was beginning to make serious efforts at clearing it before
his unfortunate death. Other than that, only a one-shot poster
"lucaspa" made any kind of effort at all.
>And if no chemistry can produce x, then perhaps he is indeed
> going to invoke transfer to our universe from older universes.
Garbage in, garbage out. Only a science fiction nut would seriously
contemplate such a ridiculous scenario as the basis for a scientific
theory of directed panspermia, or Intelligent Design.
> > Clearly nobody knows exactly what did happen, and
> > most likely we never will. I will address what could
> > happen, what might have happened, and what evidence
> > we have for what did happen with support for some
> > scenarios.
That was the late lamented el cid again. Would that I could encounter
someone as levelheaded and as knowledgeable as him in biochemistry
here! I would make talk.origins here my permanent home, and the
abortion newsgroups would be secondary along with a number of others,
including of course sci.bio.paleontology.
> > These answers matter to me to know if it is worth
> > the effort of providing an alternative view. If there's
> > really no more to it than some vague impression
> > derived from reading a few whimsical books by
> > Crick and De Duve, I don't think it will be worth the
> > effort. I'm willing to put up something tangible against
> > something tangible but not against shifting mists.
I've done my best to make it tangible, and I believe that if "el cid"
had lived another year, we would have arrived at a very good
understanding of each other's points of view.
I've snipped some things he said which were based on the misconception
above, along with some typically clueless put-downs by Howard Hershey
which you can read in the original post [url above].
Peter Nyikos
John Harshman
> I have boycotted Howard Hershey for over two months now, due to his
> lack of repentance for some vile libels which he subjected me to when
> we last had an exchange of posts. However, this post that he did
> almost two months ago illustrates a number of misconceptions that
> others have been laboring under, and so I take it as a starting point
> for clarifying matters.
Bit of advice. If your intention is to clarify, using most of the post
to obsess with wrongs done to you over the course of many years is not
useful.
pnyikos
And posting such wild exaggerations as "using most of the post to
obsess with wrongs done to you over the course of many years"
is also not useful.
Nor is using most of your post to make such wild exaggerations.
[I am not exaggerating here if one takes "your post" to mean
your own addition to the rest.]
If you want to be useful, why don't you respond to some of the many
useful things I wrote in the two posts I've done to this thread so
far?
Peter Nyikos
Inez
> theological discussion thanks to Ray Martinez, so I thought I'd start
> a new thread with this reply to a post on the thread, "The futility of
> Intelligent Desgin [*sic*]".
>
>
> *Hemidactylus* <ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Isaak has made a critical argument
> > relevant to your panspermist
> > hypothesis.
>
> Namely, that primitive unicellular organisms were sent to earth by a
> species at least as advanced technologically as our own, from another
> solar system ca. 3.9 billion years ago, and these evolved into all the
> life on earth.
How would you know if this happened or not? What sort of evidence do
you see for it?
<Snip>
John Harshman
It's too hard to wade through the accusations. I would prefer if you
would write a post about some ideas or theories. Then I'd be glad to
respond.
pnyikos
I hope Inez doesn't behave like a savage mouse in response to this
post. :-)
We'd never know for *sure* except in the unlikely event that we
encounter intelligent beings who have had this information passed down
to them over the last ca. 3.9 billion years.
However, we can gather evidence for it.
>�What sort of evidence do
> you see for it?
Right now the evidence is mostly that advanced by Crick and Orgel,
combined with the fact that nobody, including them, seems to have come
up with a scenario of how abiogenesis MIGHT be expected to happen in
the scant 500 million years available on earth--or indeed more than
once in a googol of universes with the same physical constants and
roughly the same number of stars as ours.
If the odds are that astronomical against abiogenesis, then we have to
try and assess the odds on whether a few billion years are enough to
have a life form as simple as a prokaryote to evolve an intelligent
life form, intelligent enough to produce a level of technology that
makes them capable of space travel.
Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. I
don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. As
long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote, simple reasoning
would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding,
than we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
protein translation mechanism.
One of the possible scenarios I have been advancing is that an
intelligent life form with a biochemistry much less hard to evolve
(say, with enzymes RNA based) developed nanotechnology to produce
various proteins, and one of them got the bright idea to design a
bunch of protein enzymes using this technology, thereby producing
"life as we know it."
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.
pnyikos
> pnyikos wrote:
> > On Feb 10, 11:04 am, John Harshman <jharsh...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> >> pnyikos wrote:
> >>> I have boycotted Howard Hershey for over two months now, due to his
> >>> lack of repentance for some vile libels which he subjected me to when
> >>> we last had an exchange of posts. However, this post that he did
> >>> almost two months ago illustrates a number of misconceptions that
> >>> others have been laboring under, and so I take it as a starting point
> >>> for clarifying matters.
> >> Bit of advice. If your intention is to clarify, using most of the post
> >> to obsess with wrongs done to you over the course of many years is not
> >> useful.
>
> > And posting such wild exaggerations as "using most of the post to
> > obsess with wrongs done to you over the course of many years"
> > is also not useful.
Part of the wild exaggeration is "over the course of many years."
There is only ONE incident that predates December 2010 that I am hung
up on--the one identified above.
Why don't you ask Paul Gans what kinds of past wrongs of mine he is
obsessing about? He hasn't even done us the courtesy of saying THAT
he is boycotting my posts [although he obviously is] let alone why.
> > Nor is using most of your post to make such wild exaggerations.
> > [I am not exaggerating here if one takes "your post" to mean
> > your own addition to the rest.]
>
> > If you want to be useful, why don't you respond to some of the many
> > useful things I wrote in the two posts I've done to this thread so
> > far?
>
> It's too hard to wade through the accusations.
Gimme a break. There is only one statement that can be construed as
an accusation in the first post to this thread. And that's right near
the beginning.
And now, thanks to Inez, and my reply to her, you have some more
useful stuff to reply to.
> I would prefer if you
> would write a post about some ideas or theories. Then I'd be glad to
> respond.
If you still are having trouble responding to what I have on this
thread now, I'll move some stuff over here from other threads.
Peter Nyikos
Vend
> We'd never know for *sure* except in the unlikely event that we
> encounter intelligent beings who have had this information passed down
> to them over the last ca. 3.9 billion years.
Even then, how would you know they are not making it up?
> Right now the evidence is mostly that advanced by Crick and Orgel,
> combined with the fact that nobody, including them, seems to have come
> up with a scenario of how abiogenesis MIGHT be expected to happen in
> the scant 500 million years available on earth--or indeed more than
> once in a googol of universes with the same physical constants and
> roughly the same number of stars as ours.
So it's an alien-of-the-gaps argument?
> If the odds are that astronomical against abiogenesis, then we have to
> try and assess the odds on whether a few billion years are enough �to
> have a life form as simple as a prokaryote to evolve an intelligent
> life form, intelligent enough to produce a level of technology that
> makes them capable of space travel.
And where did the first prokaryote come from?
> Here we have one datum: �it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes.
American billion years?
> �I
> don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. �As
> long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote, simple reasoning
> would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding,
> than we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
Sorry, but simple reasoning dictated that the paragraph above makes no
sense.
How do you compare an "expected number of attempts to seed promising
planets" to a probability?
> Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
> of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
> prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
> protein translation mechanism.
Only if you buy the flawed logic of the IDists.
> One of the possible scenarios I have been advancing is that an
> intelligent life form with a biochemistry much less hard to evolve
> (say, with enzymes RNA based) developed nanotechnology to produce
> various proteins, and one of them got the bright idea to design a
> bunch of protein enzymes using this technology, thereby producing
> "life as we know it."
That, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster just puffed us into existence.
John Harshman
The mere absence of a sufficiently detailed scenario doesn't provide you
with an opportunity to invent vanishingly small probabilities out of
nothing. The mention of a googol of universes serves no purpose whatsoever.
> If the odds are that astronomical against abiogenesis,
If. You have provided no evidence for the odds, one way or another.
> then we have to
> try and assess the odds on whether a few billion years are enough to
> have a life form as simple as a prokaryote to evolve an intelligent
> life form, intelligent enough to produce a level of technology that
> makes them capable of space travel.
> Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. I
> don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis.
How have you determined how terrible the odds are?
> As
> long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote, simple reasoning
> would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding,
> than we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
There are several assumed but uncalculated probabilities in that
estimate. You need to make your estimates explicit if you want to have a
reasonable discussion. What is the expected number of attempts? What are
the odds of a species arising?
> Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
> of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
> prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
> protein translation mechanism.
They look that way to you, but not to many others. You need to present
your argument for design.
> One of the possible scenarios I have been advancing is that an
> intelligent life form with a biochemistry much less hard to evolve
> (say, with enzymes RNA based) developed nanotechnology to produce
> various proteins, and one of them got the bright idea to design a
> bunch of protein enzymes using this technology, thereby producing
> "life as we know it."
What is your argument that such a biochemistry would be much less hard
to evolve?
*Hemidactylus*
> On Feb 1, 1:49 pm, pnyikos<nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> The original thread without the "II" seems to have morphed into a
>> theological discussion thanks to Ray Martinez, so I thought I'd start
>> a new thread with this reply to a post on the thread, "The futility of
>> Intelligent Desgin [*sic*]".
>>
>> On Jan 11, 3:19 am, inhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9cc2c1ead88d9dbb
>>
>> *Hemidactylus*<ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> Isaak has made a critical argument
>>> relevant to your panspermist
>>> hypothesis.
>>
>> Namely, that primitive unicellular organisms were sent to earth by a
>> species [space aliens] at least as advanced technologically as our own, from another
>> solar system ca. 3.9 billion years ago, and these evolved into all the
>> life on earth.
>>
>
> General Reader: Peter Nyikos claims to be a Christian; please do not
> confuse him to be an Atheist.
That makes no sense. Are you telling me not to confuse Peter or to not
assume he is an atheist because you think he is not a Christian?
--
*Hemidactylus*
Chief Pastor
United Church of Jesus Christ the Procrastinator
"He's suffering performance anxiety"
*Hemidactylus*
> The original thread without the "II" seems to have morphed into a
> theological discussion thanks to Ray Martinez, so I thought I'd start
> a new thread with this reply to a post on the thread, "The futility of
> Intelligent Desgin [*sic*]".
>
> On Jan 11, 3:19 am, in
> http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9cc2c1ead88d9dbb
> *Hemidactylus*<ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Isaak has made a critical argument
>> relevant to your panspermist
>> hypothesis.
>
> Namely, that primitive unicellular organisms were sent to earth by a
> species at least as advanced technologically as our own, from another
> solar system ca. 3.9 billion years ago, and these evolved into all the
> life on earth.
A concise snippet of your argument?
>> It breaks down to "who benefits" if I recall right.
>
> Yeah, and so did a number of other people with impoverished ideas of
> what constitutes "benefit".
Should add cost to that too :-)
> What's the benefit in watching the Super Bowl on the boob tube, eh?
Social connections and entertainment. Pretty cheap as you could have
watched it without cable if you had a digitally capable antenna. What's
the benefit of seeding a far flung planet vs. costs? Space travel
doesn't come cheap given the energy required. Superbowls are proximally
profitable, especially given advertizing revenue. Deferring benefits to
distances in time nad space are a very hard sell for any investor. How
much would the seeding mission cost versus a superbowl?
