why no search on venus instead of mars?

[Dale]

why no search for life on venus instead of mars?

venus could have had a different climate a long time ago
before gravity pulled it closer to the sun

as with the idea of man escaping earth for mars when the earth
gets closer only "some" could go, all the people would take a
lot of space crafts

maybe "some" people came from venus and designed some
lifeforms here and used their technology to build the stone
monoliths/megaliths they show on Ancient Aliens

deep space travel seems unlikely to me

the nearest star is 5 light years away

dust particles could hit a spacecraft traveling fast, or maybe
even in a spacetime warp, a spacetime warp could leave its
path in destruction maybe

already existing warps, wormholes, are the any around? I have
never seen any?

maybe life in this solar system started on mercury, or a
planet that already was engulfed into the sun

maybe the designers of life, monoliths/megaliths left a
message in stone, etc.

--
Dale http://www.dalekelly.org

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, May 29, 2015 at 3:23:11 PM UTC-4, Dale wrote:

> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?

The high temperature is deadly to life as we know it except deep in the
ocean, where pressure keeps water from boiling. But it is generally
believed that what bodies of water there were, evaporated and boiled
away quite early in the history of Venus.

So the best we can hope for is fossil evidence, but for the same
reason, it would be in the form of microorganisms or cyanobacterial
mats/stromatolites. Also, weathering by wind over eons and volcanic
activity and occasional asteroid strikes would probably have obliterated it.

> venus could have had a different climate a long time ago
> before gravity pulled it closer to the sun

What makes you think it was ever much further? If anything,
it and the earth were closer, because liquid water was available
early in earth history, when the sun was cooler than it is now.

> as with the idea of man escaping earth for mars when the earth
> gets closer

No, when the sun gets hotter.

> only "some" could go, all the people would take a
> lot of space crafts
>
> maybe "some" people came from venus and designed some
> lifeforms here and used their technology to build the stone
> monoliths/megaliths they show on Ancient Aliens

<sigh> you are way out in left field. Velikovsky has been discredited,
man evolved from life that was here over 500 million years ago,
and Venus has been subject to a runaway greenhouse effect for eons.

> deep space travel seems unlikely to me
>
> the nearest star is 5 light years away

Actually, a bit over 3.

Here's an idea that is less hackneyed than your "chariots of the Gods
flights of fancy, which Ray Martinez also seems mesmerized by.

Maybe, 550 million years ago, a star with a planetary system that
included intelligent beings on an earth-like planet, came within
a fraction of a light year of earth. The beings knew that this
close approach was in the works thousands of years in advance, so
they were able to design a fleet of starships able to traverse the
distance in less than a decade. [The technology for such fast travel
is within our grasp now.]

Colonists totally unrelated to earth organisms came here and
established a colony that survived for millions of years, enough
time for the colonists to take some sponges and, during millions of
years of patient genetic engineering, to produce the life that
blossomed in the Cambrian explosion.

CAVEAT. I don't think this ever happened, but the possibility
of it happening cannot be ruled out, whereas your farfetched
scenario of Venusians is easily shot down. And there is plenty
of scope for imagination here. A talented writer could even make
a successful science fiction novel out of this idea.

> dust particles could hit a spacecraft traveling fast, or maybe
> even in a spacetime warp, a spacetime warp could leave its
> path in destruction maybe
>
> already existing warps, wormholes, are the any around? I have
> never seen any?
>
> maybe life in this solar system started on mercury, or a
> planet that already was engulfed into the sun
>
> maybe the designers of life, monoliths/megaliths left a
> message in stone, etc.
>
> --
> Dale http://www.dalekelly.org

If there were designers of earth life, they were active not a mere
100,000 years ago [as far back as you could hypothesize megaliths],
or even a mere 550 million years ago, but about 3.5 billion years ago.

I have a theory that I "inherited" from Nobel Laureate Francis Crick
and Leslie Orgel, a tiny bit like the idea I've given you, but
much more realistic: sending of microorganisms to seed earth way
back then. I've written a great deal of reasoning in support of the
hypothesis that this is somewhat more likely than abiogenesis on earth,
but I think the details might not interest you: they lack the pizazz
of your "ancient aliens" ideas.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina
http://people.math.sc.edu/nyikos/

[Nick Roberts]

In message <2366762.a...@dalekelly.org>

Dale <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote:

> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?

Given the pressure and temperatures involved, such a search would be
extraordinarily difficult, as building a probe that can land on the
surface of Venus is best described as "challenging". It would also be
pretty pointless, as any indications of past life would have been
temperature- and pressure- degraded into non-existance millions of
years ago.

At 53Km above the surface (i.e. roughly 6 times the height of Everest)
the atmospheric pressure and is comparable to Earth at sea level.
At the surface, the pressure is approximately 90 times Earth at sea
level.

The temperature at the surface is about 470 degrees C, which is plenty
hot enough to melt a lot of metals (lead, tin, bismuth, zinc).

Basically, there are much better places to look for life, even if you
restrict yourself to

> venus could have had a different climate a long time ago
> before gravity pulled it closer to the sun

You think that Venus has spiralled in so far since its orbit first
stabilised to have a measurable effect on insolation? Really?

> as with the idea of man escaping earth for mars when the earth
> gets closer only "some" could go, all the people would take a
> lot of space crafts

> maybe "some" people came from venus and designed some
> lifeforms here and used their technology to build the stone
> monoliths/megaliths they show on Ancient Aliens
>
> deep space travel seems unlikely to me
>
> the nearest star is 5 light years away
>
> dust particles could hit a spacecraft traveling fast, or maybe
> even in a spacetime warp, a spacetime warp could leave its
> path in destruction maybe
>
> already existing warps, wormholes, are the any around? I have
> never seen any?
>
> maybe life in this solar system started on mercury, or a
> planet that already was engulfed into the sun
>
> maybe the designers of life, monoliths/megaliths left a
> message in stone, etc.

And maybe the designers and builders of megaliths were just humans who
just wanted a really cool way of celebrating astronomical events.

Your skepticism is oddly unbalanced: you dismiss wormholes with
apparent contempt, and yet you apparently take the fantasies of people
like Von Daniken, Sitchin and Hancock seriously.

--
Nick Roberts tigger @ orpheusinternet.co.uk

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which
can be adequately explained by stupidity.

[Dale]

Peter Nyikos wrote:

> they lack the pizazz
> of your "ancient aliens" ideas.

they do a good job of graphics and photography on that show

--
Dale http://www.dalekelly.org

[John Bode]

On Friday, May 29, 2015 at 2:23:11 PM UTC-5, Dale wrote:
> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?
>

We've yet to build a probe that can survive on the surface for more
than a couple of hours. You have a *hot* atmosphere (in excess
of 840 degrees F) that's also *dense* (something like 90 Earth
atmospheres) and corrosive. Surface exploration of Venus simply
isn't in the cards. Even if we could build probes that could survive
those conditions long enough to do useful science, any signs of life
(as we would recognize it, anyway) would have long since been obliterated.
The surface is effectively sterile.

Based on what we know about Venus, it's highly unlikely that it was
ever suitable for life (as we would recognize it, anyway).

[Mark Isaak]

On 5/29/15 3:45 PM, John Bode wrote:
> On Friday, May 29, 2015 at 2:23:11 PM UTC-5, Dale wrote:
>> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?
>>
>
> We've yet to build a probe that can survive on the surface for more
> than a couple of hours. You have a *hot* atmosphere (in excess
> of 840 degrees F) that's also *dense* (something like 90 Earth
> atmospheres) and corrosive. Surface exploration of Venus simply
> isn't in the cards.

I have read (in a sci-fi book, so not the best source) that at a level
of Venus's atmosphere where the pressure is earth-like, so also is the
temperature, and the acidity is all below there. Of course, life would
probably enjoy having some nutrients, too.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"Keep the company of those who seek the truth; run from those who have
found it." - Vaclav Havel

[Peter Nyikos]

On Friday, May 29, 2015 at 8:13:11 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 5/29/15 3:45 PM, John Bode wrote:
> > On Friday, May 29, 2015 at 2:23:11 PM UTC-5, Dale wrote:
> >> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?
> >>
> >
> > We've yet to build a probe that can survive on the surface for more
> > than a couple of hours. You have a *hot* atmosphere (in excess
> > of 840 degrees F) that's also *dense* (something like 90 Earth
> > atmospheres) and corrosive. Surface exploration of Venus simply
> > isn't in the cards.

> I have read (in a sci-fi book, so not the best source) that at a level
> of Venus's atmosphere where the pressure is earth-like, so also is the
> temperature, and the acidity is all below there. Of course, life would
> probably enjoy having some nutrients, too.

