The origin of life has not been explained

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Cosmin Visan

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Jul 6, 2019, 4:48:12 AM7/6/19
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Samiya Illias

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Jul 6, 2019, 6:23:56 AM7/6/19
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Thank you for this interesting share! 

On 06-Jul-2019, at 1:48 PM, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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Philip Thrift

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Jul 6, 2019, 6:53:28 AM7/6/19
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On Saturday, July 6, 2019 at 3:48:12 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:



You know that this YouTube channel - The Discovery Science News Channel is the official Youtube channel of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture - is via a conservative evangelical Christian organization.


The Discovery Institute (DI) is a politically conservative non-profit think tank based in Seattle, Washington, that advocates the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design (ID). Its "Teach the Controversy" campaign aims to permit the teaching of anti-evolution, intelligent-design beliefs in United States public high school science courses in place of accepted scientific theories, positing that a scientific controversy exists over these subjects.

Center for Science and Culture (CSC) promotes "a rigorously God-centered view of creation, including a new 'science' based solidly on theism.

@philipthrift

Cosmin Visan

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Jul 6, 2019, 7:18:38 AM7/6/19
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What does this has to do with what that guy is saying ?

Philip Thrift

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Jul 6, 2019, 7:37:30 AM7/6/19
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Who cares?

But you should identify the source of what you post.

One can say something I can agree with, but if they say it on a far-right venue (for example), I will identify the "channel" they are speaking on.

It's called "full disclosure".

@philipthrift

Cosmin Visan

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Jul 6, 2019, 7:39:19 AM7/6/19
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So you care more about social status than truth ? Quite irrational, don't you think ?

On Saturday, 6 July 2019 14:37:30 UTC+3, Philip Thrift wrote:
Who cares?

Philip Thrift

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Jul 6, 2019, 8:01:12 AM7/6/19
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What does "social status" have to do with a program shown on a far-right channel?

I care about the truth of identifying the source of information.

Do you care about that truth at all?

@philipthrift

John Clark

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Jul 6, 2019, 10:07:14 AM7/6/19
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On Sat, Jul 6, 2019 at 4:48 AM 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Science has a good explanation how to go from the simplest bacteria to human beings. Science has also made a good start at explaining how to go from simple chemicals to simple bacteria, but in that it still has a way to go. Meanwhile the God theory has managed to explain precisely NOTHING, all it does is kick the problem upstairs. It is the very nature of an explanation to show how a simple thing can produce a complex thing, the God theory does the reverse. If an explanation is more complicated than the thing it's trying to explain then it is of no use to anyone. 

John K Clark



John K Clark


Philip Thrift

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Jul 6, 2019, 10:25:46 AM7/6/19
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Science today is in complete confusion about "origin of life" theories.

But there are (true materialist) alternatives to the "God did it" propaganda pushed by Discovery Institute.

Cosmopsychism might seem crazy, but it provides a robust explanatory model for how the Universe became fine-tuned for life.


@philipthrift

smitra

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Jul 6, 2019, 11:32:54 AM7/6/19
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https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01945


A followup article which focuses more on the mathematical issues is
under construction, the key points are:

1) In interstellar space, simple organic compounds captured in small ice
grains were subject to UV radiation and occasional heating due to
incident cosmic rays (CR). This induced a bond percolation process that
led to large clusters of organic molecules on a time scale of $\gtrsim
10^6$ years.

2) On a proto-planet, such clusters can merge into loosely bound
superclusters. The deep interior of such superclusters can provide for
chemical micro-environments in which conventional models of abiogenesis
driven by cold-warm cycles can be considered.

3) Rapid fluctuations in the chemical potentials of certain chemical
compounds that can penetrate the supercluster, will be damped down. Long
term gradual and periodic changes then dominate, allowing any
biochemical systems inside the superclusters to more easily evolve
toward exploiting the conditions in their micro-environments, compared
to a similar system in the outside environment.

4) As the supercluster breaks up, the system experiences more of the
shorter term fluctuations that has more of a random character. The
system can then evolve to adapt to these fluctuations, when doing so
right from the start might not have worked.

5) On a small fraction of the superclusters these processes led to
microbes capable of surviving in the outside environment.