>> What's
>> the point of the alleged panspermists seeding a planet so far away?
>
> It doesn't necessarily stay so far away. Anyway, they can check up on
> it from time to time and see the progress of their grand experiment,
> even if they never exploit it for their own narrow economical ends.
How do they check up on it? What's our technological ability to check on
anything far flung from us, especially given the delay implied of light
speed data transmissions?
>> What
>> benefit do the panspermists get out of it, given the investment of time,
>> money, etc.
>
> One of those planets could be their future home. Apparently it isn't
> earth. But that could be due to the fact that our planet stayed very
> low in oxygen for billions of years.
Could they have benefited more from a home-bound green initiative? It's
a stab in the dark to seed a distant planet.
> And that long delay, if I read an essay [by Isaac Asimov, if memory
> serves] aright, could be largely due to the extensive metal compounds
> dissolved in the ocean, especially those of iron. Until they were
> thoroughly oxidized [along with other iron compounds and metallic
> iron] the oxygen given off by photosynthesis got promptly locked up.
>
> Ironically [no pun intended] Howard Hershey objected to the idea of a
> technological civilization arising ca. 4 billion years ago, because
> [so he thinks, but I disagree] their planet would have been metal-
> poor.
Hershey did raise some interesting points.
> But look at it this way: if they arose on a somewhat smaller planet,
> with much less water but still enough to cover a fair fraction of the
> planet, the oxygen level could have risen a lot more quickly than on
> earth, and 2.5 or so billion years might have sufficed from the onset
> of abiogenesis on their planet.
>
> The banded iron formations associated with a poverty of oxygen ceased
> right around 1.9 billion years ago.
>
> 6.5 billion years ago is already a little bit beyond the halfway mark
> from the Big Bang to the present day. And by that time, we can be
> pretty confident that the requisite amount and variety of metal could
> have been present.
>
> If, after seeding earth, these panspermists had come across a planet
> more like their own home planet, they might have lost interest in the
> earth and focused their attention on the new kid on the block.
>
>> Isaak can refine my memory of what he said, but I remember
>> him saying stuff along these lines, which is a problem for your
>> hypothesis. What is the motivation for seeding a distant planet when
>> there should have been more pressing problems on Xordax or Throom?
>
> "should"? What problems did you have in mind?
Problems for any organism with coded developmental instructions and a
tendency for self-interest. Experience with history makes me think they
would have rather spent their money blowing up neighbors and exploiting
their resources than sending resources across a vast distance of outer
space for questionable reasons. A Xordaxian Sarah Palin would have
doomed the project.
> Another participant suggested that they did the panspermy to relieve
> boredom. After 10,000 Super Bowls have gone by, even the American
> couch potatoes of the future might look for other interests.
Way too expensive even by Pentagon standards.
>> Did
>> they have a libertarian streak that resulted in the gutting of
>> intergalactic seeding programs, thus cutting the funding Zandor
>
> Where does Zandor come into this picture?
He was the designer right?
>> so
>> desperately needed to seed Earth. A potential non-deity designer would
>> have economic and political realities to contend with.
>
> Sure, and our space program is suffering from political realities
> disguised as economic realities. But I'm hoping humanity can solve
> its biggest problems in the next millennium, and finally reach for the
> stars.
>
I agree but reality suggests otherwise. Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and
Ludwig von Mises trump overpriced seeding projects conducted by a
corrupt overbearing gummint.
*Hemidactylus*
peasants with pitchforks revolt, decapitate the philosopher kings with
dreamy Earth seeding plans and send Xordax into a tailspin of repressive
traditionalist theocracy that prefers the golden age of Throom over some
overpriced seeding project. The power source for the Earth seeding
project is redirected towards powering the heaters of a billion
impoverished homes during a particularly cold Xordaxian winter. The
people are happy.
Inez
> On Feb 10, 3:53 pm, Inez <savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I hope Inez doesn't behave like a savage mouse in response to this
> post. :-)
One can't help their true nature.
> > On Feb 1, 1:49 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > > The original thread without the "II" seems to have morphed into a
> > > theological discussion thanks to Ray Martinez, so I thought I'd start
> > > a new thread with this reply to a post on the thread, "The futility of
> > > Intelligent Desgin [*sic*]".
>
> > > On Jan 11, 3:19 am, in
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9cc2c1ead88d9dbb
>
>
>
> > > *Hemidactylus* <ecpho...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Isaak has made a critical argument
> > > > relevant to your panspermist
> > > > hypothesis.
>
> > > Namely, that primitive unicellular organisms were sent to earth by a
> > > species at least as advanced technologically as our own, from another
> > > solar system ca. 3.9 billion years ago, and these evolved into all the
> > > life on earth.
>
> > How would you know if this happened or not?
>
> We'd never know for *sure* except in the unlikely event that we
> encounter intelligent beings who have had this information passed down
> to them over the last ca. 3.9 billion years.
>
> However, we can gather evidence for it.
Evidence is enough for me really.
> > What sort of evidence do
> > you see for it?
>
> Right now the evidence is mostly that advanced by Crick and Orgel,
> combined with the fact that nobody, including them, seems to have come
> up with a scenario of how abiogenesis MIGHT be expected to happen in
> the scant 500 million years available on earth--or indeed more than
> once in a googol of universes with the same physical constants and
> roughly the same number of stars as ours.
What evidence was advanced by Crick and Orgel? My brief google search
turned up only what you have written above- they didn't know how
abiogenesis happened, with a mention that Ribozymes were not know at
the time they advanced that opinion.
>
> If the odds are that astronomical against abiogenesis, then we have to
> try and assess the odds on whether a few billion years are enough to
> have a life form as simple as a prokaryote to evolve an intelligent
> life form, intelligent enough to produce a level of technology that
> makes them capable of space travel.
I don't see what one has to do with the other. The ease or difficulty
of abiogenesis needn't be tied to the intelligence-producing abilities
of evolution, or if it does you'll have to explain how to me.
One also has to note that you're proposing that abiogenesis happened
on another planet and evolution there produced space traveling
intelligence that seeded earth with cells which again evolved into
space traveling intelligences. I should think that would be even
trickier and more time consuming than just doing it once on earth.
> Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. I
> don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. As
> long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote, simple reasoning
> would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding,
> than we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
Can you calculate those odds?
> Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
> of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
> prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
> protein translation mechanism.
Why do those and only those look like they were designed? What is so
special about those systems?
> One of the possible scenarios I have been advancing is that an
> intelligent life form with a biochemistry much less hard to evolve
> (say, with enzymes RNA based) developed nanotechnology to produce
> various proteins, and one of them got the bright idea to design a
> bunch of protein enzymes using this technology, thereby producing
> "life as we know it."
>
Well I can't say you're wrong, but it seems like a lot of squinting
and guessing to me. It would be more fun if your theory were true.
Inez
I have to admit to knowing very little about panspermy theories. If I
had to guess I would have said it was what happens to a teenage boy's
room if you don't filter his internet connection.
Inez
Another question occurs- in your first post you suggested that earth
was seeded with primordial cells. Presumably these simple cells were
not intelligent, right? So either way intelligence must have evolved
here in the stipulated time. Or are you postulating that these
panspermists visit earth and install biological features from time to
time?
> > Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> > 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. I
> > don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. As
> > long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> > several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> > less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote, simple reasoning
> > would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding,
> > than we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
>
> Can you calculate those odds?
>
> > Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
> > of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
> > prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
> > protein translation mechanism.
>
> Why do those and only those look like they were designed? What is so
> special about those systems?
>
> > One of the possible scenarios I have been advancing is that an
> > intelligent life form with a biochemistry much less hard to evolve
> > (say, with enzymes RNA based) developed nanotechnology to produce
> > various proteins, and one of them got the bright idea to design a
> > bunch of protein enzymes using this technology, thereby producing
> > "life as we know it."
>
> Well I can't say you're wrong, but it seems like a lot of squinting
> and guessing to me. It would be more fun if your theory were true.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
pnyikos
On Feb 10, 11:25 pm, Inez <savagem...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Another question occurs-
I'm about to turn in for the night, so this is all I have time for
now. I hope I can return to this thread tomorrow. In any case, I'll
be here Monday.
>in your first post you suggested that earth
> was seeded with primordial cells. Presumably these simple cells were
> not intelligent, right?
No. They would be similar to various present-day bacteria including
cyanobacteria.
There's a chance, of course, that they also sent eukaryotes, maybe
even multicellular ones, but the rigors of a long (thousands of years
on the average) journey favor prokaryotes. As Francis Crick keeps
saying in _Life Itself_, prokaryotes travel farther. Their spores are
so hardy, Arrhenius even thought they just might survive drifiting
through space for millions of years. But a space probe would provide
lots of extra protection.
> So either way intelligence must have evolved
> here in the stipulated time.
Yes, and I think all that could have happened naturally. Even if it
only happens 1 in 10,000 tries in the allotted time (3.9 billion
years) I think the odds slightly favor seeding from far off over
homegrown abiogenesisl.
> Or are you postulating that these
> panspermists visit earth and install biological features from time to
> time?
No.
> > > Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> > > 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. I
> > > don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. As
> > > long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> > > several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> > > less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote,
So up there, I am mentioning odds of 9999 to 1 (to be exact) and so if
they seeded, say, 40,000 planets it's more likely that we are the
product of seeding than the product of "Mother Earth did it."
> > >simple reasoning
> > > would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding,
> > > than we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
>
> > Can you calculate those odds?
>
> > > Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
> > > of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
> > > prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
> > > protein translation mechanism.
>
> > Why do those and only those look like they were designed?
There are others, but these are among the best known. Michael Behe
mentions the cilia, the flagella, and a few others in _Darwin's Black
Box_. I always thought it a huge deficiency not to mention the
translation apparatus.
> >What is so
> > special about those systems?
Hard to evolve, especially the translation mechanism.
> > > One of the possible scenarios I have been advancing is that an
> > > intelligent life form with a biochemistry much less hard to evolve
> > > (say, with enzymes RNA based) developed nanotechnology to produce
> > > various proteins, and one of them got the bright idea to design a
> > > bunch of protein enzymes using this technology, thereby producing
> > > "life as we know it."
>
> > Well I can't say you're wrong, but it seems like a lot of squinting
> > and guessing to me. It would be more fun if your theory were true.
Yup. And even as it is, I have lots of fun thinking about it.
Peter Nyikos
Walter Bushell
*Hemidactylus* <ecph...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> A Xordaxian Sarah Palin would have
> doomed the project.
Ah, but the Xordaxians were an intelligent life form.
--
The Chinese pretend their goods are good and we pretend our money
is good, or is it the reverse?
Inez
> On Feb 10, 11:25�pm, Inez <savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Another question occurs-
>
> I'm about to turn in for the night, so this is all I have time for
> now. �I hope I can return to this thread tomorrow. �In any case, I'll
> be here Monday.
>
> >in your first post you suggested that earth
> > was seeded with primordial cells. �Presumably these simple cells were
> > not intelligent, right?
>
> No. �They would be similar to various present-day bacteria including
> cyanobacteria.
>
> There's a chance, of course, that they also sent eukaryotes, maybe
> even multicellular ones, but the rigors of a long (thousands of years
> on the average) journey favor prokaryotes. �As Francis Crick keeps
> saying in _Life Itself_, prokaryotes travel farther. �Their spores are
> so hardy, Arrhenius even thought they just might survive drifiting
> through space for millions of years. �But a space probe would provide
> lots of extra protection.