Yes, none of the mountains on Venus reaches that high, so life would have
to somehow stay perpetually aloft with lots of nutrients in that part
of the atmosphere. One episode of Carl Sagan's series _Cosmos_ featured
hypothetical "gasbags" floating around in the denser atmosphere of a
Jupiter-like planet, getting nutrition that way, with some gasbags
preying on others.

I doubt that such a life form would be feasible on Venus, and even Sagan's
idea was something of a stretch.

I do recall how, in the sixties, people seriously thought of terraforming
Venus, sending cyanobacteria into the atmosphere in the hopes that they could
multiply up there, turning some of the carbon dioxide into oxygen and
biomass, and thereby diminishing the greenhouse effect. But I believe that
was before the full force of the inhospitability of Venus sank in.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[Mr. B1ack]

On Fri, 29 May 2015 15:17:13 -0400, Dale <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote:

>why no search for life on venus instead of mars?

Because it's 900 freakin' degrees there and the
atomosphere is acid - tends to do major damage
to molecules you could hope to build life out of.

>venus could have had a different climate a long time ago
>before gravity pulled it closer to the sun

I'm not sure it was ever much further away from the
sun. In any case, being bathed in sulfuric acid vapor
for five billion years ... really good chance that snuffed
out any life that did form early.

If you're gonna spend time and money looking, look
on Mars. It was "OK" for a lot longer period. Alas, so
far and so far as they're telling us, nada. Maybe life
isn't very likely to develop ? Hey, we've only got ONE
thread of life on this planet after 4+ billion years ...
if life were "easy" we'd surely have two or more
distinct lines with distinct biochemistries.

[Mr. B1ack]

On Fri, 29 May 2015 19:07:41 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Friday, May 29, 2015 at 8:13:11 PM UTC-4, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 5/29/15 3:45 PM, John Bode wrote:
>> > On Friday, May 29, 2015 at 2:23:11 PM UTC-5, Dale wrote:
>> >> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?
>> >>
>> >
>> > We've yet to build a probe that can survive on the surface for more
>> > than a couple of hours. You have a *hot* atmosphere (in excess
>> > of 840 degrees F) that's also *dense* (something like 90 Earth
>> > atmospheres) and corrosive. Surface exploration of Venus simply
>> > isn't in the cards.
>
>> I have read (in a sci-fi book, so not the best source) that at a level
>> of Venus's atmosphere where the pressure is earth-like, so also is the
>> temperature, and the acidity is all below there. Of course, life would
>> probably enjoy having some nutrients, too.
>
>Yes, none of the mountains on Venus reaches that high, so life would have
>to somehow stay perpetually aloft with lots of nutrients in that part
>of the atmosphere. One episode of Carl Sagan's series _Cosmos_ featured
>hypothetical "gasbags" floating around in the denser atmosphere of a
>Jupiter-like planet, getting nutrition that way, with some gasbags
>preying on others.

Venus evolved rapidly ... being closer to the sun all
of its more volatile gasses were blown away by the
solar winds early-on. No hydrogen, no oxygen, little
nitrogen. The rapidly increasing concentration of
hot acid vapors would have destroyed any biological
chemisty as we can conceive it. In short, Venus
became unlivable VERY early in its development.

So no ... I don't see any chance of "gas-bags" ...
such complex multicellulars just wouldn't have had
time to evolve. Venus is just a very hot, acidic
planet ... void of life.

Hey ... even on earth we got just ONE thread of life.
We're all related to the ONE primordial cell. If life
were so easy there'd probably be numerous lines
of life with different, incompatible, biochemistries.

[Ernest Major]

On 29/05/2015 23:11, Nick Roberts wrote:
> In message <2366762.a...@dalekelly.org>
> Dale <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote:
>
>> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?
>
> Given the pressure and temperatures involved, such a search would be
> extraordinarily difficult, as building a probe that can land on the
> surface of Venus is best described as "challenging". It would also be
> pretty pointless, as any indications of past life would have been
> temperature- and pressure- degraded into non-existance millions of
> years ago.
>
> At 53Km above the surface (i.e. roughly 6 times the height of Everest)
> the atmospheric pressure and is comparable to Earth at sea level.
> At the surface, the pressure is approximately 90 times Earth at sea
> level.
>
> The temperature at the surface is about 470 degrees C, which is plenty
> hot enough to melt a lot of metals (lead, tin, bismuth, zinc).

Additionally Venus is believed to have been resurfaced a few hundred
million years ago, so any hypothetical fossils from a few billion years
ago would be buried under lava flows.

alias Ernest Major

[Mike Dworetsky]

There is plenty of hydrogen and oxygen, but at higher altitudes it is all
tied up in sulphuric acid (H2SO4) and carbon dioxide (CO2), and some sulphur
dioxide. There is only a tiny amount of water vapor and no free oxygen.
Nitrogen content is about 3.5%. No liquid water.

>
> So no ... I don't see any chance of "gas-bags" ...
> such complex multicellulars just wouldn't have had
> time to evolve. Venus is just a very hot, acidic
> planet ... void of life.
>
> Hey ... even on earth we got just ONE thread of life.
> We're all related to the ONE primordial cell. If life
> were so easy there'd probably be numerous lines
> of life with different, incompatible, biochemistries.

--
Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

[jillery]

On Sat, 30 May 2015 03:06:03 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>
wrote:

Not related to your main point, but your last paragraph isn't quite
correct. Even assuming incompatible chemistries, and that life
started independently at several locations, it's almost certain that
time, chance, and competition will eliminate all but a single line.

--
Intelligence is never insulting.

[Nick Roberts]

In message <248ima9gur2no8tgj...@4ax.com>

Unlikely, I would have thought. Given how good various forms of archaea
and bacteria are at finding sustenance from all kinds of chemical
compounds, I would expect that whichever biochemistry came first would
work out all sorts of ways to use the later type for lunch.

I suppose it may work if all the examples of the each
biochemistry were strictly segmented from all the examples of the other
biochemistries it might work.

I'm still hopeful for Enceladus.

And while I don't think it very likely, I really, really, _really_ want
Titan to be demonstrated to host methagenic life, even if only for the
cool factor.

[jonathan]

On 5/29/2015 6:00 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:


> I have a theory that I "inherited" from Nobel Laureate Francis Crick
> and Leslie Orgel, a tiny bit like the idea I've given you, but
> much more realistic: sending of microorganisms to seed earth way
> back then. I've written a great deal of reasoning in support of the
> hypothesis that this is somewhat more likely than abiogenesis on earth,

That's an absurd idea merely from the combinatorial aspects.

Can you even imagine a more hospitable place for life
then Earth? So why would intelligent life be any
more likely to evolve on some distant star than here?

Your idea also requires some distant society also needs
to learn how to travel among the stars, a pipe-dream
at least a thousand times less likely than life
itself.

And being several orders of magnitude less likely
than the simpler explanation life evolved here first
means as an idea it qualifies only as noise.

> but I think the details might not interest you: they lack the pizazz
> of your "ancient aliens" ideas.
>

What's the difference?

[jillery]

On Sat, 30 May 2015 10:12:53 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On 5/29/2015 6:00 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>
>
>> I have a theory that I "inherited" from Nobel Laureate Francis Crick
>> and Leslie Orgel, a tiny bit like the idea I've given you, but
>> much more realistic: sending of microorganisms to seed earth way
>> back then. I've written a great deal of reasoning in support of the
>> hypothesis that this is somewhat more likely than abiogenesis on earth,
>
>
>
>That's an absurd idea merely from the combinatorial aspects.
>
>Can you even imagine a more hospitable place for life
>then Earth?

Easily, but more to the point, life evolves to fit the environment it
finds itself, by definition. Earth has radically changed several
times since abiogenesis, and it provides thousands of very different
environments, and life is well-suited for each case.

>So why would intelligent life be any
>more likely to evolve on some distant star than here?

The answer to that question is straightforward: because some distant
stars were born before our Sun. Assuming that the creation and
evolution of intelligent life involves some relatively rare events,
increasing the time for those events to happen increases the chances
of them happening elsewhere. After all, it took 13.7 billion years
for the Universe to evolve us.

>Your idea also requires some distant society also needs
>to learn how to travel among the stars, a pipe-dream
>at least a thousand times less likely than life
>itself.

It certainly seems that way, but that could be the result of our
collective ignorance.

>And being several orders of magnitude less likely
>than the simpler explanation life evolved here first
>means as an idea it qualifies only as noise.

I have to agree with you there.