6) Microbes were transferred to Earth via a collision of a
microbe-containing proto-planet with the Moon. Fragments containing
microbes resulting from the giant impact rained down on the Earth.


Saibal

On 06-07-2019 10:48, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sP1E1Jd_Y [1]
>
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> [2].
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>
> Links:
> ------
> [1]
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sP1E1Jd_Y&amp;fbclid=IwAR03cRVkBTOeYnPldcuLzFGCNiWqCR0dE5FENXF9JJtRlk75sbq5Dh2wxcY
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spudb...@aol.com

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Jul 6, 2019, 2:05:32 PM7/6/19
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Scientifically, nobody has yet, pursued a chain, where people can create life out of base elements* (Ulam-Miller?), where is a telling point for me.  So in our inability we must either not be looking, or it may be impossible, or how to get life started is being misunderstood.

*Carbon Hydrogen Oxygen Nitrogen and maybe potassium, sodium, etc...  Biologists need to get their act together, otherwise, they are peddling an incomplete understanding. Beyond this, I care more about Life Scientists ability to cure disease, than I am about creating life. Ever, the pragmatist, I. 


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spudb...@aol.com

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Jul 6, 2019, 2:11:40 PM7/6/19
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Panspermia for sure. Did it work that way in the universe? Maybe. I am guessing we'd require a close-by stellar activity place where life all started, and thus, floomed it's way to a hungry earth? My suspicion would be if we'd see life on the other planets in our solar system, your reasoning would be spot-on! Since life appears sketchy around these parts, I am no enthusiast of panspermia. It made for a great tale in Stephen Baxter's Evolution (2002), and one of Larry Niven's short tales however. (The Green Marauder).


-----Original Message-----
From: smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl>
To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sat, Jul 6, 2019 11:32 am
Subject: Re: The origin of life has not been explained

> send an email to everything-list+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

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Lawrence Crowell

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Jul 6, 2019, 4:18:23 PM7/6/19
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The speaker James Tour also signed the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, which is a bit like the list of 100 physicists who disagreed with Einstein. Einstein quipped back, why do you need 100, when only 1 with a correct argument would suffice? Tour is a fundy, and while he may have done reasonable research, he appears religiously biased here. I also can tell in the way he talks that he can pound people down with words pretty well.

Tour is right in that we do not know the origins of life. We have lots of hypotheses on this, but it is a point where biological evolution loses explanatory power, just as general relativity fails at the center of black hole collapse. Tour though makes the implicit statement that this will never be answered, or that it is a scientific impossibility to know. The real problem is that we have no data; we have a complete paucity of data on the chemistry that lead to the development of life. We might find such data on other planets, and maybe Mars is a start. Maybe prebiotic chemistry has degraded and been lost there, so maybe Enceladus or ... ? We may even in fact never find such data and be left dangling with only hypotheticals. We are in a better position to understand the origins of the universe than the origins of life, and this question may be with us for a while. 

The problem I have with people such as Tour is the same I would have with similar of argumenta by similar people in the 17th century who might say we humans can never know the principles of planetary motion. They would argue this is the province of God and His heavenly hosts and that we will never find physical principles when this is all a matter of divine providence and supernatural power. The net effect of such an argument is to stop inquiry.

LC

John Clark

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Jul 6, 2019, 6:04:40 PM7/6/19
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On Sat, Jul 6, 2019 at 4:18 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote
> We have lots of hypotheses on this, but it is a point where biological evolution loses explanatory power, just as general relativity fails at the center of black hole collapse. 

I think that's the key point, Darwinian Evolution can't take over until you have a replicator of some sort, in fact I would say the origin of heredity is the same thing as the origin of life. That first replicator was certainly far simpler than anything alive today and it almost certainly didn't have any DNA in it. RNA is only single stranded not double as DNA is and it is usually much shorter too, and RNA would help in getting over the chicken or the egg problem. RNA can carry information, not as well as DNA can but it can do it. And RNA can act like an enzyme and catalyze chemical reactions, not as well as proteins can but it can do it. So the first RNA life would be very incompetent by modern standards but with Darwin you don't have to be perfect you just have to be better than the competition. 