>
> >�So either way intelligence must have evolved
> > here in the stipulated time.
>
> Yes, and I think all that could have happened naturally. �Even if it
> only happens 1 in 10,000 tries in the allotted time (3.9 billion
> years) I think the odds slightly favor seeding from far off over
> homegrown abiogenesisl.
The point I was getting at though is I don't see how the odds of
intelligence developing on earth enters into it. Both hypotheses
require intelligence to evolve from primitive life forms in 3.9
billion years.
> >�Or are you postulating that these
> > panspermists visit earth and install biological features from time to
> > time?
>
> No.
>
> > > > Here we have one datum: �it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> > > > 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. �I
> > > > don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. �As
> > > > long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> > > > several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> > > > less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote,
>
> So up there, I am mentioning odds of 9999 to 1 (to be exact) and so if
> they seeded, say, 40,000 planets it's more likely that we are the
> product of seeding than the product of "Mother Earth did it."
I have to say that I have a hard time imagining humans wanting to pony
up the cash for 40,000 rockets designed to possibly create something
interest in a few billion years on a planet too far away to reach.
> > > >simple reasoning
> > > > would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding,
> > > > than we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
>
> > > Can you calculate those odds?
>
> > > > Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
> > > > of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
> > > > prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
> > > > protein translation mechanism.
>
> > > Why do those and only those look like they were designed? �
>
> There are others, but these are among the best known. �Michael Behe
> mentions the cilia, the flagella, and a few others in _Darwin's Black
> Box_. I always thought it a huge deficiency not to mention the
> translation apparatus.
My point in asking is that if you don't assume that life has been
tinkered with over time then all of the systems that are too hard to
evolve must have come over in the original cells. Since we are
positing bacteria as having been sent, that means everything
multicellular must have evolved. So what you're saying is that the
flagella is more complicated to evolve than, I don't know, the immune
system, a brain complex enough to create Two and a Half Men and
emotionally sturdy enough not to become suicidal after having done so,
or even blood clotting mechanisms that Behe (who seems not to exclude
continued tinkering) named as too complicated to have evolved.
Without some objective measure of Evolvable Difficulty I remain
dubious.
Mark Isaak
>> What sort of evidence do you see for [panspermy]?
>
> Right now the evidence is mostly that advanced by Crick and Orgel,
> combined with the fact that nobody, including them, seems to have come
> up with a scenario of how abiogenesis MIGHT be expected to happen in
> the scant 500 million years available on earth--or indeed more than
> once in a googol of universes with the same physical constants and
> roughly the same number of stars as ours.
>
> If the odds are that astronomical against abiogenesis, [...]
You just said that there is no evidence that abiogenesis is anything less
than certain. "Nobody knows" cuts both ways.
Incidentally, have you seen the following article?
Nick Lane, 2010. Chance or necessity? Bioenergetics and the
probability of life. _Journal of Cosmology_ 10: 3286-3304.
http://journalofcosmology.com/Abiogenesis107.html
I'm guessing not, or you would not have said above that nobody has come
up with a plausible scenario.
> Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. I
> don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. As
> long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote, simple reasoning
> would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding, than
> we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
So it's based on numbers you pretty much made up out of nothing.
> Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
> of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
> prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
> protein translation mechanism.
Now you are calling for, or at least strongly implying, at least two
panspermy events -- one for prokaryotes and one for eukaryotes. Have you
figured that into your probability calculations?
Besides, none of those look intelligently designed. The "looks designed"
aspects which people attribute to them are just the sort of thing one
would expect from their having evolved.
> One of the possible scenarios I have been advancing is that an
> intelligent life form with a biochemistry much less hard to evolve (say,
> with enzymes RNA based) developed nanotechnology to produce various
> proteins, and one of them got the bright idea to design a bunch of
> protein enzymes using this technology, thereby producing "life as we
> know it."
Cool idea. How would you test it?
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume
pnyikos
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:21:26 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> > Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> > 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes.
AFAIK, America is definitely in the minority among countries of the
world in its use of "billion" (10^9) while most of the world calls
that a "milliard" and uses 10^12 for "billion".
> > I don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. As
> > long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> > several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> > less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote, simple reasoning
> > would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding, than
> > we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
>
> So it's based on numbers you pretty much made up out of nothing.
Note the total lack of numbers up there, except for a best-current-
estimate about the time of the first prokaryotes, and a conservative
estimate ("less than 5 billion years") based on that, readers.
And then ask yourselves: is Mark Isaak for real? [In asking this,
don't forget about the lead-off word "So" and the period at the end of
his sentence.]
> > Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
> > of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
> > prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
> > protein translation mechanism.
>
> Now you are calling for, or at least strongly implying, at least two
> panspermy events -- one for prokaryotes and one for eukaryotes.
Well, I'm leaving open that possibility, but note the incredibly weak
"look like". That is a purely subjective expression, unlike the
carefully objective language in my immediately preceding paragraph.
Then ask yourselves, readers, why Mark came down so much more heavily
on the former than on the latter.
> Have you
> figured that into your probability calculations?
Yes, but I go by Crick's "prokaryotes travel farther" in my comparing
the probability of which is/are due to panspermy, and which is/are due
to evolution.
> Besides, none of those look intelligently designed. The "looks designed"
> aspects which people attribute to them are just the sort of thing one
> would expect from their having evolved.
This deliberately paradoxical comment by you, together with your
earlier comments, strongly suggests that you belong to the "spoofer"
category of which your kindred spirit, Paul Gans, is the (heretofore)
only confirmed member. See:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/547048f4bdc70192
and
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/6e9f0156f2349a83
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> >> What sort of evidence do you see for [panspermy]?
>
> > Right now the evidence is mostly that advanced by Crick and Orgel,
> > combined with the fact that nobody, including them, seems to have come
> > up with a scenario of how abiogenesis MIGHT be expected to happen in
> > the scant 500 million years available on earth--or indeed more than
> > once in a googol of universes with the same physical constants and
> > roughly the same number of stars as ours.
>
> > If the odds are that astronomical against abiogenesis, [...]
>
> You just said that there is no evidence that abiogenesis is anything less
> than certain.
What have you been smoking? :-)
> "Nobody knows" cuts both ways.
Seems like it's more honored in the breach than in the observance.
While I make "if...then...." statements and challenges, you and most
other t.o. regulars seem to think that "Mother Earth did it" is a
done deal as long as no one PROVES otherwise.
> Incidentally, have you seen the following article?
>
> Nick Lane, 2010. Chance or necessity? Bioenergetics and the
> probability of life. _Journal of Cosmology_ 10: 3286-3304.http://journalofcosmology.com/Abiogenesis107.html
Not until I read your post. But a quick glance shows me the author is
of the old school, just bringing data up to date about the various
chemical forces going on.
Most tellingly, there is absolutely no hint of how the protein
translation mechanism could have evolved. The only place where you
even see the word "translation" is:
Oparin, A. I. (1924). Translation into English. The Origin and
Development of Life. (NASA TTF-488). Washington: D.C.L GPO, 1968.
> I'm guessing not, or you would not have said above that nobody has come
> up with a plausible scenario.
Wrong use of the word "scenario." We are given spectacular underwater
scenes, and lots of generalities, but not even an outline of how
protein translation, whether by ribozymes or protein enzymes, could
have evolved.
The following at least takes a long look at how the first might have
evolved, and has several scenarios, detailing several steps of the
long journey from Urey-Miller to the first prokaryote.
AM Poole, DC Jeffares, D Penney, The path from the RNA world. J.
Molecular Evolution 46: 1-17, 1998.
http://awcmee.massey.ac.nz/people/dpenny/pdf/Poole_et_al_1998.pdf
Actually a more apt title would have been, "A possible path within RNA
world, and some ideas about a path from it".
[deletia of things to be replied to separately]
> > One of the possible scenarios I have been advancing is that an
> > intelligent life form with a biochemistry much less hard to evolve (say,
> > with enzymes RNA based) developed nanotechnology to produce various
> > proteins, and one of them got the bright idea to design a bunch of
> > protein enzymes using this technology, thereby producing "life as we
> > know it."
>
> Cool idea. How would you test it?
I've been thinking about that angle lately. See the following post
for a hint as to what a detailed scenario [in MY sense of the word]
might be like:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/7dbc78bd6b692dd9
We could try to do exactly what I hypothesized such aliens might do,
based on the article being discussed in that thread, thereby giving a
really detailed scenario of how it might have happened.
Peter Nyikos
Ray Martinez
> I have boycotted Howard Hershey for over two months now, due to his
> lack of repentance for some vile libels which he subjected me to when
> we last had an exchange of posts.
Howard is not slighting you. He has done the same to me and Sean
Pitman. He slanders anyone who refuses to accept his ideas and
opinions.
Ray
> However, this post that he did
> almost two months ago illustrates a number of misconceptions that
> others have been laboring under, and so I take it as a starting point
> for clarifying matters.
>
> On Dec 12 2010, 5:46 pm, hersheyh <hershe...@yahoo.com> wrote inhttp://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/624ab648a2fa44de?dmod...
pnyikos
Look at it this way: if the odds favor abiogenesis less than once in a
universe, what is the more likely: that we are the ONE intelligent
species so far in our universe, or that we have evolved from living
things sent here by that ONE intelligent species?
In the rest of this post, I discuss the unusual (for me) hypothesis
that WE are that ONE species.
>
>
> > > Or are you postulating that these
> > > panspermists visit earth and install biological features from time to
> > > time?
>
> > No.
>
> > > > > Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> > > > > 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. I
> > > > > don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. As
> > > > > long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> > > > > several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> > > > > less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote,
>
> > So up there, I am mentioning odds of 9999 to 1 (to be exact) and so if
> > they seeded, say, 40,000 planets it's more likely that we are the
> > product of seeding than the product of "Mother Earth did it."
>
> I have to say that I have a hard time imagining humans wanting to pony
> up the cash for 40,000 rockets designed to possibly create something
> interest in a few billion years on a planet too far away to reach.
It would be spread out over at least as many years, and each probe
would cost no more than the annual piddling NASA budget these days.
It wouldn't even start until a thousands of years went by with
instrumental probes. If these show planet after planet awash with
prebiotic soup (or having layers of sludge from earlier prebiotic
soup) but no life, the human at that point might decide they would be
doing a huge favor to the concept of "species diversity" by seeding
lots of planets and letting life evolve on them, under diverse
conditions.
Of course, I would expect them to first be reasonably certain that
there are no life forms on each planet that they seed in turn. Hence
no more than one probe a year, maybe only one every twenty years.
>
>
> > > > >simple reasoning
> > > > > would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding,
> > > > > than we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
>
> > > > Can you calculate those odds?
>
> > > > > Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
> > > > > of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
> > > > > prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
> > > > > protein translation mechanism.
>
> > > > Why do those and only those look like they were designed?
>
> > There are others, but these are among the best known. Michael Behe
> > mentions the cilia, the flagella, and a few others in _Darwin's Black
> > Box_. I always thought it a huge deficiency not to mention the
> > translation apparatus.