>> but I think the details might not interest you: they lack the pizazz
>> of your "ancient aliens" ideas.
>>
>
>
>What's the difference?

The latter is somebody else's noise.

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 29 May 2015 23:11:45 +0100, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Nick Roberts
<tig...@orpheusinternet.co.uk>:

>In message <2366762.a...@dalekelly.org>
> Dale <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote:
>
>> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?
>
>Given the pressure and temperatures involved, such a search would be
>extraordinarily difficult, as building a probe that can land on the
>surface of Venus is best described as "challenging".

Ummm...yeah. And the Pacific Ocean best described as
"dampish".

No, that's manifestly impossible. They didn't have iPods or
Starbucks or Adidas, so they can't have been intelligent
enough to move rocks around.

>Your skepticism is oddly unbalanced: you dismiss wormholes with
>apparent contempt, and yet you apparently take the fantasies of people
>like Von Daniken, Sitchin and Hancock seriously.
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[jonathan]

On 5/30/2015 1:12 PM, jillery wrote:
> On Sat, 30 May 2015 10:12:53 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On 5/29/2015 6:00 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I have a theory that I "inherited" from Nobel Laureate Francis Crick
>>> and Leslie Orgel, a tiny bit like the idea I've given you, but
>>> much more realistic: sending of microorganisms to seed earth way
>>> back then. I've written a great deal of reasoning in support of the
>>> hypothesis that this is somewhat more likely than abiogenesis on earth,
>>
>>
>>
>> That's an absurd idea merely from the combinatorial aspects.
>>
>> Can you even imagine a more hospitable place for life
>> then Earth?
>
>
> Easily,

The same conditions that allow life to thrive
also allows the creation of life. If a distant
'seed' could thrive here, Earth wouldn't need
to be seeded.





s

[jillery]

On Sat, 30 May 2015 14:27:58 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>

Your reply has exactly nothing to do with your own question. No
surprise there.

Apparently you weren't really interested in all that other stuff you
snipped out without attribution either. One might wonder why you even
bothered to post it.

[passer...@gmail.com]

Excellent chance of life on Venus. And much quicker to get to then Mars. Humans can live there, and will go there long before we go to Mars. We can stand outside and breathe the air and everything...

...In balloons far above the surface. Atmosphere shields against harmful radiation like on Mars, the air is breathable, but unfortunately it's about 170 degrees F. About the same as the hottest temperatures on earth. You could go outside the balloon, look around, breathe the air, but you'd want to go back into the air conditioning before long.

That's the big news in human spaceflight. Robot videos from there, floating around in a balloon, in a few years.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

Dale <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote in
news:2366762.a...@dalekelly.org:

> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?
>
> venus could have had a different climate a long time ago
> before gravity pulled it closer to the sun
>
> as with the idea of man escaping earth for mars when the earth
> gets closer only "some" could go, all the people would take a
> lot of space crafts
>
> maybe "some" people came from venus and designed some
> lifeforms here and used their technology to build the stone
> monoliths/megaliths they show on Ancient Aliens

Uh-huh. They designed some lifeforms that just happened to look exactly
like the lifeforms that would have evolved naturally, and they used
their unimaginably advanced spacefaring technology to shift a few rocks.

> deep space travel seems unlikely to me

And a bunch of technologically-advanced aliens wasting their time making
rockpiles seems *likely* to you?

What was their technology based on? They evidently didn't use metals,
seeing as how they left no evidence of mines, refineries, or metal
structures. They evidently didn't exploit any of Earth's potential fuel
sources; they didn't use arch-and-vault designs, external buttresses, or
anything else that would have enabled them to build anything more than
150 metres tall: I note that the steeple of Ulm Cathedral, completed in
1890, is 161.5 metres tall. These ancient aliens had the technology to
travel 261 million kilometres through the void of space, but they
couldn't outbuild a bunch of 19th-century Germans?

> the nearest star is 5 light years away
>
> dust particles could hit a spacecraft traveling fast, or maybe
> even in a spacetime warp, a spacetime warp could leave its
> path in destruction maybe
>
> already existing warps, wormholes, are the any around? I have
> never seen any?

How would you see them?

> maybe life in this solar system started on mercury, or a
> planet that already was engulfed into the sun
>
> maybe the designers of life, monoliths/megaliths left a
> message in stone, etc.

No doubt Bob Dylan was channeling that message when he composed 'Rainy
Day Women #12 and 35'.
--
S.O.P.

[Mr. B1ack]

On Sat, 30 May 2015 08:13:24 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Identify the other lines ... ANY of them ... ONE of them .....

Ain't there.

[jillery]

On Sun, 31 May 2015 02:51:41 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>

There would be no evidence of other lines even if they had once
existed.

[jonathan]

Or maybe that was the only statement I
had an issue with?

[Glenn]

"John Bode" <jfbod...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:04ae87d5-3b03-4007...@googlegroups.com...

"The same object shows up in a photograph taken by an identical landing probe, Venera 14, which landed nearby on Venus."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/9034433/Russian-scientist-claims-1982-pictures-shows-life-on-Venus.html

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 31 May 2015 08:30:22 -0700, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by "Glenn" <g...@invalid.invalid>:

And let's not forget this photo showing life (of a sort) on
Mars:

http://www.hatchoo.nl/mars/index6.html

Be sure to follow the link below the photo to see some
*really* exciting revelations:

http://www.hatchoo.nl/mars/index7.html

[jillery]

On Sun, 31 May 2015 10:26:36 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>

If so, then why didn't you say so? Go ahead and say what issue you
have with "easily". That should be entertaining.

[Mr. B1ack]

On Sun, 31 May 2015 07:11:57 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

Well, that's not *necessarily* true ... there's been some
success is scraping out remnants of old proteins and
DNA fragments such from even quite old fossils. Not
a whole picture by any means, but perhaps enough to
spot something seriously "different".

Also, on the question of alternate lifeforms being out-
competed .... being 'alternate', ie of significantly
different biochemistry, how much competiton would
there BE for resources ? Line 'A' and line 'B' could
be only partial competitors ... each mostly keen on
the kinds of chemicals IT uses.

Life proliferates, it adapts, it evolves. There are vast
numbers of species of OUR kind of life - and over
time some DO get out-competed or their ideal
environment goes away, but there are always a
lot more OTHER species that persist. Your proposed
'alternate' must have been pretty wimpy ....

It's not impossible that we'd find an 'alternate' thread
of life *somewhere* eventually ... perhaps some of
the deepest darkest hottest cracks in the crust. There
has been a fair amount of sampling and drilling and
such however and, so far, nothing found. Maybe they
haven't been looking for the right thing ? After all, what
does an 'alternate' line look like ? What does it
consume ? What does it excrete ? If it's not DNA and
a bunch of OUR favorite proteins/sugars/fats then
what might they be ?

There was one horrible horrible global disaster about
600 million years ago ... an upstart multi-colony organism
called a "stromatalite" began producing a gawdawfully
toxic gas called "oxygen" ... and it killed almost *everything*.
Maybe it was worse on your 'alternate' than on our line ?

[jillery]

On Mon, 01 Jun 2015 10:27:21 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>
wrote:

[...]

>>>>> Hey ... even on earth we got just ONE thread of life.
>>>>> We're all related to the ONE primordial cell. If life
>>>>> were so easy there'd probably be numerous lines
>>>>> of life with different, incompatible, biochemistries.
>>>>
>>>>Not related to your main point, but your last paragraph isn't quite
>>>>correct. Even assuming incompatible chemistries, and that life
>>>>started independently at several locations, it's almost certain that
>>>>time, chance, and competition will eliminate all but a single line.
>>>
>>>
>>> Identify the other lines ... ANY of them ... ONE of them .....
>>>
>>> Ain't there.
>>
>>
>>There would be no evidence of other lines even if they had once
>>existed.
>
>
> Well, that's not *necessarily* true ...

If you mean that the laws of physics don't exclude the possibility, of
course you're correct. But if you mean that it's probable within the
lifetime of the Earth, my understanding is you're wrong.

> there's been some
> success is scraping out remnants of old proteins and
> DNA fragments such from even quite old fossils. Not
> a whole picture by any means, but perhaps enough to
> spot something seriously "different".

The older the fossil, the more degraded the molecules you describe
above become. DNA was found in some fossils 10^5 years old Proteins
were found in some fossils 10^7 years old. But the best evidence
suggests life started on Earth 10^9 years ago. Fossil traces of any
kind from that long ago period are incredibly rare, and none of them
have even hinted at the possibility of original organic material
preserved in them.