In 1986 Nobel Laureate Walter Gilbert said in the journal Nature: 

"One can contemplate an RNA world, containing only RNA molecules that serve to catalyze the synthesis of themselves. The first step of evolution proceeds then by RNA molecules performing the catalytic activities necessary to assemble themselves from a nucleotide soup."

However some people, like Chemist Graham Cairns-Smith think that even the RNA world, although far simpler than modern life, was still too complicated to be the first replicator aka the first life. Cairns-Smith proposed that the very first replicators were not organic at all but were clays were information was encoded in a pattern of defects in silicate crystals. In 1985 he wrote a book about it that is now online:

Seven clues to the origin of life

The problem with figuring out how life started is that chemicals usually don't have fossils, so even evolutionary biologist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins admits that although he likes the Cairns-Smith theory we may never be able to say this is definitely how life started and it couldn't have started any other way, the best we can do is find a plausible way that life *could* have started.   

 John K Clark

Lawrence Crowell

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Jul 6, 2019, 6:34:40 PM7/6/19
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The complexity group at Santa Fe Institute has a 3 month course on the origins of life. I thought about joining, but decided not because my plate is already a bit full and frankly all we really have to go with are hypotheses. The idea of the RNA world runs into trouble with the ribosome, which is a hugely complex system of RNA and proteins. How that got going is difficult to know. 

I had this idea about RNA interactions with carbon nanofibers. Could RNA coil up around these and these could serve as some system for translation? Maybe in time this became more complex with more RNA and proteins bound to the system. Eventually this evolved into the ribosome. I looked this up and found of course other had taken up this idea.

LC 

smitra

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Jul 6, 2019, 6:43:17 PM7/6/19
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Although there is an element of panspermia in this proposal, as I
explain in the conclusion, the panspermia element is a side issue as I
need to explain how something cooked up in space ends up on Earth. The
main problem to be solved is how to get from building blocks to
machines. The problem has actually little to do with biochemistry, it's
a mathematical problem because you would always stumble on that problem
in any model of artificial chemistry. The solution is percolation in 3
dimensions to get from building blocks to a large number of
micro-environments with features in the interior that can act as
catalysts. Each micro-environment breaks symmetries in different ways,
some are are better than others for harboring an RNA world than others.




On 06-07-2019 20:11, spudboy100 via Everything List wrote:
> Panspermia for sure. Did it work that way in the universe? Maybe. I am
> guessing we'd require a close-by stellar activity place where life all
> started, and thus, floomed it's way to a hungry earth? My suspicion
> would be if we'd see life on the other planets in our solar system,
> your reasoning would be spot-on! Since life appears sketchy around
> these parts, I am no enthusiast of panspermia. It made for a great
> tale in Stephen Baxter's Evolution (2002), and one of Larry Niven's
> short tales however. (The Green Marauder).
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: smitra <smi...@zonnet.nl>
> To: everything-list <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
> Sent: Sat, Jul 6, 2019 11:32 am
> Subject: Re: The origin of life has not been explained
>
> https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01945 [1]
>
> A followup article which focuses more on the mathematical issues is
> under construction, the key points are:
>
> 1) In interstellar space, simple organic compounds captured in small
> ice
> grains were subject to UV radiation and occasional heating due to
> incident cosmic rays (CR). This induced a bond percolation process
> that
> led to large clusters of organic molecules on a time scale of $gtrsim
> 10^6$ years.
>
> 2) On a proto-planet, such clusters can merge into loosely bound
> superclusters. The deep interior of such superclusters can provide for
>
> chemical micro-environments in which conventional models of
> abiogenesis
> driven by cold-warm cycles can be considered.
>
> 3) Rapid fluctuations in the chemical potentials of certain chemical
> compounds that can penetrate the supercluster, will be damped down.
> Long
> term gradual and periodic changes then dominate, allowing any
> biochemical systems inside the superclusters to more easily evolve
> toward exploiting the conditions in their micro-environments, compared
>
> to a similar system in the outside environment.
>
> 4) As the supercluster breaks up, the system experiences more of the
> shorter term fluctuations that has more of a random character. The
> system can then evolve to adapt to these fluctuations, when doing so
> right from the start might not have worked.
>
> 5) On a small fraction of the superclusters these processes led to
> microbes capable of surviving in the outside environment.
>
> 6) Microbes were transferred to Earth via a collision of a
> microbe-containing proto-planet with the Moon. Fragments containing
> microbes resulting from the giant impact rained down on the Earth.
>
> Saibal
>
> On 06-07-2019 10:48, 'Cosmin Visan' via Everything List wrote:
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sP1E1Jd_Y [2][1]
>>
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> [3]
>> [2].
>>
>>
>> Links:
>> ------
>> [1]
>>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sP1E1Jd_Y&fbclid=IwAR03cRVkBTOeYnPldcuLzFGCNiWqCR0dE5FENXF9JJtRlk75sbq5Dh2wxcY
> [4]
>> [2]
>>
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> [6].
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> [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01945
> [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sP1E1Jd_Y
> [3]
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/a43531f9-d34c-4806-97f0-7665befc7e95%40googlegroups.com
> [4]
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sP1E1Jd_Y&amp;fbclid=IwAR03cRVkBTOeYnPldcuLzFGCNiWqCR0dE5FENXF9JJtRlk75sbq5Dh2wxcY
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Philip Thrift