>
> My point in asking is that if you don't assume that life has been
> tinkered with over time then all of the systems that are too hard to
> evolve must have come over in the original cells. Since we are
> positing bacteria as having been sent, that means everything
> multicellular must have evolved.
Yes.
> So what you're saying is that the
> flagella is more complicated to evolve than, I don't know, the immune
> system,
No. What I am saying is that IF we are the result of directed
panspermia [by the way, that's the usual spelling; if you want to
google it, use that one] then these are very good candidates for
deliberately designed structures/systems.
Yes, I worded things carelessly below. When I said "hard to evolve" I
meant, among systems that were sent here by panspermists.
Inez
> On Feb 11, 1:23�pm,Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Feb 10, 9:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
I suspect that the odds favor abiogenesis every time the conditions
are right, and I'm not sure how intelligence works into the
equation.If abiogenesis is likely a once-in-a-universe event then it
would most likely be that it happened on earth. The odds of a thing
happening are usually better than the odds of that same thing
happening plus another thing also happening.
> In the rest of this post, I discuss the unusual (for me) hypothesis
> that WE are that ONE species.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > > > Or are you postulating that these
> > > > panspermists visit earth and install biological features from time to
> > > > time?
>
> > > No.
>
> > > > > > Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> > > > > > 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. I
> > > > > > don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. As
> > > > > > long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> > > > > > several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> > > > > > less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote,
>
> > > So up there, I am mentioning odds of 9999 to 1 (to be exact) and so if
> > > they seeded, say,40,000planets it's more likely that we are the
> > > product of seeding than the product of "Mother Earth did it."
>
> > I have to say that I have a hard time imagining humans wanting to pony
> > up the cash for40,000rockets designed to possibly create something
> > interest in a few billion years on a planet too far away to reach.
>
> It would be spread out over at least as many years, and each probe
> would cost no more than the annual piddling NASA budget these days.
Would it? How do you arrive at these conclusions?
> It wouldn't even start until a thousands of years went by with
> instrumental probes. �If these show planet after planet awash with
> prebiotic soup (or having layers of sludge from earlier prebiotic
> soup) but no life, the human at that point might decide they would be
> doing a huge favor to the concept of "species diversity" by seeding
> lots of planets and letting life evolve on them, under diverse
> conditions.
>
> Of course, I would expect them to first be reasonably certain that
> there are no life forms on each planet that they seed in turn. �Hence
> no more than one probe a year, maybe only one every twenty years.
>
It just seems like a tremendous amount of work for something that
can't really make very much difference to the person/creature doing
the work.
I don't see any point to this line of conjecture. If we know that
things that seem difficult to evolve did in fact evolve then there's
no way to know if flagella were designed or not.
> Yes, I worded things carelessly below. �When I said "hard to evolve" I
> meant, among systems that were sent here by panspermists.
>
No offense, because I don't think that Directed panspermy in
inherently unreasonable, but it just seems to me that this is mostly a
fun notion with no supporting evidence.
Mark Isaak
> On Feb 11, 3:59 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:21:26 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
>> >> What sort of evidence do you see for [panspermy]?
>>
>> > Right now the evidence is mostly that advanced by Crick and Orgel,
>> > combined with the fact that nobody, including them, seems to have
>> > come up with a scenario of how abiogenesis MIGHT be expected to
>> > happen in the scant 500 million years available on earth--or indeed
>> > more than once in a googol of universes with the same physical
>> > constants and roughly the same number of stars as ours.
>>
>> > If the odds are that astronomical against abiogenesis, [...]
>>
>> You just said that there is no evidence that abiogenesis is anything
>> less than certain.
>
> What have you been smoking? :-)
>
>> "Nobody knows" cuts both ways.
>
> Seems like it's more honored in the breach than in the observance. While
> I make "if...then...." statements and challenges, you and most other
> t.o. regulars seem to think that "Mother Earth did it" is a done deal
> as long as no one PROVES otherwise.
What have you been smoking? I just said that you cannot go from "don't
know the cause" to "know the probabilities of it happening." For most of
human history, nobody had any scenario for what makes the sun shine.
That mean, according to Nyikosian logic, that the odds of the sun shining
were astronomically small (at least, until the 20th century; good thing
we figured it out in time).
Here's what you may validly use in your panspermy calculations: The odds
of abiogenesis on an earth-like planet are somewhere between 0 and 1, and
we cannot say where in that range is more likely.
>> Incidentally, have you seen the following article?
>>
>> Nick Lane, 2010. Chance or necessity? Bioenergetics and the
>> probability of life. _Journal of Cosmology_ 10:
>> 3286-3304.http://journalofcosmology.com/Abiogenesis107.html
>
> Not until I read your post. But a quick glance shows me the author is
> of the old school, just bringing data up to date about the various
> chemical forces going on.
And heck, why would anyone interested in abiogenesis worry at all about
chemistry.
> Most tellingly, there is absolutely no hint of how the protein
> translation mechanism could have evolved.
There's no hint in the article of how the Hula Hoop fad began, either.
Maybe the article was about something else.
>> I'm guessing not, or you would not have said above that nobody has come
>> up with a plausible scenario.
>
> Wrong use of the word "scenario." We are given spectacular underwater
> scenes, and lots of generalities, but not even an outline of how protein
> translation, whether by ribozymes or protein enzymes, could have
> evolved.
So abiogenesis is not the object of your incredulity, protein translation
is. Okay, then. Take all mention of abiogenesis out of your
calculations. (It's impossible to include realistically, anyway.)
Assume all planets start with primitive life, and make protein
translation the limiting factor.
> The following at least takes a long look at how the first might have
> evolved, and has several scenarios, detailing several steps of the long
> journey from Urey-Miller to the first prokaryote.
>
> AM Poole, DC Jeffares, D Penney, The path from the RNA world. J.
> Molecular Evolution 46: 1-17, 1998.
> http://awcmee.massey.ac.nz/people/dpenny/pdf/Poole_et_al_1998.pdf
>
> Actually a more apt title would have been, "A possible path within RNA
> world, and some ideas about a path from it".
So you already have a scenario. Then what are you bitching about?
Mark Isaak
> On Feb 11, 3:59 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:21:26 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
>
>> > Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
>> > 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes.
>
> AFAIK, America is definitely in the minority among countries of the world
> in its use of "billion" (10^9) while most of the world calls that a
> "milliard" and uses 10^12 for "billion".
>
>> > I don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis.
>> > As long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets
>> > is several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
>> > less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote, simple reasoning
>> > would dictate that we are more likely to be the result of seeding,
>> > than we are to be the result of "Mother Earth did it" abiogenesis.
>>
>> So it's based on numbers you pretty much made up out of nothing.
>
> Note the total lack of numbers up there, ...
"Astronomically small" is a number, or at least a narrow range. One you
made up out of an astronomically small amout of evidence.
>> > Other than that, the only additional evidence is a number of features
>> > of organisms that look like they were intelligently designed: the
>> > prokaryotic flagellae, the eukaryotic cilia, and the biggie: the
>> > protein translation mechanism.
>>
>> Now you are calling for, or at least strongly implying, at least two
>> panspermy events -- one for prokaryotes and one for eukaryotes.
>
> Well, I'm leaving open that possibility, but note the incredibly weak
> "look like".
Why the hell should anyone note that? Note the incredibly strong
"prokaryotic" and "eukaryotic". You are calling for separate panspermy
events if you want both to appear by pansperia.
>> Besides, none of those look intelligently designed. The "looks
>> designed" aspects which people attribute to them are just the sort of
>> thing one would expect from their having evolved.
>
> This deliberately paradoxical comment by you, [...]
What deliberately paradoxical? Evolution shares many traits in common
with design, so it is only to be expected that "looks designed" and
"looks evolved" would overlap a very great deal. If you are going to
talk about design, you should learn something about it.
pnyikos
> On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:54:29 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> > On Feb 11, 3:59�pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 15:21:26 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> >> >>�What sort of evidence do you see for [panspermy]?
>
> >> > Right now the evidence is mostly that advanced by Crick and Orgel,
> >> > combined with the fact that nobody, including them, seems to have
> >> > come up with a scenario of how abiogenesis MIGHT be expected to
> >> > happen in the scant 500 million years available on earth--or indeed
> >> > more than once in a googol of universes with the same physical
> >> > constants and roughly the same number of stars as ours.
>
> >> > If the odds are that astronomical against abiogenesis, [...]
>
> >> You just said that there is no evidence that abiogenesis is anything
> >> less than certain.
>
> > What have you been smoking? �:-)
No answer. So, does "just" refer to some other post of mine? Which
one? There's nothing like that from me up there.
> >>�"Nobody knows" cuts both ways.
>
> > Seems like it's more honored in the breach than in the observance. While
> > I make "if...then...." statements and challenges, you and most other
> > t.o. regulars �seem to think that "Mother Earth did it" is a done deal
> > as long as no one PROVES otherwise.
>
> What have you been smoking? �I just said that you cannot go from "don't
> know the cause" to "know the probabilities of it happening."
Where? If it's not here, then how can anyone possibly say that this
is ALL you wrote?
>�For most of
> human history, nobody had any scenario for what makes the sun shine.
> That mean, according to Nyikosian logic, that the odds of the sun shining
> were astronomically small (at least, until the 20th century; good thing
> we figured it out in time).
You are lying. I never concluded that the odds were astronomically
small from the fact that no one has presented a scenario.
In fact, I've never claimed outright that they were astronomically
small. I only:
(1) stated it as my private opinion, as one having an open mind (just
look at what I've written to and about the late lamented "el cid")
that the odds are astronomically small and
(2) used it in conditional sentences, as in "If the odds are
astronomically small, then...."
> Here's what you may validly use in your panspermy calculations: The odds
> of abiogenesis on an earth-like planet are somewhere between 0 and 1, and
> we cannot say where in that range is more likely.
Would you also say that the odds that *we* are the natural outcome of
abiogenesis HERE ON EARTH is somewhere between 0 and 1, and we cannot
say where in that range is more likely?
Would you also say that the odds that we are descended from
unicellular organisms by natural processes is somewhere between 0 and
1, and we cannot say where in that range is more likely?
> >> Incidentally, have you seen the following article?
>
> >> � Nick Lane, 2010. �Chance or necessity? Bioenergetics and the
> >> probability of life. �_Journal of Cosmology_ 10:
> >> 3286-3304.http://journalofcosmology.com/Abiogenesis107.html
>
> > Not until I read your post. �But a quick glance shows me the author is
> > of the old school, just bringing data up to date about the various
> > chemical forces going on.
>
> And heck, why would anyone interested in abiogenesis worry at all about
> chemistry.
The chemistry in THAT article is of one of two kinds: up through
deDuve's thioester world, and after the first unicellular organisms.
I'm not concerned about anything in those ranges. I am concerned
about the colossal gap in between the two, and I saw nothing in the
article that was relevant to that.
> > Most tellingly, there is absolutely no hint of how the protein
> > translation mechanism could have evolved.
>
> There's no hint in the article of how the Hula Hoop fad began, either.
> Maybe the article was about something else.
Maybe you are a scientific ignoramus, who doesn't realize that the
article does not give a scenario in the sense I've always meant it: a
step by step hypothesis of how abiogenesis could have happened. See
below.
> >> I'm guessing not, or you would not have said above that nobody has come
> >> up with a plausible scenario.