> Also, on the question of alternate lifeforms being out-
> competed .... being 'alternate', ie of significantly
> different biochemistry, how much competiton would
> there BE for resources ? Line 'A' and line 'B' could
> be only partial competitors ... each mostly keen on
> the kinds of chemicals IT uses.

It's not really a question of being out-competed. Lots of systems
start out with initial diversity, then just by random chance converge
to one over time, like genetic drift, or the loss of surnames in small
towns.

But there's also the advantage of CHNOPS chemistry. These are among
the most abundant elements on Earth. Any life using those elements is
going to have access to more building blocks in more locations than
other alternate chemistries. Even where there were local patches
where some other elements dominated which might have supported some
other chemical life, that alternate life would simply be outnumbered
everywhere else. Sooner or later, some CHNOPS mutation would use that
alternate chemistry and simply overwhelm any previously evolved life
with its superior numbers.

> Life proliferates, it adapts, it evolves. There are vast
> numbers of species of OUR kind of life - and over
> time some DO get out-competed or their ideal
> environment goes away, but there are always a
> lot more OTHER species that persist. Your proposed
> 'alternate' must have been pretty wimpy ....

My understanding is extinction is more a matter of bad luck than bad
genes.

> It's not impossible that we'd find an 'alternate' thread
> of life *somewhere* eventually ... perhaps some of
> the deepest darkest hottest cracks in the crust. There
> has been a fair amount of sampling and drilling and
> such however and, so far, nothing found. Maybe they
> haven't been looking for the right thing ? After all, what
> does an 'alternate' line look like ? What does it
> consume ? What does it excrete ? If it's not DNA and
> a bunch of OUR favorite proteins/sugars/fats then
> what might they be ?

It would be a whole lot easier to reasonably speculate about
life-as-we-don't-know-it if science had a more complete understanding
of how life-as-we-know-it got started.

> There was one horrible horrible global disaster about
> 600 million years ago ... an upstart multi-colony organism
> called a "stromatalite" began producing a gawdawfully
> toxic gas called "oxygen" ... and it killed almost *everything*.
> Maybe it was worse on your 'alternate' than on our line ?

AIUI was a global disaster 600 mya, and there was a geologically
sudden release of biogenic oxygen into the atmosphere, but those are
two entirely separate events.

The evidence is that 600 mya, and perhaps other times previously,
Earth went through the ultimate global cooling, where glaciers formed
from pole to equator, perhaps covering Earth's entire surface with
ice. Some speculate this event led to the rise of multicellular life,
as preserved in Ediacaran fossils

The evidence is that the Great Oxygenation Event happened around 2.3
bya, resulting from the evolution of photosynthesis in cyanobacteria.

And it's likely there were other global life-threatening catastrophes
that happened since life evolved almost 4 bya. For example, it's
estimated that a meteor impact like the one which wiped out non-avian
dinosaurs hits Earth about once every 100 million years. If so,
plenty of equivalent-sized asteroids hit Earth since abiogenesis, but
natural processes have erased any evidence of most of them.

[Mr. B1ack]

On Mon, 01 Jun 2015 17:36:11 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

So you're claiming proof through obscurity ?

Well now ... the earth has been "nice" for about 3 billion
years ... not too hot, not too cold, but with little pockets
of extremes that could spawn all sorts of interesting
chemistry.

So who says those alternative threads of life had to take
shape right around the same time ours did ? Seems
like ANY time would be a good time ... 3 billion OR 3
million years ago. If life is something even vaguely
"likely" to take shape then it should have been doing
so quite often - and, as I mentioned, the more 'alternate'
the less competition issues with our thread-o-life.

But, alas, nada.

>> Also, on the question of alternate lifeforms being out-
>> competed .... being 'alternate', ie of significantly
>> different biochemistry, how much competiton would
>> there BE for resources ? Line 'A' and line 'B' could
>> be only partial competitors ... each mostly keen on
>> the kinds of chemicals IT uses.
>
>
>It's not really a question of being out-competed. Lots of systems
>start out with initial diversity, then just by random chance converge
>to one over time, like genetic drift, or the loss of surnames in small
>towns.

I think you're talking about "99% compatible" lines-o-life. Sure,
they COULD merge.

But DNA/RNA isn't the only thing that can be used to store
genetic info, our kinds of proteins aren't the only kinds of
proteins (and proteins aren't the only thing you can make
structure and enzymes from), our phospholipid membranes
aren't the only way to make membranes, chlorophyl isn't the
only molecule that can harvest solar energy ... there's more
than enough "stuff" on this planet to assemble a number of
VERY different threads-o-life ... very incompatible ones.

But, alas, nada.

>But there's also the advantage of CHNOPS chemistry. These are among
>the most abundant elements on Earth. Any life using those elements is
>going to have access to more building blocks in more locations than
>other alternate chemistries. Even where there were local patches
>where some other elements dominated which might have supported some
>other chemical life, that alternate life would simply be outnumbered
>everywhere else. Sooner or later, some CHNOPS mutation would use that
>alternate chemistry and simply overwhelm any previously evolved life
>with its superior numbers.

"Overwhelming" only works well when there's competiton for
the same resources. By your logic there should be only ONE
kind of bacteria in the world ... the fastest-breeding kind ...
which would have overwhelmed all the others aeons ago.

>> Life proliferates, it adapts, it evolves. There are vast
>> numbers of species of OUR kind of life - and over
>> time some DO get out-competed or their ideal
>> environment goes away, but there are always a
>> lot more OTHER species that persist. Your proposed
>> 'alternate' must have been pretty wimpy ....
>
>My understanding is extinction is more a matter of bad luck than bad
>genes.

Typically yes ... although it's hard to tell what genes are "bad"
until you arrive at a particular environmental situation. The
proposed "global warming" is likely to happen faster than
some species can adapt or spawn new species - therefore
they'll die out, some of their genes which were "good"
yesterday suddenly became "bad".

>> It's not impossible that we'd find an 'alternate' thread
>> of life *somewhere* eventually ... perhaps some of
>> the deepest darkest hottest cracks in the crust. There
>> has been a fair amount of sampling and drilling and
>> such however and, so far, nothing found. Maybe they
>> haven't been looking for the right thing ? After all, what
>> does an 'alternate' line look like ? What does it
>> consume ? What does it excrete ? If it's not DNA and
>> a bunch of OUR favorite proteins/sugars/fats then
>> what might they be ?
>
>
>It would be a whole lot easier to reasonably speculate about
>life-as-we-don't-know-it if science had a more complete understanding
>of how life-as-we-know-it got started.

Well, they're working on that ...

I don't expect an *exact* answer, you'd have to be
there to be sure, but just as physics can kind-of
run the universe backwards it's possible to run
genetics/biochemistry backwards to a degree.
That'll give more clues to the chemists who are
working on self-assembling life-like chemical
soups.

And hey, maybe the panspermia people were
accidently right ... earth may NEVER have been
good for the initial creation of life - just for its
subsequent sustenence. The Answer may be
on some other planet that DID have a better
chemical toolkit and environment.

>> There was one horrible horrible global disaster about
>> 600 million years ago ... an upstart multi-colony organism
>> called a "stromatalite" began producing a gawdawfully
>> toxic gas called "oxygen" ... and it killed almost *everything*.
>> Maybe it was worse on your 'alternate' than on our line ?
>
>
>AIUI was a global disaster 600 mya, and there was a geologically
>sudden release of biogenic oxygen into the atmosphere, but those are
>two entirely separate events.

Who says you can't have two disasters one right
after the other ? :-)

>The evidence is that 600 mya, and perhaps other times previously,
>Earth went through the ultimate global cooling, where glaciers formed
>from pole to equator, perhaps covering Earth's entire surface with
>ice. Some speculate this event led to the rise of multicellular life,
>as preserved in Ediacaran fossils
>
>The evidence is that the Great Oxygenation Event happened around 2.3
>bya, resulting from the evolution of photosynthesis in cyanobacteria.

I likely got my timeframe wrong with the oxygen. However
it was a terrible blow to the sulfide-suckin' community.
Lucky there was a LOT of dissolved iron to absorb the
evil oxygen ... slowed things down enough to allow SOME
adaptation/evolution.

>And it's likely there were other global life-threatening catastrophes
>that happened since life evolved almost 4 bya. For example, it's
>estimated that a meteor impact like the one which wiped out non-avian
>dinosaurs hits Earth about once every 100 million years. If so,
>plenty of equivalent-sized asteroids hit Earth since abiogenesis, but
>natural processes have erased any evidence of most of them.