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Jul 6, 2019, 7:22:57 PM7/6/19
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Interesting.

@philipthrift 

Lawrence Crowell

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Jul 6, 2019, 7:48:53 PM7/6/19
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Panspermia just kicks the can down the road. It does not explain the origins of life, but rather how life got here and flourished. If the universe were eternal and stationary, what Fred Hoyle thought, then it would just be a part of this eternal recurrence of things. The big bang puts a past time limit on things. So some where life got going.

LC
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>>
>> Links:
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>> [1]
>>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sP1E1Jd_Y&fbclid=IwAR03cRVkBTOeYnPldcuLzFGCNiWqCR0dE5FENXF9JJtRlk75sbq5Dh2wxcY
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John Clark

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Jul 6, 2019, 8:09:46 PM7/6/19
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On Sat, Jul 6, 2019 at 6:34 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The idea of the RNA world runs into trouble with the ribosome, which is a hugely complex system of RNA and proteins

In the RNA world there would be nothing nearly as large and competent as modern ribosomes and there would be no proteins at all, there would just be short single strands of RNA floating in a sea of nucleotides. As far as I know nobody has yet found a RNA string that could catalyze the duplication of a string of nucleotides as large as itself, but they have found a RNA string called tC19Z that could reliably copy, without the help of proteins, RNA sequences 95 nucleotides long. And that is almost half as long as tC19Z itself. I find that encouraging.

Ribozyme-Catalyzed Transcription of an Active Ribozyme

John K Clark






RNA sequences up to 95 letters 
no be anything as big as a ribosome or any proteins at all, there would be short single strands of RNA floating in a sea of nucleotides
neucteatides 




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spudb...@aol.com

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Jul 6, 2019, 11:04:36 PM7/6/19
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Very well. If it's math, them, it;s at least quasi-Platonic and that is well-above my pay grade intellectually. How math principles become cells is an intense topic. It's a pity we cannot yet produce this today. Set up an experiment and evolve basic elements into something that quacks. Noteworthy, if possible? 


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>>
>> Links:
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>> [1]
>>
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Brent Meeker

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Jul 7, 2019, 2:33:05 AM7/7/19
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I think Nick Lane's metabolism-first theory, which he discusses in his
book "The Vital Question", is more plausible.  There's good online talk
by Lane https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhPrirmk8F4.

Brent

Philip Thrift

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Jul 7, 2019, 5:52:41 AM7/7/19
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He does have the correct contemplative, far-away look on his home page:



Acetyl phosphate as a primordial energy currency at the origin of life
Alexandra Whicher, Eloi Camprubi, Silvana Pinna, Barry Herschy and Nick Lane
Orig Life Evol Biosph (2018)