>
> > Wrong use of the word "scenario." �We are given spectacular underwater
> > scenes, and lots of generalities, but not even an outline of how protein
> > translation, whether by ribozymes or protein enzymes, could have
> > evolved.
Note the "whether by ribozymes or protein enzymes". Getting to
ribozymes, in and of itself, is a big step, but the article does do a
bit of explanation there. Getting to a protein translation by
ribozymes, mRNA, and tRNA is a colossal step; getting from that to
translation using protein enzymes, mRNA, tRNA, and ribosomes is
another colossal step.
A scenario, in my sense of the word, means breaking those two colossal
steps into a huge number of small steps, where one can clearly see
that each step doesn't require overcoming astronomical odds.
Naturally, I don't expect anyone here to describe all the steps. A
couple of dozen references to articles accessible on the net, along
witih a brief description of which steps each one describes, would
suffice. But so far I have only one really useful article.
Continued in my next post, which repeates that one really useful
article.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:54:29 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> > On Feb 11, 3:59 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> So abiogenesis is not the object of your incredulity, protein translation
> is.
Wrong. Life as we know it is ALL based on the protein translation
mechanism. That is what is relevant to whether abiogenesis happened
here on earth. We know of no other organisms that could have come
from abiogenesis.
>Okay, then. Take all mention of abiogenesis out of your
> calculations. (It's impossible to include realistically, anyway.)
> Assume all planets start with primitive life,
No dice. Someone could claim that "primitive life" could include a
RNA molecule with two nucleotides, coming together with a pair of
nucleotides of complementary sort, followed by those two nucleotides
forming a complementary RNA molecule to the first, then the new one
going through the same process to produce a duplicate of the original
RNA molecule.
> and make protein
> translation the limiting factor.
Someone else could take "primitive life" to mean a proto-cell
containing mRNA, tRNA, DNA, and ribozymes, and describe how, once it
grabbed the right amino acids from the surrounding medium, it could
set up a protein translation "assembly line," and crank out some
polypeptides.
And then, some aggressive jerk whom no one wants to cross can say my
conditions have been met for abiogenesis. Since the two people
referred to above don't want to cross him, they'll remain mum while
the jerk continually accuses me of "moving the goalposts" and of
indulging in "misdirection ploys".
> > The following at least takes a long look at how the first might have
> > evolved, and has several scenarios, detailing several steps of the long
> > journey from Urey-Miller to the first prokaryote.
>
> > AM Poole, DC Jeffares, D Penney, The path from the RNA world. J.
> > Molecular Evolution 46: 1-17, 1998.
> >http://awcmee.massey.ac.nz/people/dpenny/pdf/Poole_et_al_1998.pdf
>
> > Actually a more apt title would have been, "A possible path within RNA
> > world, and some ideas about a path from it".
>
> So you already have a scenario. Then what are you bitching about?
It's a bunch of short scenarios, with at least one colossal gap and
several other gaps remaining to be filled before we have a scenario of
the sort that would be meaningful. See my reply immediately
preceding, to this same post of yours.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On Feb 11, 4:09 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 11, 1:23 pm,Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 10, 9:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 10, 11:25 pm,Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >in your first post you suggested that earth
> > > > > was seeded with primordial cells. Presumably these simple cells were
> > > > > not intelligent, right?
Right.
That depends on what you mean by "abiogenesis". I'm holding out for
an organism with a good potential for evolving into intelligent life
capable of producing a technological civilization including space
travel. If your idea of abiogenesis is two RNA molecules as described
to my second reply to Mark of today, then I would say that this is NOT
an organism with a good potential for evolving into that kind of life.
See both replies of today to Mark Isaak for an example of what I think
of as something with that good potential, maybe 1 in 10,000.
> and I'm not sure how intelligence works into the
> equation.If abiogenesis is likely a once-in-a-universe event then it
> would most likely be that it happened on earth. The odds of a thing
> happening are usually better than the odds of that same thing
> happening plus another thing also happening.
You are implicitly multiplying the individual odds here; that is not
the right way to go about it.
If the one thing also can be expected to give rise to several other
things of the same kind, then the right question to ask is: what are
the odds that the thing before us is the first one?
> > In the rest of this post, I discuss the unusual (for me) hypothesis
> > that WE are that ONE species.
>
> > > > > Or are you postulating that these
> > > > > panspermists visit earth and install biological features from time to
> > > > > time?
>
> > > > No.
>
> > > > > > > Here we have one datum: it apparently happened here on earth, in ca.
> > > > > > > 3.9 American billion years starting with the first prokaryotes. I
> > > > > > > don't think the odds are as terrible as those against abiogenesis. As
> > > > > > > long as the expected number of attempts to seed promising planets is
> > > > > > > several times as much as the odds against such a species arising in
> > > > > > > less than 5 bilion years from the first prokaryote,
>
> > > > So up there, I am mentioning odds of 9999 to 1 (to be exact) and so if
> > > > they seeded, say, 40,000planets it's more likely that we are the
> > > > product of seeding than the product of "Mother Earth did it."
>
> > > I have to say that I have a hard time imagining humans wanting to pony
> > > up the cash for 40,000rockets designed to possibly create something
> > > interest in a few billion years on a planet too far away to reach.
If all they want is an atmosphere with enough oxygen, maybe only a
fraction of a billion is enough.
> > It would be spread out over at least as many years, and each probe
> > would cost no more than the annual piddling NASA budget these days.
>
> Would it? How do you arrive at these conclusions?
Have you ever heard of Project Orion, or Project Daedalus? These are
projects seriously considered by American and British space
scientists. The space vehicles envisioned were designed to transport
humans, but if all they transport are instruments or unicellular life
forms, the cost would be as described above once an assembly line to
produce them is in place.
You can read about them here:
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-daedalus-starship
http://www.damninteresting.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-atomic-spaceship
The second envisions the Orion ships taking off from earth, but the
assembly line I envision would be out in space, either on the moon or
an asteroid or maybe just a space station. That way, there is no
danger from nuclear fallout.
> > It wouldn't even start until a thousands of years went by with
> > instrumental probes. If these show planet after planet awash with
> > prebiotic soup (or having layers of sludge from earlier prebiotic
> > soup) but no life, the human at that point might decide they would be
> > doing a huge favor to the concept of "species diversity" by seeding
> > lots of planets and letting life evolve on them, under diverse
> > conditions.
>
> > Of course, I would expect them to first be reasonably certain that
> > there are no life forms on each planet that they seed in turn. Hence
> > no more than one probe a year, maybe only one every twenty years.
>
> It just seems like a tremendous amount of work for something that
> can't really make very much difference to the person/creature doing
> the work.
Why did Mallory want to climb Mount Everest? After being asked that a
number of times, he said simply, "Because it is there." And that
answer has been a source of inspiration for untold thousands.
The feeling of accomplishing something like directed panspermy with
great potential might give an even better satisfaction than being the
first to conquer Mt. Cholomungma ("Mother Goddess of the World"-- the
Tibetans' name for Mt. Everest).
Concluded in next post to this thread.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
I should add that the protein translation mechanism is of a different
nature altogether. It is so absolutely essential to life as we know
it, and so tremendously difficult to evolve, it makes even things like
the immune system look easy to evolve by comparison.
I should also add that Behe, etc. see the difficulty of evolving the
flagellae as evidence that they were designed. Lots of people have
lots of ideas as to what is easy to evolve and what is not, and I
sometimes have trouble deciding how much merit there is to what they
say.
> I don't see any point to this line of conjecture. If we know that
> things that seem difficult to evolve did in fact evolve
We don't know it, but each of us has his own opinion as to what
evolved and what did not.
Even with the protein translation mechanism, I have no firm opinions
as to whether it arose naturally (be it on earth or elsewhere) or was
designed by an intelligent life form with radically different
biochemistry, perhaps easier to arise naturally.
> then there's
> no way to know if flagella were designed or not.
> > Yes, I worded things carelessly below. When I said "hard to evolve" I
> > meant, among systems that were sent here by panspermists.
>
> No offense, because I don't think that Directed panspermy in
> inherently unreasonable, but it just seems to me that this is mostly a
> fun notion with no supporting evidence.
No offense taken. It's been a pleasure discussing these issues with
you, and I hope I haven't seen the last of you.
Peter Nyikos
Inez
> On Feb 12, 10:48�am, Inez <savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 11, 4:09 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 11, 1:23 pm,Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 10, 9:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Feb 10, 11:25 pm,Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > Look at it this way: if the odds favor abiogenesis less than once in a
> > > universe, what is the more likely: that we are the ONE intelligent
> > > species so far in our universe, or that we have evolved from living
> > > things sent here by that ONE intelligent species?
>
> > I suspect that the odds favor abiogenesis every time the conditions
> > are right,
>
> That depends on what you mean by "abiogenesis". �I'm holding out for
> an organism with a good potential for evolving into intelligent life
> capable of producing a technological civilization including space
> travel. �If your idea of abiogenesis is two RNA molecules as described
> to my second reply to Mark of today, then I would say that this is NOT
> an organism with a good potential for evolving into that kind of life.
>
I've no idea what the original self-replicating doohickeys were like
nor any idea how to judge which sort of molecule might be more or less
likely to evolve into anything else. I do however average seeing five
incredible things every day so I am not persuaded by arguments from
incredulity.
> See both replies of today to Mark Isaak for an example of what I think
> of as something with that good potential, maybe 1 in 10,000.
I'll have a look, but so far you seem extremely willing to pull
numbers out of thin air. Do you have scientific basis for your
opinions?
> > and I'm not sure how intelligence works into the
> > equation.If abiogenesis is likely a once-in-a-universe event then it
> > would most likely be that it happened on earth. �The odds of a thing
> > happening are usually better than the odds of that same thing
> > happening plus another thing also happening.
>
> You are implicitly multiplying the individual odds here; that is not
> the right way to go about it.
Actually I was adding them, which was perhaps not the right way to do
it either. Then again, I'm not attempting an exact calculation.
> If the one thing also can be expected to give rise to several other
> things of the same kind, then the right question to ask is: what are
> the odds that the thing before us is the first one?
>
I don't know what we can say that one thing can be expected to give
rise to several other things in this case. We know of only one
intelligent species and it has yet to show serious interest in panning
any sperm at far away planets.
<snip>
> > > > I have to say that I have a hard time imagining humans wanting to pony
> > > > up the cash for 40,000rockets designed to possibly create something
> > > > interest in a few billion years on a planet too far away to reach.
>
> If all they want is an atmosphere with enough oxygen, maybe only a
> fraction of a billion is enough.
>
But see, that's still a long time. I might well want a planet with an
atmosphere, but do I want one for my descendants who have in the
intervening time evolved into something else? Can't I just leave them
my great aunt's cameo brooch and save my rocket money? Also, if they
are so keen on oxygen why are they not here breathing it?
> > > It would be spread out over at least as many years, and each probe
> > > would cost no more than the annual piddling NASA budget these days.
>
> > Would it? �How do you arrive at these conclusions?
>
> Have you ever heard of Project Orion, or Project Daedalus? �These are
> projects seriously considered by American and British space
> scientists. �The space vehicles envisioned were designed to transport
> humans, but if all they transport are instruments or unicellular life
> forms, the cost would be as described above once an assembly line to
> produce them is in place.