Plenty of disasters ... and while asteroids are spectacular,
maybe the periodic giant-scale volcanic events were even
more disasterous for life - and they lasted a LONG time
compared to one little whack from above.

OTOH ... if you put ego aside, by far the dominant lifeform
on the planet is single-celled organisms - by number,
variety and metric tonnage. So some trees and dinosaurs
dying off *barely* rates a blip on the extinct-o-meter because
almost all life on the planet is microscopic specks in the
ocean :-)

[jillery]

On Mon, 01 Jun 2015 18:56:55 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>

Isn't that what you're doing, invoking DNA from fossils billions of
years old?

> Well now ... the earth has been "nice" for about 3 billion
> years ... not too hot, not too cold, but with little pockets
> of extremes that could spawn all sorts of interesting
> chemistry.
>
> So who says those alternative threads of life had to take
> shape right around the same time ours did ? Seems
> like ANY time would be a good time ... 3 billion OR 3
> million years ago. If life is something even vaguely
> "likely" to take shape then it should have been doing
> so quite often - and, as I mentioned, the more 'alternate'
> the less competition issues with our thread-o-life.
>
> But, alas, nada.

Only if you presume non-chemical based life. And unless you presume
life in alternate dimensions, it would have still have to compete for
lebensraum.

>>> Also, on the question of alternate lifeforms being out-
>>> competed .... being 'alternate', ie of significantly
>>> different biochemistry, how much competiton would
>>> there BE for resources ? Line 'A' and line 'B' could
>>> be only partial competitors ... each mostly keen on
>>> the kinds of chemicals IT uses.
>>
>>
>>It's not really a question of being out-competed. Lots of systems
>>start out with initial diversity, then just by random chance converge
>>to one over time, like genetic drift, or the loss of surnames in small
>>towns.
>
> I think you're talking about "99% compatible" lines-o-life. Sure,
> they COULD merge.

No, not merged, merely pushed aside.

> But DNA/RNA isn't the only thing that can be used to store
> genetic info, our kinds of proteins aren't the only kinds of
> proteins (and proteins aren't the only thing you can make
> structure and enzymes from), our phospholipid membranes
> aren't the only way to make membranes, chlorophyl isn't the
> only molecule that can harvest solar energy ... there's more
> than enough "stuff" on this planet to assemble a number of
> VERY different threads-o-life ... very incompatible ones.
>
> But, alas, nada.

You rely too much on your undefined "incompatible". If your alternate
life is chemistry-based, that means it relies on the raw materials
found on Earth. If your presume your alternate life uses chemistry
not based on CHNOPS, it would necessarily be restricted to small
pockets of localized concentrations of whatever, which would
eventually be diluted and/or consumed, and then your alternate life
would perish.

Alternately, if you presume a resource which is steadily renewed, say
from volcanoes, it's almost certain CHNOPS life would learn to use
that resource also.

>>But there's also the advantage of CHNOPS chemistry. These are among
>>the most abundant elements on Earth. Any life using those elements is
>>going to have access to more building blocks in more locations than
>>other alternate chemistries. Even where there were local patches
>>where some other elements dominated which might have supported some
>>other chemical life, that alternate life would simply be outnumbered
>>everywhere else. Sooner or later, some CHNOPS mutation would use that
>>alternate chemistry and simply overwhelm any previously evolved life
>>with its superior numbers.
>
> "Overwhelming" only works well when there's competiton for
> the same resources. By your logic there should be only ONE
> kind of bacteria in the world ... the fastest-breeding kind ...
> which would have overwhelmed all the others aeons ago.

In your haste to support your alternate life, you invoke a strawman.
You forget that evolving life constantly occupies new niches. "The
race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... but
time and chance happeneth to them all."

But any chemical alternate life competes for the same resources; for
living space, for energy, and if CHNOPS-based, for raw materials. So,
either your alternate life is so "incompatible" we're unable to
recognize it as life at all, or your alternate life necessarily
suffered the stochastic fates.

>>> Life proliferates, it adapts, it evolves. There are vast
>>> numbers of species of OUR kind of life - and over
>>> time some DO get out-competed or their ideal
>>> environment goes away, but there are always a
>>> lot more OTHER species that persist. Your proposed
>>> 'alternate' must have been pretty wimpy ....
>>
>>My understanding is extinction is more a matter of bad luck than bad
>>genes.
>
> Typically yes ... although it's hard to tell what genes are "bad"
> until you arrive at a particular environmental situation.

More precisely, the environment defines which genes are bad.

It's known that all kinds of exotic molecules exist in outer space,
and that space provides conditions different than Earth's surface, so
yes, it's possible that necessary initial ingredients originated in
space and fell to Earth, slowly as cosmic dust or all at once on a
comet.

Yes, the Universe knows lots of ways to destroy life.

> OTOH ... if you put ego aside, by far the dominant lifeform
> on the planet is single-celled organisms - by number,
> variety and metric tonnage. So some trees and dinosaurs
> dying off *barely* rates a blip on the extinct-o-meter because
> almost all life on the planet is microscopic specks in the
> ocean :-)

[Nick Roberts]

In message <2366762.a...@dalekelly.org>

Dale <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote:

> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?
>

> venus could have had a different climate a long time ago
> before gravity pulled it closer to the sun
>
> as with the idea of man escaping earth for mars when the earth
> gets closer only "some" could go, all the people would take a
> lot of space crafts
>
> maybe "some" people came from venus and designed some
> lifeforms here and used their technology to build the stone
> monoliths/megaliths they show on Ancient Aliens

The fate of life on Venus and the origin of intelligent life on Earth -
two problems, one solution:

http://xkcd.com/1519/

[Bob Casanova]

On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 16:53:22 +0100, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by Nick Roberts
<tig...@orpheusinternet.co.uk>:

>In message <2366762.a...@dalekelly.org>
> Dale <da...@dalekelly.org> wrote:
>
>> why no search for life on venus instead of mars?
>>
>> venus could have had a different climate a long time ago
>> before gravity pulled it closer to the sun
>>
>> as with the idea of man escaping earth for mars when the earth
>> gets closer only "some" could go, all the people would take a
>> lot of space crafts
>>
>> maybe "some" people came from venus and designed some
>> lifeforms here and used their technology to build the stone
>> monoliths/megaliths they show on Ancient Aliens

>The fate of life on Venus and the origin of intelligent life on Earth -
>two problems, one solution:
>
> http://xkcd.com/1519/

xkcd strikes again... ;-)

Good one, and far more appropriate to this thread than my
all-time favorite:

http://xkcd.com/556/

[Peter Nyikos]

On Saturday, May 30, 2015 at 2:28:07 PM UTC-4, jonathan wrote:
> On 5/30/2015 1:12 PM, jillery wrote:
> > On Sat, 30 May 2015 10:12:53 -0400, jonathan <WriteI...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On 5/29/2015 6:00 PM, Peter Nyikos wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> I have a theory that I "inherited" from Nobel Laureate Francis Crick
> >>> and Leslie Orgel, a tiny bit like the idea I've given you, but
> >>> much more realistic: sending of microorganisms to seed earth way
> >>> back then. I've written a great deal of reasoning in support of the
> >>> hypothesis that this is somewhat more likely than abiogenesis on earth,
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> That's an absurd idea merely from the combinatorial aspects.

You obviously have no idea what my reasoning is.
If you are as adept at mathematics as you claim to be, you
should have no trouble understanding it:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/talk.origins/VJE_cAxliM4/r_fyIyzGy6UJ

> >> Can you even imagine a more hospitable place for life
> >> then Earth?

Read my post, and then try to see how very little relevance this
question of yours has.

> > Easily,

> The same conditions that allow life to thrive
> also allows the creation of life. If a distant
> 'seed' could thrive here, Earth wouldn't need
> to be seeded.

Last month, you thought to challenge me with a "mathematical" question that
has only a little to do with mathematics, and thought that you were
important enough that my ignoring you meant something about me.

Now you show a greater cluelessness about biochemistry. The
high percentage of free oxygen on present-day earth
(including that dissolved in water) allows lots
of adapted life to thrive, but only the early earth had conditions
that produce a good range of amino acids spontaneously. Purines and
pyrimidines, let alone nucleotides, are even harder to produce.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics -- standard disclaimer--
University of South Carolina

http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/
nyikos @ math.sc.edu

[Mr. B1ack]

Hmmm ... we've branched into a lot of subjects here. Messy.

Let's start at the bottom ... "panspermia".

It IS "possible". Earth may not have been a good life-creation
environment and it instead arrived from elsewhere. Meteor
impacts - don't even have to be the size of the dinosaur-
buster - can fling LOTS of dirt into space, along with whatever
may be living in it. Many bacteria are tough little bastards and
will form spores or just go dormant under bad conditions.