Abstract
Metabolism is primed through the formation of thioesters via acetyl CoA and the phosphorylation of substrates by ATP. Prebiotic equivalents such as methyl thioacetate and acetyl phosphate have been proposed to catalyse analogous reactions at the origin of life, but their propensity to hydrolyse challenges this view. Here we show that acetyl phosphate (AcP) can be synthesised in water within minutes from thioacetate (but not methyl thioacetate) under ambient conditions. AcP is stable over hours, depending on temperature, pH and cation content, giving it an ideal poise between stability and reactivity. We show that AcP can phosphorylate nucleotide precursors such as ribose to ribose-5-phosphate and adenosine to adenosine monophosphate, at modest (~2%) yield in water, and at a range of pH. AcP can also phosphorylate ADP to ATP in water over several hours at 50 °C. But AcP did not promote polymerization of either glycine or AMP. The amino group of glycine was preferentially acetylated by AcP, especially at alkaline pH, hindering the formation of polypeptides. AMP formed small stacks of up to 7 monomers, but these did not polymerise in the presence of AcP in aqueous solution. We conclude that AcP can phosphorylate biologically meaningful substrates in a manner analogous to ATP, promoting the origins of metabolism, but is unlikely to have driven polymerization of macromolecules such as polypeptides or RNA in free solution. This is consistent with the idea that a period of monomer (cofactor) catalysis preceded the emergence of polymeric enzymes or ribozymes at the origin of life.


@philipthrift
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PGC

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Jul 7, 2019, 9:16:26 AM7/7/19
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On Sunday, July 7, 2019 at 11:52:41 AM UTC+2, Philip Thrift wrote:


He does have the correct contemplative, far-away look on his home page:


Heh! Yeah good try on the look. For yours truly it's gotta be the chest out, stoic, pointing out into the distance/horizon explorer look though.

Concerning origin of life there have to be more approaches than RNA  and protein. I tend to think the ribozyme research is amazing and that panspermia just displaces the problem and fuels unwarranted speculation and unknowns. 

But we need more attempts at good soup and the processes therein. For now, visiting Chinese parts of town or Hong Kong yields the most convincing results: if you catch the right chef and restaurant, I'm sure that some amazing wonton soup would support the creation of all life. Greens, veggies, noodles, proteins AND RNA intelligently seasoned and folded just the right way: it supports all of it! 

PGC's wonton theory: IF panspermia then the Chinatown equivalent of the multiverse laced all meteorites with primordial wonton. Age and cycles of the multiverse can be derived from how sophisticated your local soup is: how many folds.  PGC

Brent Meeker

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Jul 7, 2019, 4:10:12 PM7/7/19
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Read Nick Lane.  He makes a good argument for a metabolism first abiogenesis.  He observes that the ADP<->ATP energy cycle is the same in every organism and he shows how it could have originated in alkaline ocean vents.

Brent

smitra

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Jul 22, 2019, 6:55:58 PM7/22/19
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This doesn't address the fundamental problems. People like Leslie Orgel
have explained why metabolism first is a non-starter. He has argued on
the basis of the difficulties of getting to functional RNA, and more
recently people like Paul Davies have pointed out the fundamental nature
of this problem. My suggestion is not some new model, it simply makes
conventional models such as e.g. the protocell work better by putting
these in a micro-environment that itself has been forged in far from
equilibrium conditions. The micro-environments break the symmetry that
can steer the chemistry that takes place inside more coherently in one
or the other direction compared to whatever chemistry can go on in a
macroscopic environment.

Keep in mind that the simplest functional living organism is likely
going to be similar to a microbe, involving hundreds of thousands of
different enzymes that are then all necessary to make each other and
maintain and copy the organism. There thus exists a massive gap from
simple chemistry to the simplest self-reproducing lifeforms. The only
plausible solution is then a scenario where simpler systems that would
not function good enough to be able to reproduce with a multiplication
factor of larger than one, can reproduce with a multiplication factor
larger than 1 in a protected environment. But that environment must then
have features that would have to play the role of the more sophisticated
molecular machinery that makes the more advanced life forms work. Fixed
features on the inner surface area of a micro-environment can then work.
The effect such features have over the entire volume can be
non-negligible in a small system.

Saibal

Brent Meeker

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Jul 22, 2019, 10:11:02 PM7/22/19
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On 7/22/2019 3:55 PM, smitra wrote:
> This doesn't address the fundamental problems. People like Leslie
> Orgel have explained why metabolism first is a non-starter.

And you think Nick Lane hasn't read Orgel?