Wikipedia suggests a price of 10% of the Entire US GDP for an Orion
style spaceship. No price figures were given for Project Daedalus,
but the article did have mining balloons gathering helium-3 from
Jupiter, which can't be cheap.
> You can read about them here:
>
> http://www.damninteresting.com/the-daedalus-starship
>
> http://www.damninteresting.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-lov...
>
> The second envisions the Orion ships taking off from earth, but the
> assembly line I envision would be out in space, either on the moon or
> an asteroid or maybe just a space station. �That way, there is no
> danger from nuclear fallout.
>
> > > It wouldn't even start until a thousands of years went by with
> > > instrumental probes. If these show planet after planet awash with
> > > prebiotic soup (or having layers of sludge from earlier prebiotic
> > > soup) but no life, the human at that point might decide they would be
> > > doing a huge favor to the concept of "species diversity" by seeding
> > > lots of planets and letting life evolve on them, under diverse
> > > conditions.
>
> > > Of course, I would expect them to first be reasonably certain that
> > > there are no life forms on each planet that they seed in turn. Hence
> > > no more than one probe a year, maybe only one every twenty years.
>
> > It just seems like a tremendous amount of work for something that
> > can't really make very much difference to the person/creature doing
> > the work.
>
> Why did Mallory want to climb Mount Everest? �After being asked that a
> number of times, he said simply, "Because it is there." �And that
> answer has been a source of inspiration for untold thousands.
> The feeling of accomplishing something like directed panspermy with
> great potential might give an even better satisfaction than being the
> first to conquer Mt. Cholomungma ("Mother Goddess of the World"-- the
> Tibetans' name for Mt. Everest).
Yes, but what satisfaction is there in sending a probe off into space
that will return long after you are dead to report on whether or not
there is a planet worthy of sending your cells to so a second rocket
can be sent, and then you wait a billion years? Not a lot of sense of
accomplishment in that, although who knows how aliens think?
Vend
Adding is incorrect, however your intuition is correct.
Indeed, you pointed out a conjunction fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy
pnyikos
But not any committed by me. Note what I said next:
"If the one thing also can be expected to give rise to several other
things of the same kind, then the right question to ask is: what are
the odds that the thing before us is the first one?"
Inez didn't know why I expect a technologically advanced civilization
to seed many planets; but there are several reasons why I think it a
better than 1 in 3 shot.
First, we've barely attained the level of space travel. Barring a
thermonuclear world war, I'd say we have a darn good chance (better
that 1 in 2) of maintaining that civilization for several million
years.
Second, if we do go that far, with intermittent progress, I expect us
to have a pretty darn good idea whether there are likely any other
planets within 1000 light years with life or even proto-life that is
more advanced than a bunch of self-replicating oligonucleotides.
Third, if some calculations are correct, our sun will become so hot
within half a billion years that life on earth will no longer be
practically sustainable. And the other places in the solar system
won't be comfortable much longer than that. So if our species makes
it to, say, 5 million years from now, then it may also decide there is
a good chance of it continuing to 500 million years later, and then
undertake a project to convert some other planet into a habitable
world with oxygen.
Back to the second point: I suspect that the humans of a few million
years from now WILL find a few planets with life on them, but ONLY
because the very first technological civilization in our galaxy was
faced with a similar scenario and decided to spread primitive life far
and wide, for reasons like those in the third point.
Why only a few? Because the planets the panspermists seeded will be
pretty randomly spread out in the galaxy by now, except for its big
central hub consisting mostly of Population II stars (which, despite
the Roman numeral, are generally much older than the Population I
stars, of which our sun is one).
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
Mark Isaak
> On Feb 12, 1:00 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:54:29 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
>> > On Feb 11, 3:59 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>> So abiogenesis is not the object of your incredulity, protein
>> translation is.
>
> Wrong. Life as we know it is ALL based on the protein translation
> mechanism. That is what is relevant to whether abiogenesis happened
> here on earth. We know of no other organisms that could have come from
> abiogenesis.
Please note that there is a distinction between "we do not know of" and
"does not exist". Please note that that distinction is huge and,
literally, vitally important. Please note that that distinction holds
even when "we" includes you.
>> Okay, then. Take all mention of abiogenesis out of your
>> calculations. (It's impossible to include realistically, anyway.)
>> Assume all planets start with primitive life,
>
> No dice. Someone could claim that "primitive life" could include a
> RNA molecule with two nucleotides, coming together with a pair of
> nucleotides of complementary sort, followed by those two nucleotides
> forming a complementary RNA molecule to the first, then the new one
> going through the same process to produce a duplicate of the original
> RNA molecule.
And in fact, they could claim that "primitive life" could be even simpler
than that, and they would be right. Once you have something that is
self-replicating and more-or-less self-contained and that uses energy and
raw materials from somewhere else, you have life. Maybe you have life
even before that; there is no clear dividing line.
Then, once you have primitive life, optimizing organization is just a
matter of course. Yes, getting from RNA to proteins is a big step from
the perspective of ignorance, but there is nothing to indicate that it is
not composed of many small and simple steps. In fact, given what we know
about the organizing power of evolution, *something* as "big" as protein
translation was all but inevitable.
Vend
> On Feb 15, 3:55 pm, Vend <ven...@virgilio.it> wrote:
<snip>
> > Adding is incorrect, however your intuition is correct.
> > Indeed, you pointed out a conjunction fallacy:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy
>
> But not any committed by me. �ｿｽNote what I said next:
>
> "If the one thing also can be expected to give rise to several other
> things of the same kind, then the right question to ask is: what are
> the odds that the thing before us is the first one?"
>
> Inez didn't know why I expect a technologically advanced civilization
> to seed many planets; but there are several reasons why I think it a
> better than 1 in 3 shot.
Whatever scenario you can come up with, it still requires abiogenesis
happening somewhere, AND a series of other, quite improbable, events.
The joint probability of any of your scenarios is still lower than the
scenario where abiogenesis happens on earth and that's it.
> First, we've barely attained the level of space travel. �ｿｽBarring a
> thermonuclear world war, I'd say we have a darn good chance (better
> that 1 in 2) of maintaining that civilization for several million
> years.
Possibly.
But what was the prior probability civilization appeared on our planet
given that abiogenesis happened on earth?
Pretty low, I think.
> Second, if we do go that far, with intermittent progress, I expect us
> to have a pretty darn good idea whether there are likely any other
> planets within 1000 light years with life or even proto-life that is
> more advanced than a bunch of self-replicating oligonucleotides.
But unless some major new discovery in physics allows us to build star
trekesque superluminal travel, it's unlikely we are ever going to set
foot on any of these planets. Or send probes there, for that matter.
> Third, if some calculations are correct, our sun will become so hot
> within half a billion years that life on earth will no longer be
> practically sustainable. �ｿｽ And the other places in the solar system
> won't be comfortable much longer than that. �ｿｽSo if our species makes
> it to, say, 5 million years from now, then it may also decide there is
> a good chance of it continuing to 500 million years later, and then
> undertake a project to convert some other planet into a habitable
> world with oxygen.
Come on, people barely care about what happens within their lifetime,
do you seriously think someone is gonna undertake a project that pays
off in 500 million years?
And anyway, how is this related to your argument?
> Back to the second point: I suspect that �ｿｽthe humans of a few million
> years from now WILL find a few planets with life on them, but ONLY
> because the very first technological civilization in our galaxy was
> faced with a similar scenario and decided to spread primitive life far
> and wide, for reasons like those in the third point.
That sounds quite circular. You expect evidence of panspermy because
you believe in panspermy.
Arkalen
> On Feb 15, 10:45 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> On Feb 12, 10:48 am, Inez <savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Feb 11, 4:09 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>>>> On Feb 11, 1:23 pm,Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>> On Feb 10, 9:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>
>>> and I'm not sure how intelligence works into the
>>> equation.If abiogenesis is likely a once-in-a-universe event then it
>>> would most likely be that it happened on earth. The odds of a thing
>>> happening are usually better than the odds of that same thing
>>> happening plus another thing also happening.
>>
>> You are implicitly multiplying the individual odds here; that is not
>> the right way to go about it.
>
> Actually I was adding them, which was perhaps not the right way to do
> it either. Then again, I'm not attempting an exact calculation.
Your problem was comparing "the odds of a thing happening vs the odds of
that same thing happening + another thing". The problem is the odds of
life appearing on Earth aren't really the same as the odds of life
appearing elsewhere. If anything the odds of it appearing elsewhere are
much higher because there is more of it, but on the other hand on Earth
at least we know life exists. We just don't know that much on the subject.
PNyikos's statement that life on Earth is more likely to come from
seeding than from abiogenesis is true IF abiogenesis is very unlikely
and IF seeding is very likely and widespread. Both of those are big ifs
and I don't see a reason to assume them. Again, we don't know that much
and while PNyikos thinks the data shows abiogenesis is highly unlikely
tons of people think it shows the exact opposite.
The way I see it, we don't know enough to tell which of those hypotheses
is more likely. But as far as research focus goes, we can either study
abiogenesis in a few specific environments we have a certain amount of
information on, or study it in any environment of a Universe we don't
know that much about in the first place.
If you don't know the likelihood of your keys having fallen in one place
or the other you might as well start by looking under the streetlight,
basically.
Inez
> On Feb 15, 3:55 pm, Vend <ven...@virgilio.it> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> to seed many planets; but there are several reasons why I think it a
> better than 1 in 3 shot.
>
> First, we've barely attained the level of space travel. Barring a
> thermonuclear world war, I'd say we have a darn good chance (better
> that 1 in 2) of maintaining that civilization for several million
> years.
> Second, if we do go that far, with intermittent progress, I expect us
> to have a pretty darn good idea whether there are likely any other
> planets within 1000 light years with life or even proto-life that is
> more advanced than a bunch of self-replicating oligonucleotides.
Will we? How would we know about conditions on planets 1,000 light
years away? What if none of the science fictiony methods of getting
around the speed of light turn out to work? How would we get that
level of detail about a planet so distant? I hope we do get to know
these things, but it doesn't seem super-possible to me.
>
> Third, if some calculations are correct, our sun will become so hot
> within half a billion years that life on earth will no longer be
> practically sustainable. And the other places in the solar system
> won't be comfortable much longer than that. So if our species makes
> it to, say, 5 million years from now, then it may also decide there is
> a good chance of it continuing to 500 million years later, and then
> undertake a project to convert some other planet into a habitable
> world with oxygen.
You're giving these future generations the ability to fly to places
1,000 light years away but all they get for terraforming is dumping a
couple of cells on a planet and waiting half a billion years. Why
wouldn't they just fly there with colonists in suspended animation,
dump a bunch of plant seeds, and land their colony a decade later, or
however long it takes?
> Back to the second point: I suspect that the humans of a few million
> years from now WILL find a few planets with life on them, but ONLY
> because the very first technological civilization in our galaxy was
> faced with a similar scenario and decided to spread primitive life far
> and wide, for reasons like those in the third point.
I don't see why you think abiogenesis must be so rare. This seems
very unlikely to me. I'm not a chemist, but it seems to me that
chemical reactions either work all the time given the right conditions
or not at all given the wrong ones, and I don't see why you would
expect there to be a planet with physical conditions that were
different than every other planet in the universe.