So yes, such things *could* have been drifting through space for
millions, maybe a billion, years and survived an impact with
our planet.

But it's all a "could-have" sort of argument ... no solid proof.
When we can finally get decent volumes of samples from
the oort cloud and beyond then we may get a better idea
about how much, if any, biological material is drifting in space.
Isotope analysis oughtta tell whether any given rock is from
earth or not.

"Alternate"/"different" lifeforms :

No, I wasn't speculating about non-organics. Theoretically
such things *could* exist, but I have extreme doubts. Organic
is "life friendly", lots of ways to put those molecules together
on temperate worlds. If there's non-organic life then it was
probably *made* by intelligent, originally organic, lifeforms.
Androids/robots, AI based on who-knows what, organic
bodies continually "upgraded" for centuries or millenia until
they're 100% silicones and such ... those will be your
inorganic life. (I think we're ultimately headed that way,
the only way to tell Future Man from an android will be
to check and see if there's a factory serial number)

By "alternate"/"different" I mean different molecules arranged
in different ways to accomplish the usual tasks "life" has to
perform - gathering energy, disposing of wastes, reproduction,
motion, homeostasis, adaptation/evolution to accomodate
changing circumstances.

On THIS planet it'd still probably use the same ELEMENTS as
our kind of life, but you don't need DNA or RNA to store info
and regulate minute-2-minute function, chlorophyll isn't the
only molecule that can absorb light and rub a couple of
other chemicals together for energy, muscle-like tissue
doesn't have to be made from acto-myosin, proteins
other than the ones we use can be made and built into
structure and enzymes, complex sugars could replace
amino acids and proteins to a fair degree.

In short, from the same pile of "stuff" the environment
provides you can put together a number of of biological
lines that are in no way related, do not harken back to
a common ancestor and may not even seriously
overlap each other in terms of material needs (except
space, in extreme circumstances).

Earth has been a rich and nurturing enviroment for a
LONG time so it's surprising that we haven't encountered
numerous examples of "alternate" life that's taken shape
over the past few billion years. "We ate them all" isn't
100% plausable. Actually, they'd probably be un-nutritious
or even poisonous if they didn't have the "right" amino
acids in 'em.

All this said, clearly we haven't examined the molecular
profiles of even a tiny fraction of the life on this world.
Those "alternates" MAY be out there ... kinda look like
our kind of microbes (good designs tend to reappear)
and thus go unnoticed. Time will tell ... and fortunately
we now have the tools and the samples from a vast
number of environments so that it may not be MUCH
time before we see if ours is (and maybe always has
been) the ONLY biotic lineage on earth.

The reason I worry about this is because if our "perfect"
world could only produce ONE ... seems to drastically
cut the chances of finding life "out there". It'd be a far
more boring universe ... though we wouldn't have to
worry much about 'Klingons' either.

Oh, and it'd also tend to boost the hopes of the "special
creation" crowd .... "SEE ! We're IT ! This PROVES my
fantastically-complex religion is 101 percent TRUE !!!".

Well, there's the other track too ... the physicists are
making headway painting our alleged 3-D existence
as a sort of "holographic" projection. There's another
term for that, a less-fun side of "special creation",
known as the "game grid". Kinda makes "Have you
been SAVED ?" into a different kind of question,
doesn't it ? :-)

[jillery]

Say Jonathan, you seem to have conveniently missed this post, too.
Apparently you're not really interested in this topic after all.


On Sun, 31 May 2015 15:59:53 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[jillery]

On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 17:46:02 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>
wrote:

>Hmmm ... we've branched into a lot of subjects here. Messy.
>
>Let's start at the bottom ... "panspermia".
>
>It IS "possible". Earth may not have been a good life-creation
>environment and it instead arrived from elsewhere. Meteor
>impacts - don't even have to be the size of the dinosaur-
>buster - can fling LOTS of dirt into space, along with whatever
>may be living in it. Many bacteria are tough little bastards and
>will form spores or just go dormant under bad conditions.
>
>So yes, such things *could* have been drifting through space for
>millions, maybe a billion, years and survived an impact with
>our planet.

Life-bearing spores is one scenario, but that's really a cheat,
because it just moves first life to another planet whose past we can
know even less about than Earth's. I described a different scenario,
where molecules developed in space that seem to be difficult to
produce spontaneously in the conditions of early Earth.

If contemporaneous alternate life lines both use CHNOPS chemistry,
they necessarily would have competed for materials, as well as living
space and energy, whether or not they also used DNA, RNA, and amino
acids.

>Earth has been a rich and nurturing enviroment for a
>LONG time so it's surprising that we haven't encountered
>numerous examples of "alternate" life that's taken shape
>over the past few billion years. "We ate them all" isn't
>100% plausable. Actually, they'd probably be un-nutritious
>or even poisonous if they didn't have the "right" amino
>acids in 'em.

As I said, it's not surprising at all. My impression is even if there
were multiple alternate life lines, they almost certainly would not
have left any evidence of their existence.

And your poisonous amino acid argument doesn't wash. It's plausible
that early life didn't use amino acids as indivisible molecules, but
broke them down to even simpler molecules first. So, no, different
amino acids wouldn't be poisonous. A more likely response to an
indigestible amino acid is that it would be ignored, analogous to how
your body ignores indigestible paraffin.

>All this said, clearly we haven't examined the molecular
>profiles of even a tiny fraction of the life on this world.
>Those "alternates" MAY be out there ... kinda look like
>our kind of microbes (good designs tend to reappear)
>and thus go unnoticed. Time will tell ... and fortunately
>we now have the tools and the samples from a vast
>number of environments so that it may not be MUCH
>time before we see if ours is (and maybe always has
>been) the ONLY biotic lineage on earth.
>
>The reason I worry about this is because if our "perfect"
>world could only produce ONE ... seems to drastically
>cut the chances of finding life "out there". It'd be a far
>more boring universe ... though we wouldn't have to
>worry much about 'Klingons' either.
>
>Oh, and it'd also tend to boost the hopes of the "special
>creation" crowd .... "SEE ! We're IT ! This PROVES my
>fantastically-complex religion is 101 percent TRUE !!!".
>
>Well, there's the other track too ... the physicists are
>making headway painting our alleged 3-D existence
>as a sort of "holographic" projection. There's another
>term for that, a less-fun side of "special creation",
>known as the "game grid". Kinda makes "Have you
>been SAVED ?" into a different kind of question,
>doesn't it ? :-)

Another scenario I didn't mention is that it's plausible abiogenesis
occurred multiple times on Earth, but only the last one survived. The
early Earth was a lot more hostile than the one modern life has
evolved to love.

[Mr. B1ack]

On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 18:44:55 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 17:46:02 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>
>wrote:
>
>>Hmmm ... we've branched into a lot of subjects here. Messy.
>>
>>Let's start at the bottom ... "panspermia".
>>
>>It IS "possible". Earth may not have been a good life-creation
>>environment and it instead arrived from elsewhere. Meteor
>>impacts - don't even have to be the size of the dinosaur-
>>buster - can fling LOTS of dirt into space, along with whatever
>>may be living in it. Many bacteria are tough little bastards and
>>will form spores or just go dormant under bad conditions.
>>
>>So yes, such things *could* have been drifting through space for
>>millions, maybe a billion, years and survived an impact with
>>our planet.
>
>
>Life-bearing spores is one scenario, but that's really a cheat,
>because it just moves first life to another planet whose past we can
>know even less about than Earth's. I described a different scenario,
>where molecules developed in space that seem to be difficult to
>produce spontaneously in the conditions of early Earth.

Some are obsessed with how/if life formed ... either for
reasons of scientific knowledge or, for some, 'religious
reasons'. The details of a natural process *would* be
very interesting. However I don't care so much *where*
it formed.

Why there seems to be a vast 11-dimensional energy
mass that can spawn one or more lower-D universes
is even more interesting. Of course if it weren't there
then I wouldn't be asking such a question ... but that's
a more "ultimate" question than the formation of life,
the "Why ANYTHING ?" question. It's where the
causality buck stops and even encompasses all
those 'gods' folks love to believe in.

There's no shortage of CHNOPS on the planet.

Our kind of life isn't so much interested in pure carbon or
phosphorous or sulfur as it is in existing complex molecules
that incorporate those elements. When we digest we do
not break down the food into pure carbon/nitrogen/etc, but
into amino acids ... the pre-made building blocks that can
be used to repair/expand our bodies.