> He has argued on the basis of the difficulties of getting to
> functional RNA, and more recently people like Paul Davies have pointed
> out the fundamental nature of this problem. My suggestion is not some
> new model, it simply makes conventional models such as e.g. the
> protocell work better by putting these in a micro-environment that
> itself has been forged in far from equilibrium conditions. The
> micro-environments break the symmetry that can steer the chemistry
> that takes place inside more coherently in one or the other direction
> compared to whatever chemistry can go on in a macroscopic environment.
>
> Keep in mind that the simplest functional living organism is likely
> going to be similar to a microbe, involving hundreds of thousands of
> different enzymes that are then all necessary to make each other and
> maintain and copy the organism. There thus exists a massive gap from
> simple chemistry to the simplest self-reproducing lifeforms. The only
> plausible solution is then a scenario where simpler systems that would
> not function good enough to be able to reproduce with a multiplication
> factor of larger than one, can reproduce with a multiplication factor
> larger than 1 in a protected environment.

Which Lane and others postulate to alkaline "white smokers".

Brent

Cosmin Visan

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Jul 23, 2019, 8:30:20 AM7/23/19
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Keep in mind that life is linked to consciousness. There is no such thing as "material life". Whatever happened had to involve consciousness one way or another.

On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 01:55:58 UTC+3, smitra wrote:
Keep in mind

Philip Thrift

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Jul 23, 2019, 9:45:29 AM7/23/19
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Keep in mind there is no consciousness without matter.

@philipthrift

Telmo Menezes

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Jul 23, 2019, 9:56:07 AM7/23/19
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On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 13:45, Philip Thrift wrote:

Keep in mind there is no consciousness without matter.

Is there matter without consciousness?

Telmo.


@philipthrift


On Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 7:30:20 AM UTC-5, Cosmin Visan wrote:
Keep in mind that life is linked to consciousness. There is no such thing as "material life". Whatever happened had to involve consciousness one way or another.

On Tuesday, 23 July 2019 01:55:58 UTC+3, smitra wrote:
Keep in mind


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Philip Thrift

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Jul 23, 2019, 10:15:06 AM7/23/19
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On Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 8:56:07 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:


On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 13:45, Philip Thrift wrote:

Keep in mind there is no consciousness without matter.

Is there matter without consciousness?

Telmo.


According to panpsychists, no. :) 


@philipthrift

Telmo Menezes

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Jul 23, 2019, 10:23:45 AM7/23/19
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I know :)
But panpsychists are still materialists. Which leads me to the tougher question: does matter exist outside of first-person conscious experience? If your answer is "yes", my follow-up question is quite predictable: how do you know?

Telmo.


@philipthrift


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Philip Thrift

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Jul 23, 2019, 2:26:51 PM7/23/19
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On Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 9:23:45 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:


On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 14:15, Philip Thrift wrote:


On Tuesday, July 23, 2019 at 8:56:07 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:


On Tue, Jul 23, 2019, at 13:45, Philip Thrift wrote:

Keep in mind there is no consciousness without matter.

Is there matter without consciousness?

Telmo.


According to panpsychists, no. :) 


I know :)
But panpsychists are still materialists. Which leads me to the tougher question: does matter exist outside of first-person conscious experience? If your answer is "yes", my follow-up question is quite predictable: how do you know?

Telmo.




There us no reason to know (and one cannot claim to know) anything whatsoever outside of knowing one's selfhood.

Anything else is just best-effort-guessing.


@philipthrift 

smitra

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Jul 23, 2019, 3:07:05 PM7/23/19
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On 23-07-2019 04:10, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List wrote:
> On 7/22/2019 3:55 PM, smitra wrote:
>> This doesn't address the fundamental problems. People like Leslie
>> Orgel have explained why metabolism first is a non-starter.
>
> And you think Nick Lane hasn't read Orgel?

Orgel's original arguments can be generalized into a no-go argument that
precludes all existing biochemical models for abiogenesis. This has been
pointed out by Paul Davies. However, Davies then argues that this means
that the problem lies with the fundamental laws of physics, but one can
also circumvent the problems raised by sticking to ordinary physics and
getting to the right structures within which the conventional models can
work.