> Why only a few? Because the planets the panspermists seeded will be
> pretty randomly spread out in the galaxy by now, except for its big
> central hub consisting mostly of Population II stars (which, despite
> the Roman numeral, are generally much older than the Population I
> stars, of which our sun is one).
>
> Peter Nyikos
> Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/- Hide quoted text -
pnyikos
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:09:54 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> > On Feb 12, 1:00�pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:54:29 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> >> > On Feb 11, 3:59�pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >> So abiogenesis is not the object of your incredulity, protein
> >> translation is.
>
> > Wrong. �Life as we know it is ALL based on the protein translation
> > mechanism. �That is what is relevant to whether abiogenesis happened
> > here on earth. �We know of no other organisms that could have come from
> > abiogenesis.
>
> Please note that there is a distinction between "we do not know of" and
> "does not exist". �Please note that that distinction is huge and,
> literally, vitally important. �Please note that that distinction holds
> even when "we" includes you.
Please note that I am only talking about the odds that abiogenesis
happened ON EARTH. This extra qualifier dwarfs even your huge
"vitally important" ones.
> >> Okay, then. �Take all mention of abiogenesis out of your
> >> calculations. �(It's impossible to include realistically, anyway.)
> >> Assume all planets start with primitive life,
>
> > No dice. � Someone could claim that �"primitive life" could include a
> > RNA molecule with two nucleotides, coming together with a pair of
> > nucleotides of complementary sort, followed by those two nucleotides
> > forming a complementary RNA molecule to the first, then the new one
> > going through the same process to produce a duplicate of the original
> > RNA molecule.
>
> And in fact, they could claim that "primitive life" could be even simpler
> than that, and they would be right.
Only if you play the Lexicographical Straightjacketer and insist that
"life" has to be interpreted this broadly.
> �Once you have something that is
> self-replicating and more-or-less self-containedand that uses energy and
> raw materials from somewhere else, you have life. �Maybe you have life
> even before that; there is no clear dividing line.
>
> Then, once you have primitive life, optimizing organization is just a
> matter of course.
"Optimizing" the production of two nucleotides from two other ones IS
just a matter of course. What you say next is a matter of blind
faith--BY YOU.
>�Yes, getting from RNA to proteins is a big step from
> the perspective of ignorance,
TWO nucleotide RNA. Do you see why I said "No dice."? You are
already starting to play the role of the jerk whose description
you've conveniently deleted.
> but there is nothing to indicate that it is
> not composed of many small and simple steps.
There is nothing to indicate that it is. Not even if you assume 50
nucleotide RNA's practically saturating earth's oceans.
There is nothing to indicate that it COULD BE. At least not within
the confines of talk.origins and every book on the subject that I have
ever read.
You have ducked the challenge I'm alluding to here, repeatedly.
> �In fact, given what we know
> about the organizing power of evolution, *something* as "big" as protein
> translation was all but inevitable.
Ha! ha! ha!
Now it comes out that you dissembled big time when you claimed that
the probability of abiogenesis on an earth like planet is somewhere
between 0 and 1, and nobody has a clue as to one range being more
likely than another.
And so you reveal yourself to be a political animal, a polemicist who
will say one thing to deflate an opponent and the opposite to inflate
the faith you hold so biindly.
But then, you've come across that way to me since 1995. It's nice,
though, to see such a crystal clear illustration of what a pollitical
animal you are.
Peter Nyikos
Mark Isaak
You are using quite a different dictionary than I am. Your definitions
of 'abiogenesis', 'life', and 'political', for a start, have nothing to
do with the definitions of those words as I use them, and as I hear most
others use them.
Anyway, I'm glad to see you admit that the steps to protein synthesis
*could be* trivial.
pnyikos
> On Feb 15, 2:59�pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 15, 3:55 pm, Vend <ven...@virgilio.it> wrote:
>
> > > On 15 Feb, 20:45,Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 15, 10:45 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:>
>
> > > > > On Feb 12, 10:48 am,Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > I suspect that the odds favor abiogenesis every time the conditions
> > > > > > are right,
>
> > > > > That depends on what you mean by "abiogenesis". I'm holding out for
> > > > > an organism with a good potential for evolving into intelligent life
> > > > > capable of producing a technological civilization including space
> > > > > travel. If your idea of abiogenesis is two RNA molecules as described
> > > > > to my second reply to Mark of today, then I would say that this is NOT
> > > > > an organism with a good potential for evolving into that kind of life.
>
> > > > I've no idea what the original self-replicating doohickeys were like
> > > > nor any idea how to judge which sort of molecule might be more or less
> > > > likely to evolve into anything else.
Single molecules -- not a chance. It's assemblages of molecules on
which biological evolution depends. Even viruses are evolutionary
dead ends. They cannot reproduce without taking over the protein
translation mechanism of host cells.
> > > > > See both replies of today to Mark Isaak for an example of what I think
> > > > > of as something with that good potential, maybe 1 in 10,000.
>
> > > > I'll have a look, but so far you seem extremely willing to pull
> > > > numbers out of thin air. Do you have scientific basis for your
> > > > opinions?
Well, there was a joint conference of space scientists from the Soviet
Union and the USA in the 1970's which I read about in an astronomy
textbook I have at home. If I recall correctly, there was a sort of
consensus on the estimate that one in 100,000 planets with conditions
similar to those of the new earth would give rise to a species with a
technological civilization.
I think they seriously underestimated the difficulty of getting a life
form as sophisticated as a bacterium, and I don't know what the
breakdown of that figure was. But, assuming they gave it a 1 in 10
chance, I can go along with the rest of the estimate, and hence my 1
in 10,000 figure.
[...]
> > "If the one thing also can be expected to give rise to several other
> > things of the same kind, then the right question to ask is: what are
> > the odds that the thing before us is the first one?"
>
> > Inez didn't know why I expect a technologically advanced civilization
> > to seed many planets; but there are several reasons why I think it a
> > better than 1 in 3 shot.
>
> > First, we've barely attained the level of space travel. Barring a
> > thermonuclear world war, I'd say we have a darn good chance (better
> > that 1 in 2) of maintaining that civilization for several million
> > years.
> > Second, if we do go that far, with intermittent progress, I expect us
> > to have a pretty darn good idea whether there are likely any other
> > planets within 1000 light years with life or even proto-life that is
> > more advanced than a bunch of self-replicating oligonucleotides.
>
> Will we? How would we know about conditions on planets 1,000 light
> years away?
Assuming we don't regress seriously for most of those several million
years, we could send out unmanned probes to scout all likely
prospects. Good space-based telescopes could really narrow down which
solar systems get our attention. So even one probe a century could
probably do a pretty thorough job of our 1,000 light year vicinity in
the course of 1 million years.
> What if none of the science fictiony methods of getting
> around the speed of light turn out to work?
I envision something possible with present day technology, 1/30th of
the speed of light, and no return trip, and several solar systems
visited by the same probe on the first go-round of a system.
>How would we get that
> level of detail about a planet so distant?
The probes would radio back the information using masers aimed at
earth.
> > Third, if some calculations are correct, our sun will become so hot
> > within half a billion years that life on earth will no longer be
> > practically sustainable. And the other places in the solar system
> > won't be comfortable much longer than that. So if our species makes
> > it to, say, 5 million years from now, then it may also decide there is
> > a good chance of it continuing to 500 million years later, and then
> > undertake a project to convert some other planet into a habitable
> > world with oxygen.
>
> You're giving these future generations the ability to fly to places
> 1,000 light years away but all they get for terraforming is dumping a
> couple of cells on a planet and waiting half a billion years.
And they wouldn't need to really send humans until most of those years
are up. And there would be no need to carry fuel for a return trip,
just enough to slow down to a speed suitable for a soft landing.
> Why
> wouldn't they just fly there with colonists in suspended animation,
That's speculative--we have no clue whether humans can be put into
suspended animation for more than a few hours and be revived. I stick
to what is achievable now.
> dump a bunch of plant seeds, and land their colony a decade later, or
> however long it takes?
Not nearly enough time to produce a breathable atmosphere. In fact,
if it takes less than half a billion years for the seeded organisms to
do it, then you can cut the time for colonization accordingly.
But it took over two billion years on earth just to start
accumulating free oxygen. See my first post to this thread for why it
might take significantly less time--but I don't want to estimate less
than half a billion for an atmosphere with the oxygen level we have at
20,000 feet until I see a good reason to cut the time down further.
> > Back to the second point: I suspect that the humans of a few million
> > years from now WILL find a few planets with life on them, but ONLY
> > because the very first technological civilization in our galaxy was
> > faced with a similar scenario and decided to spread primitive life far
> > and wide, for reasons like those in the third point.
>
> I don't see why you think abiogenesis must be so rare. This seems
> very unlikely to me. I'm not a chemist, but it seems to me that
> chemical reactions either work all the time given the right conditions
The chemical reactions would have to favor enormously complicated
molecules somehow. This involves chemistry like you won't find in
more than a handful of present day labs, and the experiments THERE are
carefully selected by human agents.
> or not at all given the wrong ones, and I don't see why you would
> expect there to be a planet with physical conditions that were
> different than every other planet in the universe.
I don't. I just think one planet, with rather ordinary conditiions,
got fantastically lucky. Given 10^500 universes, it might be highly
likely that there are many lucky ones -- but each one would be
tremendously lucky IMHO.
> > Why only a few? Because the planets the panspermists seeded will be
> > pretty randomly spread out in the galaxy by now, except for its big
> > central hub consisting mostly of Population II stars (which, despite
> > the Roman numeral, are generally much older than the Population I
> > stars, of which our sun is one).
>
> > Peter Nyikos
> > Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
> > University of South Carolinahttp://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/-Hide quoted text -
pnyikos
> On Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:09:54 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> > On Feb 12, 1:00 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> On Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:54:29 -0800, pnyikos wrote:
> >> > On Feb 11, 3:59 pm, Mark Isaak <eci...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >> So abiogenesis is not the object of your incredulity, protein
> >> translation is.
>
> > Wrong. Life as we know it is ALL based on the protein translation
> > mechanism. That is what is relevant to whether abiogenesis happened
> > here on earth. We know of no other organisms that could have come from
> > abiogenesis.
>
> Please note that there is a distinction between "we do not know of" and
> "does not exist".
Please note that you are belaboring what is crashingly obvious to me.
I talked about Scenario 3C, with its ribozyme-based hypothetical
panspermists, long before you decided to belabor the obvious in any
such way.
And please note that I have refuted your opening salvo, and you have
done nothing to address the refutation. We still have to ACCOUNT FOR
the one form of life of which we know, whether by postulating a
radically different life form that designed it, or working out a
plausible scenario for it having arisen spontaneously.
> Please note that that distinction is huge and,
..and only someone as given to condescension as you are would keep
belaboring these obvious points.
> literally, vitally important. Please note that that distinction holds
> even when "we" includes you.
Please note that you are giving no sign of having the foggiest idea of
what biochemical and microbiological issues are involved.
You aren't a scientist, are you?
> >> Okay, then. Take all mention of abiogenesis out of your
> >> calculations. (It's impossible to include realistically, anyway.)
> >> Assume all planets start with primitive life,
>
> > No dice. Someone could claim that "primitive life" could include a
> > RNA molecule with two nucleotides, coming together with a pair of
> > nucleotides of complementary sort, followed by those two nucleotides
> > forming a complementary RNA molecule to the first, then the new one
> > going through the same process to produce a duplicate of the original
> > RNA molecule.