An 'alternate' lifeform might not be able to make use of
all the amino acids WE find handily about ... it'd have to
eat its own, so to speak, to obtain a good supply. Maybe
the best place to look for 'alternates' is in fairly closed
biospheres, places their kinds of molecules would
concentrate ?

>>Earth has been a rich and nurturing enviroment for a
>>LONG time so it's surprising that we haven't encountered
>>numerous examples of "alternate" life that's taken shape
>>over the past few billion years. "We ate them all" isn't
>>100% plausable. Actually, they'd probably be un-nutritious
>>or even poisonous if they didn't have the "right" amino
>>acids in 'em.
>
>
>As I said, it's not surprising at all. My impression is even if there
>were multiple alternate life lines, they almost certainly would not
>have left any evidence of their existence.

You're still thinking 4-billion-years-ago. 'Alternates' didn't HAVE
to form then ... could have formed at ANY time, including last
thursday. You may not have to scrape fossils for evidence at
all, just the inside of your toilet tank perhaps.

>And your poisonous amino acid argument doesn't wash. It's plausible
>that early life didn't use amino acids as indivisible molecules, but
>broke them down to even simpler molecules first.

A real possibility - although that'd be a *lot* more energy
intensive. It takes relatively little energy to hydrolyze a
peptide bond (2 to 4 kcal/mol) but 73 kcal/mol to pry
nitrogen from carbon, 70 for carbon & phosphorous etc..
This MIGHT not be as much of a problem for organisms
that get their energy from, say, volcanic vents ... but it'd
take a lot longer to get that much from photosynthesis.

>So, no, different
>amino acids wouldn't be poisonous. A more likely response to an
>indigestible amino acid is that it would be ignored, analogous to how
>your body ignores indigestible paraffin.

*Might* not be poisonous. Check :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-proteinogenic_amino_acids
and scroll down to "Toxic analogues"

Yep, could have been some false starts. It's fairly certain
that the proto-earth was a very *rough* place ... you never
knew when a swarm of asteroids or comets or even little
dwarf worlds would come down on your head. Our current
biotic line may not have survived because it was "superior"
but mostly because it came *late* ... missing the worst of
the disasters.

Still though ... it's probably easier to guess and simulate
the environment of a VERY early, hot, chemically-nasty
earth than of the more "settled" earth half a billion years
later when more complex and delicate molecules could
have become common. After the latest comet probes
we now KNOW what all the raw materials were. As such,
you'd think at least one of the "Let's make life from scratch"
experiments would have produced more interesting results.

[Peter Nyikos]

On Wednesday, June 3, 2015 at 10:12:55 AM UTC-4, Mr. B1ack wrote:
> On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 18:44:55 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 17:46:02 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>
> >wrote:
> >
> >>Hmmm ... we've branched into a lot of subjects here. Messy.
> >>
> >>Let's start at the bottom ... "panspermia".
> >>
> >>It IS "possible". Earth may not have been a good life-creation
> >>environment and it instead arrived from elsewhere. Meteor
> >>impacts - don't even have to be the size of the dinosaur-
> >>buster - can fling LOTS of dirt into space, along with whatever
> >>may be living in it. Many bacteria are tough little bastards and
> >>will form spores or just go dormant under bad conditions.
> >>
> >>So yes, such things *could* have been drifting through space for
> >>millions, maybe a billion, years and survived an impact with
> >>our planet.
> >
> >
> >Life-bearing spores is one scenario, but that's really a cheat,
> >because it just moves first life to another planet whose past we can
> >know even less about than Earth's.

Only if you care only about the ultimate beginning of life, and
not about how it might have begun on earth.

Jillery once jeered that my panspermia hypothesis is about as plausible
as the existence of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, so she has a vested
interest now in everyone losing interest in how life began ON EARTH.

> > I described a different scenario,
> >where molecules developed in space that seem to be difficult to
> >produce spontaneously in the conditions of early Earth.
>
> Some are obsessed with how/if life formed ... either for
> reasons of scientific knowledge or, for some, 'religious
> reasons'. The details of a natural process *would* be
> very interesting. However I don't care so much *where*
> it formed.
>
> Why there seems to be a vast 11-dimensional energy
> mass that can spawn one or more lower-D universes
> is even more interesting. Of course if it weren't there
> then I wouldn't be asking such a question ... but that's
> a more "ultimate" question than the formation of life,
> the "Why ANYTHING ?" question. It's where the
> causality buck stops and even encompasses all
> those 'gods' folks love to believe in.

Yeah, it's like all the talk about what math is worth applying
coming down to how to make controlled fusion a reality.

<snip for focus>

> >>By "alternate"/"different" I mean different molecules arranged
> >>in different ways to accomplish the usual tasks "life" has to
> >>perform - gathering energy, disposing of wastes, reproduction,
> >>motion, homeostasis, adaptation/evolution to accomodate
> >>changing circumstances.
> >>
> >>On THIS planet it'd still probably use the same ELEMENTS as
> >>our kind of life, but you don't need DNA or RNA to store info
> >>and regulate minute-2-minute function, chlorophyll isn't the
> >>only molecule that can absorb light and rub a couple of
> >>other chemicals together for energy, muscle-like tissue
> >>doesn't have to be made from acto-myosin, proteins
> >>other than the ones we use can be made and built into
> >>structure and enzymes, complex sugars could replace
> >>amino acids and proteins to a fair degree.
> >>
> >>In short, from the same pile of "stuff" the environment
> >>provides you can put together a number of of biological
> >>lines that are in no way related, do not harken back to
> >>a common ancestor and may not even seriously
> >>overlap each other in terms of material needs (except
> >>space, in extreme circumstances).

<snip for focus>

> >>Earth has been a rich and nurturing enviroment for a
> >>LONG time so it's surprising that we haven't encountered
> >>numerous examples of "alternate" life that's taken shape
> >>over the past few billion years. "We ate them all" isn't
> >>100% plausable. Actually, they'd probably be un-nutritious
> >>or even poisonous if they didn't have the "right" amino
> >>acids in 'em.
> >
> >As I said, it's not surprising at all. My impression is even if there
> >were multiple alternate life lines, they almost certainly would not
> >have left any evidence of their existence.
>
> You're still thinking 4-billion-years-ago. 'Alternates' didn't HAVE
> to form then

And they didn't have to all go extinct if they did form back then.

> ... could have formed at ANY time, including last
> thursday. You may not have to scrape fossils for evidence at
> all, just the inside of your toilet tank perhaps.

Jillery is just rationalizing, but you are going to the opposite
extreme. Just coming up with a line of microbes with a different
genetic code than ours is a very difficult business. Ciliates
somehow managed it anyway, but they are the only exception we
know of in the last billion years.

What evidently happened is that the genes coding for some amino
acid got rarer and perhaps disappeared completely, so that a
mutation in the genetic code didn't set off a devastating feedback loop.

Peter Nyikos
Professor, Department of Math. -- standard disclaimer --
U. of South Carolina at Columbia
http://www.math.sc.edu/~nyikos/

[jillery]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 15:08:58 -0700 (PDT), Peter Nyikos
<nyi...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>On Wednesday, June 3, 2015 at 10:12:55 AM UTC-4, Mr. B1ack wrote:
>> On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 18:44:55 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >On Tue, 02 Jun 2015 17:46:02 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>
>> >wrote:
>> >
>> >>Hmmm ... we've branched into a lot of subjects here. Messy.
>> >>
>> >>Let's start at the bottom ... "panspermia".
>> >>
>> >>It IS "possible". Earth may not have been a good life-creation
>> >>environment and it instead arrived from elsewhere. Meteor
>> >>impacts - don't even have to be the size of the dinosaur-
>> >>buster - can fling LOTS of dirt into space, along with whatever
>> >>may be living in it. Many bacteria are tough little bastards and
>> >>will form spores or just go dormant under bad conditions.
>> >>
>> >>So yes, such things *could* have been drifting through space for
>> >>millions, maybe a billion, years and survived an impact with
>> >>our planet.
>> >
>> >
>> >Life-bearing spores is one scenario, but that's really a cheat,
>> >because it just moves first life to another planet whose past we can
>> >know even less about than Earth's.
>
>Only if you care only about the ultimate beginning of life, and
>not about how it might have begun on earth.

If life on Earth began elsewhere, then how life began on Earth is less
interesting.

>Jillery once jeered that my panspermia hypothesis is about as plausible
>as the existence of The Flying Spaghetti Monster,

What you likely refer to is my statement: there's as much evidence
for DP as there is for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This is, not
surprisingly, not at all what you said I said. Of course, you used
your mangled version as an excuse for one of your many irrelevant and
off-topic rants.