>
>> He has argued on the basis of the difficulties of getting to
>> functional RNA, and more recently people like Paul Davies have pointed
>> out the fundamental nature of this problem. My suggestion is not some
>> new model, it simply makes conventional models such as e.g. the
>> protocell work better by putting these in a micro-environment that
>> itself has been forged in far from equilibrium conditions. The
>> micro-environments break the symmetry that can steer the chemistry
>> that takes place inside more coherently in one or the other direction
>> compared to whatever chemistry can go on in a macroscopic environment.
>>
>> Keep in mind that the simplest functional living organism is likely
>> going to be similar to a microbe, involving hundreds of thousands of
>> different enzymes that are then all necessary to make each other and
>> maintain and copy the organism. There thus exists a massive gap from
>> simple chemistry to the simplest self-reproducing lifeforms. The only
>> plausible solution is then a scenario where simpler systems that would
>> not function good enough to be able to reproduce with a multiplication
>> factor of larger than one, can reproduce with a multiplication factor
>> larger than 1 in a protected environment.
>
> Which Lane and others postulate to alkaline "white smokers".

This is impossible, because you need to build structures on the
molecular scale without the enzymes that living organisms have
available. Local thermal equilibrium won't allow chemical reactions to
proceed differently a few atoms distance away at one site of a large
molecule compared to another. So, one needs to consider processes in an
environment where local thermal equilibrium will be violated on a
molecular scale. This can happen in a cryogenic environment in space
where UV radiation creates radical and ions and occasional cosmic ray
interaction causes heating allowing nearby ions and radicals to form
bonds. Such processes have been studied with the ail of getting to the
fundamental building blocks of life, but that doesn't really work
because of the random nature of the products.

But under those conditions one will also get extremely large clusters of
organics, and they can serve as the housing within which one can have
the right structures for conventional models to work. Confinement in a
small volume is essential as there will be as small number of structures
inside each such system. This means that the net effect of all the
structures inside any particular system will differ due to statistical
fluctuations. In a larger volume, the average effects of the structures
would average out to some mean effect, also the effect the structures on
the surface have on the chemistry taking place in the entire volume
would be less the larger the volume becomes.

Saibal

Brent Meeker

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Jul 23, 2019, 3:26:19 PM7/23/19
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Which is why the huge surface area and fractal-like compartments of
white-smokers are needed for the origin of life:

http://hoffman.cm.utexas.edu/courses/hydrothermal_vents.pdf

I direct your attention to Box 3.

Brent

Telmo Menezes

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Jul 24, 2019, 2:39:34 AM7/24/19
to 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
I agree.

Telmo.



@philipthrift 


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Cosmin Visan

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Jul 24, 2019, 4:05:16 AM7/24/19
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Keep in mind that "matter" is just an idea in consciousness.

Cosmin Visan

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Jul 24, 2019, 4:08:07 AM7/24/19
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You talk of life as if is some kind of mechanism, which is not. Life is a product of consciousness. So your entire analysis is beyond meaninglessness.
>>>>> send an email to everyth...@googlegroups.com.

Philip Thrift

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Jul 24, 2019, 4:39:56 AM7/24/19
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But even given that the only thing one knows exists is one's selfhood (consciousness),  our experience includes reading about and finding out about all the weird stuff matter does (via materials science).

If there was only selfhoods, there would only be imaginings of matter. But what matter actually presents to us goes beyond what mere imaginings of what it is and does.

@philipthrift

Students learn at Materials Camp

By Special to The Oak Ridger
Posted Jul 23, 2019 at 5:30 PM   


To understand how and why things work, sometimes you have to take a close look. A really close look. Avery, a Roane County High School senior, did just that at this summer’s Materials Camp, sponsored in part by the Y-12 National Security Complex.

She and 14 other East Tennessee high school students studied nickel, iron, aluminum, copper, and other metals not by opening a textbook but by heating, hammering, grinding, bending, rolling, and polishing the materials.

“We learned how these materials behave under certain conditions and stresses,” Avery stated in a Y-12 news release. “Then we examined their microstructures, the different grain structures, using a scanning electron microscope and other analytical equipment.”

One of the campers’ favorite activities was pounding a hot iron bar with a forging hammer during the blacksmithing demonstration.

“That was really fun and cool,” said Avery, who wanted to make sure everyone, including her camp instructors, got in a few whacks at the bar.