>
> And in fact, they could claim that "primitive life" could be even simpler
> than that, and they would be right.
But could they somehow beat a path from this rudimetary self-
replicator, which must be postulated to replicate itself...
... VERY poorly, because otherwise the number of nucleotides wouldn't
grow astronomically...
...to life capable of evolving into a technologically advanced species
such as ourselves in a mere 4 billion years or less?
>Once you havesomething that is
> self-replicating and more-or-less self-contained
Whatever that means. What keeps it from deteriorating before it
replicates itself?
> and that uses energy and
> raw materials from somewhere else, you have life.
> Maybe you have life
> even before that; there is no clear dividing line.
> Then, once you have primitive life, optimizing organization is just a
> matter of course.
Blind faith is your forte. Are you a biologist, or someone who has
swallowed a lot of pop biology propaganda?
> Yes, getting from RNA to proteins is a big step from
> the perspective of ignorance,
Especially that of someone like yourself. You never even tried to
join in the discussions with "el cid", nor are you making the
slightest effort to replace him.
You lack the basic biological knowledge for it, don't you?
> but there is nothing to indicate that it is
> not composed of many small and simple steps.
Nor is there anything to indicate that it was. Hence my 15-year wait
for a scenaio in talk.origins.
> In fact, given what we know
> about the organizing power of evolution,
...in protein-translation-based life as we know it. We know ZILCH
about the organizing power of things between thioester world and
protein translation.
> *something* as "big" as protein
> translation was all but inevitable.
...in the minds of atheistic astronomers like Carl Sagan, and Nobel
Laureate biochemist Christian de Duve, whose miserable failure to
bridge the gap between thioester world and the first prokaryote is
what convinced me that the emperor of "inevitable protein translation"
has no clothes.
Peter Nyikos
>
> --
> Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
> "It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
> honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
> pompous views suggested by [...]
...Mark Isaak.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
Since you had nothing intelligent to say about the above, I decided to
do another follow-up to the same post of yours, taking a completely
different tack this time.
Let's see whether you can come up with something a little more
creative this time than the following retreat into generalities:
> You are using quite a different dictionary than I am. Your definitions
> of 'abiogenesis', 'life', and 'political', for a start, have nothing to
> do with the definitions of those words as I use them, and as I hear most
> others use them.
Here in talk.origins? Y'all are hardly an unbiased lot.
> Anyway, I'm glad to see you admit that the steps to protein synthesis
> *could be* trivial.
No, I did not admit that. What passage above makes you think
otherwise?
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On 15 Feb, 23:59, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 15, 3:55 pm, Vend <ven...@virgilio.it> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > > Adding is incorrect, however your intuition is correct.
> > > Indeed, you pointed out a conjunction fallacy:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy
>
>
> > "If the one thing also can be expected to give rise to several other
> > things of the same kind, then the right question to ask is: what are
> > the odds that the thing before us is the first one?"
>
> > Inez didn't know why I expect a technologically advanced civilization
> > to seed many planets; but there are several reasons why I think it a
> > better than 1 in 3 shot.
>
> Whatever scenario you can come up with, it still requires abiogenesis
> happening somewhere, AND a series of other, quite improbable, events.
"Improbable" only in the sense that people of 1000 AD would have
considered the existence of a pair of islands here on earth, whose
total size is about that of England, with no terrestrial mammals (let
alone man) on it, yet with temperate climate, to be "quite
improbable".
But a few centuries later, New Zealand was discovered by Maoris, who
introduced other terrestrial mammals besides themselves to the two
islands.
> The joint probability of any of your scenarios is still lower than the
> scenario where abiogenesis happens on earth and that's it.
Even "Arkalen" knew better than that. To Inez he wrote shortly after
you posted this:
"Your problem was comparing "the odds of a thing happening vs the odds
of
that same thing happening + another thing". The problem is the odds of
life appearing on Earth aren't really the same as the odds of life
appearing elsewhere. If anything the odds of it appearing elsewhere
are
much higher because there is more of it, but on the other hand on
Earth
at least we know life exists. We just don't know that much on the
subject."
Even he didn't reason out all the factors involved. But now, I'll
fill in some of the missing reasoning below.
> > First, we've barely attained the level of space travel. Barring a
> > thermonuclear world war, I'd say we have a darn good chance (better
> > that 1 in 2) of maintaining that civilization for several million
> > years.
>
> Possibly.
>
> But what was the prior probability civilization appeared on our planet
> given that abiogenesis happened on earth?
> Pretty low, I think.
Like I said to Inez, I think an estimate of 1 in 10,000 to be
reasonable. But I also think it reasonable that in the course of
several million years, a technological civilization will seed at least
100,000 planets in a huge assortment of solar systems. I think an
estimate of 1 in 4 such civilizations finding themselves alone in the
galaxy (with nothing as sophisticated as prokaryotes anywhere else)
undertaking such a big long-term project to be quite reasonable.
And I think the odds are very strongly in favor of there being no more
that 1 planet per galaxy having even something as simple as
prokaryotes arise spontaneously.
Now do you see why I favor directed panspermy over homegrown
abiogenesis?
> > Second, if we do go that far, with intermittent progress, I expect us
> > to have a pretty darn good idea whether there are likely any other
> > planets within 1000 light years with life or even proto-life that is
> > more advanced than a bunch of self-replicating oligonucleotides.
>
> But unless some major new discovery in physics allows us to build star
> trekesque superluminal travel,
...we'll just have to settle for 1/30th to 1/10th of the speed of
light, which is attainable with technology available to us. See about
Project Orion here:
http://www.damninteresting.com/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-atomic-spaceship
Since I only envision instrumental, one-way probes for the effort
outlined above, we'd need far less than the seven million tons it
describes for the largest ones, which were designed to send humans on
round trips to nearby solar systems (Barnard's star, etc.). Ten
thousand tons should be more than adequate to get it up to 1/30 c
speed.
> it's unlikely we are ever going to set
> foot on any of these planets.
Nor do I hypothesize the panspermists to have set foot (or tentacle or
whatever) on earth 3.9 billion years ago. If you read Francis Crick's
_Life Itself_, you'll see he doesn't hypothesize that either.
> Or send probes there, for that matter.
THERE I differ with you. We could send probes at the rate of 1 every
10 years and it would cost us only about 1/10th of the NASA budget,
provided we set up assembly lines and mechanize the process of
building Orion-ish spacecraft.
>
> > Third, if some calculations are correct, our sun will become so hot
> > within half a billion years that life on earth will no longer be
> > practically sustainable. And the other places in the solar system
> > won't be comfortable much longer than that. So if our species makes
> > it to, say, 5 million years from now, then it may also decide there is
> > a good chance of it continuing to 500 million years later, and then
> > undertake a project to convert some other planet into a habitable
> > world with oxygen.
>
> Come on, people barely care about what happens within their lifetime,
You are a typical 21st century American. People of other cultures are
much more farsighted, and even some Americans are.
The following joke was published in a nationally distributred magazine
in the 1950's when people were much more farsighted about space travel
than they are now, on the whole:
Audience member to lecturer: Did you really mean to say that the sun
would swallow up the earth some day?
Lecturer: Yes, but it would be only about two billion years from
now!
Audience member: Whew! What a relief! I thought you said "two
million years"!
> do you seriously think someone is gonna undertake a project that pays
> off in 500 million years?
>
> And anyway, how is this related to your argument?
It provides one possible motivation for us to undertake a huge seeding
project. And if us, why not some other technological species that
arose about 4 billion years ago?
> > Back to the second point: I suspect that the humans of a few million
> > years from now WILL find a few planets with life on them, but ONLY
> > because the very first technological civilization in our galaxy was
> > faced with a similar scenario and decided to spread primitive life far
> > and wide, for reasons like those in the third point.
>
> That sounds quite circular. You expect evidence of panspermy because
> you believe in panspermy.
It isn't really circular. Besides, I don't expect it to be the ONLY
evidence of panspermy. The best "evidence" I have so far is the
reasoning process above, but there are other (very weak at the moment)
forms, like the existence of the bacterial flagellum.
Peter Nyikos
pnyikos
> On 15/02/11 19:45, Inez wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 15, 10:45 am, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >> On Feb 12, 10:48 am, Inez <savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> On Feb 11, 4:09 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> >>>> On Feb 11, 1:23 pm,Inez<savagemouse...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>>> On Feb 10, 9:17 pm, pnyikos <nyik...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> snip
>
> >>> and I'm not sure how intelligence works into the
> >>> equation.If abiogenesis is likely a once-in-a-universe event then it
> >>> would most likely be that it happened on earth.
The following reasoning is specious because it does not take all
factors into account:
> >>> The odds of a thing
> >>> happening are usually better than the odds of that same thing
> >>> happening plus another thing also happening.
>
> >> You are implicitly multiplying the individual odds here; that is not
> >> the right way to go about it.
>
> > Actually I was adding them, which was perhaps not the right way to do
> > it either. Then again, I'm not attempting an exact calculation.
>
> Your problem was comparing "the odds of a thing happening vs the odds of
> that same thing happening + another thing". The problem is the odds of
> life appearing on Earth aren't really the same as the odds of life
> appearing elsewhere.
I wouldn't put it exactly that way. Whatever the odds of it happening
elsewhere, some other planet may have simply beat earth to it. But
you are on the right track:
> If anything the odds of it appearing elsewhere are
> much higher because there is more of it, but on the other hand on Earth
> at least we know life exists. We just don't know that much on the subject.
>
> PNyikos's statement that life on Earth is more likely to come from
> seeding than from abiogenesis is true IF abiogenesis is very unlikely
> and IF seeding is very likely and widespread. Both of those are big ifs
> and I don't see a reason to assume them.
I do see reasons to assume the first, which I've stated in arguments
on various threads, especially in discussion and debate with the late
"el cid."
I don't assume the second, just the modest assumption that maybe 1 in
3 technological civilizations would undertake a very large seeding
project. See my reply to "Vend" a short while ago.
>Again, we don't know that much
> and while PNyikos thinks the data shows abiogenesis is highly unlikely
> tons of people think it shows the exact opposite.
Yeah, but when you press them for WHY they think it will advance even
as far as the first prokaryote, they almost always become vague. Mark
Isaak is a good example. Did you notice just how he couches his
"reasoning" in extreme generalities on this thread?
> The way I see it, we don't know enough to tell which of those hypotheses
> is more likely. But as far as research focus goes, we can either study
> abiogenesis in a few specific environments we have a certain amount of
> information on, or study it in any environment of a Universe we don't
> know that much about in the first place.
We know the environments of Earth pretty well, and we only need to
reason about other environments and study those.
That's what Miller did in his famous experiment. He got the best
results with a reducing atmosphere, so he POSTULATED that the
primitive earth had one. But now it is widely accepted that it was
neutral, and so the variety of amino acids, etc. expected to arise
spontaneously has been reduced.
But none of that need stop us from investigating the possibilities for
life arising on other planets different from earth.
> If you don't know the likelihood of your keys having fallen in one place
> or the other you might as well start by looking under the streetlight,
> basically.
Yes, but the streetlight in this case is apparently NOT on earth,
except in the laboratories of people like Miller and Orgel.
Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
The standard disclaimer is that I am writing purely on my own and not
representing the organization whose name appears in my work address.