And since there's more evidence for panspermia than there is for
directed panspermia, try to avoid unnecessary confusion, if only for
the novelty of it, and don't conflate the two.

>so she has a vested
>interest now in everyone losing interest in how life began ON EARTH.

That's a really stupid thing to say, even for you.


><snip for focus>


Thanks for the precedent.

>> >As I said, it's not surprising at all. My impression is even if there
>> >were multiple alternate life lines, they almost certainly would not
>> >have left any evidence of their existence.
>>
>> You're still thinking 4-billion-years-ago. 'Alternates' didn't HAVE
>> to form then
>
>And they didn't have to all go extinct if they did form back then.

No they wouldn't have to, but they almost certainly did anyway. Even
you should be able to understand the difference.

>> ... could have formed at ANY time, including last
>> thursday. You may not have to scrape fossils for evidence at
>> all, just the inside of your toilet tank perhaps.
>
>Jillery is just rationalizing,

Of course, you don't say what you actually mean by that. No surprise
there.

>but you are going to the opposite
>extreme. Just coming up with a line of microbes with a different
>genetic code than ours is a very difficult business. Ciliates
>somehow managed it anyway, but they are the only exception we
>know of in the last billion years.

Actually, there are no living organisms on Earth with a substantially
different genetic code, and there are several living organisms each
with different minor differences.

>What evidently happened is that the genes coding for some amino
>acid got rarer and perhaps disappeared completely, so that a
>mutation in the genetic code didn't set off a devastating feedback loop.

--
This space is intentionally not blank.

[Mr. B1ack]

On Thu, 11 Jun 2015 23:46:56 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

Um ............ only to a point. How alien life, apparently
very simple, managed to get and hold a purchase on
existence on the very hostile early earth would still
be quite interesting - and educational in light of our
ultimate attempts to terraform other planets.

But yea, how life formed AT ALL, anywhere, is really
an even deeper mystery. Could have been a serious
fluke, a whole bunch of ducks having to be in a row,
not to be expected often. We've had a lot of people
boiling and electrocuting and otherwise abusing jars
of chemicals that are likely a very close match to
earth at minus 3 gigayears and while you can get a
few amino acids and such they never show any
signs of forming ANY kind of self-replicating self-
improving unit.

>>Jillery once jeered that my panspermia hypothesis is about as plausible
>>as the existence of The Flying Spaghetti Monster,
>
>
>What you likely refer to is my statement: there's as much evidence
>for DP as there is for the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This is, not
>surprisingly, not at all what you said I said. Of course, you used
>your mangled version as an excuse for one of your many irrelevant and
>off-topic rants.
>
>And since there's more evidence for panspermia than there is for
>directed panspermia, try to avoid unnecessary confusion, if only for
>the novelty of it, and don't conflate the two.

It's wise to apply The Razor there ... random panspermia is
far simpler an answer than directed panspermia. 'Directors'
are *complicated* things after all.

>>so she has a vested
>>interest now in everyone losing interest in how life began ON EARTH.
>
>
>That's a really stupid thing to say, even for you.
>
>
>><snip for focus>
>
>
>Thanks for the precedent.
>
>
>>> >As I said, it's not surprising at all. My impression is even if there
>>> >were multiple alternate life lines, they almost certainly would not
>>> >have left any evidence of their existence.
>>>
>>> You're still thinking 4-billion-years-ago. 'Alternates' didn't HAVE
>>> to form then
>>
>>And they didn't have to all go extinct if they did form back then.
>
>
>No they wouldn't have to, but they almost certainly did anyway. Even
>you should be able to understand the difference.

But a lack of evidence isn't evidence ... because we can't
find signs of alternate biotic lines doesn't prove they EVER
existed.

>>> ... could have formed at ANY time, including last
>>> thursday. You may not have to scrape fossils for evidence at
>>> all, just the inside of your toilet tank perhaps.
>>
>>Jillery is just rationalizing,
>
>
>Of course, you don't say what you actually mean by that. No surprise
>there.
>
>
>>but you are going to the opposite
>>extreme. Just coming up with a line of microbes with a different
>>genetic code than ours is a very difficult business. Ciliates
>>somehow managed it anyway, but they are the only exception we
>>know of in the last billion years.
>
>
>Actually, there are no living organisms on Earth with a substantially
>different genetic code, and there are several living organisms each
>with different minor differences.
>
>
>>What evidently happened is that the genes coding for some amino
>>acid got rarer and perhaps disappeared completely, so that a
>>mutation in the genetic code didn't set off a devastating feedback loop.

"Evidently" ? No evidence to find.

And who said alternate biotic lineages HAD to rely on
amino acids ?

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Jun 2015 01:46:18 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>

By "less interesting" I mean current abiogenesis research applies
plausible mechanisms from what Earth was like at the time. If life on
Earth started elsewhere, then it should focus on plausible mechanisms
from elsewhere. The problem is "elsewhere" is undefined and perhaps
undefinable. Alternately, if one assumes that plausible mechanisms
from elsewhere are similar to those from past Earth, then the concept
of "elsewhere" is a useless and can be discarded.

All forms of panspermia introduce to abiogenesis research the unknown,
unseen, and undefined, which is the same fatal flaw as with ID. That's
why I call panspermia a cheat.

'Tis you who claims there are/were alternate biotic lines. Remember?

>>>> ... could have formed at ANY time, including last
>>>> thursday. You may not have to scrape fossils for evidence at
>>>> all, just the inside of your toilet tank perhaps.
>>>
>>>Jillery is just rationalizing,
>>
>>
>>Of course, you don't say what you actually mean by that. No surprise
>>there.
>>
>>
>>>but you are going to the opposite
>>>extreme. Just coming up with a line of microbes with a different
>>>genetic code than ours is a very difficult business. Ciliates
>>>somehow managed it anyway, but they are the only exception we
>>>know of in the last billion years.
>>
>>
>>Actually, there are no living organisms on Earth with a substantially
>>different genetic code, and there are several living organisms each
>>with different minor differences.
>>
>>
>>>What evidently happened is that the genes coding for some amino
>>>acid got rarer and perhaps disappeared completely, so that a
>>>mutation in the genetic code didn't set off a devastating feedback loop.
>
> "Evidently" ? No evidence to find.
>
> And who said alternate biotic lineages HAD to rely on
> amino acids ?

[Mr. B1ack]

On Fri, 12 Jun 2015 08:06:57 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>

Agreed ... as, to date, we have no idea as to where
that "elsewhere" may have been or what the chemistry
of the place may have been.

So we're stuck at saying abiogenesis is "a possibility"
but nothing more.

>All forms of panspermia introduce to abiogenesis research the unknown,
>unseen, and undefined, which is the same fatal flaw as with ID. That's
>why I call panspermia a cheat.

Hmm ... I suppose it can be USED as a sort of "cheat" - not
so much unlike cozmic ultrabeings just zapping life into
existence, but there's nothing inherently wrong/impossible
about the concept. Even 'zapping' IS one possibility ...
assuming that it was microbes that were zapped into
existence and then left on their own to evolve.

In any case, scientists will continue to abuse those flasks
of primordial chemicals to see if anything more interesting
than brown stain ever takes shape. Now that we have a
little data about exoplanets they can try out some of THOSE
primordial atmospheres too, as best as we can tell what
those may be.

No, I said there weren't any ... even on this 'ideal' planet ...
which weighed against finding life on icy moons, much
less on Venus.

YOU said that there might have been, but we couldn't prove
it after 3 gigayears, then I said that on 'ideal' planets life
didn't all HAVE to form gigayears ago and ...... well ........

Frankly, I think we've kinda used up this subject.

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:11:13 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>
wrote:

> Frankly, I think we've kinda used up this subject.

It was used up even before you brought it up.

[Bob Casanova]

On Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:11:13 -0400, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>:

Yep.

> So we're stuck at saying abiogenesis is "a possibility"
> but nothing more.

I'd say we're stuck with saying abiogenesis happened, but we
don't know where it happened first. To call it a
"possibility" allows for some other cause. Can you think of
another *natural* possibility?

[Mr. B1ack]

On Sat, 13 Jun 2015 06:11:14 -0400, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Fri, 12 Jun 2015 23:11:13 -0400, "Mr. B1ack" <now...@nada.net>
>wrote:
>
>> Frankly, I think we've kinda used up this subject.
>
>
>It was used up even before you brought it up.

Nah, it was FRESH .... but the expiration date
has been reached. I guess we'll have to agree
to disagree about the liklihood of biogenesis.