“Avery wasn’t going to let us leave until I had a chance to take out some aggression on that metal bar,” said Claudia Rawn, one of the camp coordinators and associate professor in the University of Tennessee’s Materials Science and Engineering department and director of UT’s Center for Materials Processing.

Having fun while learning is all part of the camp formula. Through hands-on activities and an escape-room scenario, camp instructors introduced students to materials science, which involves the properties of materials and their application in everything from high-performance electronics and airplanes to stents, heart valves, and other biotechnologies to renewable energy.

“I think all of the students now have a different view that everything is made of a variety of materials and there are opportunities to have a fascinating education and career with materials,” said Camp Coordinator Bob Bridges, a Y-12 metallurgist.

Before the weeklong camp, many of the students had never heard of materials science.


“Most high school students thinking about majoring in an engineering discipline don’t know about materials science and engineering,” Rawn said. “A lot of STEM-oriented students know they want to major in engineering, and knowing about materials science and engineering helps them to make a more informed choice.”

The camp not only serves as a recruiting tool for area colleges but also feeds the workforce pipeline. Y-12 sponsors the camp as part of its educational outreach efforts to develop the science, technology, engineering, and math skills the site will need in the future.

“Because of this camp, I’m thinking about pursuing an education in materials science,” Avery said. “It got me thinking about different avenues for college and a career.”

In addition to UT and Consolidated Nuclear Security, which manages and operates Y-12 for the National Nuclear Security Administration, camp sponsors included the ASM Materials Education Foundation and Pellissippi State Community College.

Electron Optics Instruments and IXRF Systems, Shimadzu Scientific Instruments, Mager Scientific, and Carl Zeiss Microscopy provided almost $400,000 worth of equipment for students to use as well as staff to train campers on how to use it.

“This camp would not be possible without the huge number of volunteers who work with the students behind the scenes and donate equipment and provide expertise,” said Teri Brahams, executive director for Economic and Workforce Development at Pellissippi State Community College.



Bruno Marchal

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Jul 24, 2019, 8:04:38 AM7/24/19
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Right.
What we can do is expressed those guess in the form of theories, and try to refute them, either by showing internal contradictions, or discrepancy with repeatable facts in nature.

Bruno





@philipthrift 

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smitra

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Jul 26, 2019, 6:07:41 PM7/26/19
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You can't get such structures down to the molecular scale there.

Saibal

Brent Meeker

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Jul 26, 2019, 6:39:46 PM7/26/19
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Catalyzing a reaction on a surface is at molecular scale.

Brent

smitra

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Jul 26, 2019, 7:13:58 PM7/26/19
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Yes, but in a trivial sense as the surfaces are smooth on the molecular
scale. You can, of course, get many interesting chemical reactions in
such conditions, but there is no way you can build molecular machines
that have specially crafted molecules as their parts this way that are
then able to make their own parts or the parts of other machines. You're
starting from a situation where the massive amount of information needed
to specify how all the machines in the end product (a living organism)
doesn't exist, and it won't therefore come into existence by virtue of
having realized a number of biochemical processes.

Saibal


Brent Meeker

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Jul 26, 2019, 7:29:43 PM7/26/19
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You are ignoring the point of the abiogensis from the metabolism first
view.  The reactions are thermodynamically favored and don't require
specific proteins to catalyze them.

Brent

>
> Saibal
>
>


smitra

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Jul 26, 2019, 8:34:20 PM7/26/19
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That's like trying to build a self-driving car by trying to figure out
how to burn gasoline. Just because metabolism is of crucial importance
to life doesn't mean one can get to life just by getting some of the
important metabolic reactions started in some setting. Most of the
complexity of life is in the molecular machinery. A microbe considered
as a machine is more similar to the set of all factories, companies,
managers and politicians of a country than to a single machine.

Saibal

Cosmin Visan

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Jul 27, 2019, 5:31:27 AM7/27/19
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You said a good thing maybe even without realizing it. The "machinary" is not a "machinary" at all. Is a system of interacting conscious agents that work together to implement mechanical functions.

Philip Thrift

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Jul 27, 2019, 5:44:41 AM7/27/19
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It's consciousery vs. machinery.

@philipthrift
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