Can random molecular interactions create life?

[Elledan]

Riprorin, your post does everything but refute biogenesis. It only shows that our knowledge of it is still very limited.

I'll take biogenesis over genesis any day. But perhaps I'm just not good at superstition.

 

[silverpig]

You have factored none of the fundamental forces into your model, nor have you factored in the materials, relative abundances, energies distance scales etc. The estimate you proposed suggests a vast cosmic soup of particles colliding at random, with no forces to hold them together, or push them apart.

To simplify your calculations, you should assume the big bang (as it's the best we have right now), go with the stellar and galactic formation models we have, and just skip right to the earth's formation. The earth's atmosphere was believed to have methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and a number of other gases in it a long time ago. Lightning was also a frequent occurance, as were rain storms. Lab tests have shown that simulated lightning bolts in an atmosphere resembling that of early earths produces some amino acids. The formation of these chemicals was not by pure chance of collision, but was the product of common and predictable phenomena.

 

[Ornery]

Anyone open to the possibility of consciousness existing in a non physical form?

Quantum Physics and Consciousness

• "I would suggest that Bohr went so far as to imply that the physical and phenomenal worlds bear a complementary relation to each other which is similar to the complementarity of position and momentum in the world of the electron. Or perhaps it is more like the complementarity of the wave-like and the particle-like behaviours of subatomic particles, in that these are two systems of description which apply, in superposition, to the same entity. Superposition, as used by Schroedinger, has it that the two separately describable sets of properties both hold concurrently."

Such a consciousness might try to manifest itself in different ways, such as life as we know it. Heh, just some food for thought...

 

[Riprorin]

<< Lab tests have shown that simulated lightning bolts in an atmosphere resembling that of early earths produces some amino acids. >>



Many people think life was once created in a test tube from chemicals and energy in the 1950's. This is known as the Miner-Urey experiment. Here is what actually occurred. They sparked ammonia, methane, hydrogen and water, condensed it and ran it through a trap (do you think the early earth had traps and condensers?). The samples had to be isolated from the spark because a second spark would have destroyed any molecules that were formed). The results of these experiments were mostly tar and carboxylic acid, but a few amino acids were formed. Amino acids may be called the building blocks of life. But it is either gross ignorance or a lie to say they created true life in this experiment. Life requires many things. Long amino acid chains make proteins, chains in the proper order and shape. Millers experiment did NOT produce any chains. Life also requires DNA, RNA and never has any experiment produced DNA or RNA from base materials. Never have chains of DNA or RNA been produced, and never has a cell membrane been produced.

 

[StageLeft]

These statistics are meaningless because:

1) Even if something is one in a billion-billion-billion chance it can happen.
2) Keep trying something for enough billions of years and the chances of a hit are higher.
3) Nobody in the world is even remotely intelligent enough to get these stastics even mildly accurate.
4) Yes creation of life is a low probability, but so is some deity who cares about only us. For all you know there are millions of other planets that are also trying to create life based upon the same odds and have not done it yet.

This arguement is never applicable towards anything. It's really just quite meaningless.

 

[Riprorin]

<< These statistics are meaningless because: >>





<< 1) Even if something is one in a billion-billion-billion chance it can happen. >>



The number of random trials needed for hitting a useful sequence of one relatively short protein is 10^130 (a set of about 1,000 proteins are required for the simplest life), but who's counting.



<< 2) Keep trying something for enough billions of years and the chances of a hit are higher. >>



The model uses an upper bound for the age of the universe at about 30 billion years. I believe that most scientists put the age of the universe at about 15 billion years.



<< 3) Nobody in the world is even remotely intelligent enough to get these stastics even mildly accurate. >>



The model is quite simple actually.



<< 4) Yes creation of life is a low probability, but so is some deity who cares about only us. For all you know there are millions of other planets that are also trying to create life based upon the same odds and have not done it yet. >>



There you go again creating a strawman. Can we stay on topic?

This arguement is never applicable towards anything. It's really just quite meaningless.
[/i] >>



In your humble opinion?

 

[glenn1]

It all comes down to certain people trying to answer the question with an erroneous first premise. They start off well enough in asking the question, "how did life begin?" However, they then use as one of their first assumptions (whether implicitly stated or implied), that there is no God. They then work backwards from the known (how life exists today) to the unknown (how life arose in the first instance). That's fine, and for a while meshes pretty well with the theories they've developed, namely, evolution.

The problem comes in when they try to complete the logical chain. If you begin with the assumption that "there is no God," then by definition, you need to develop a method which includes an abiogenetic method for life first arising. So therefore, when confronted with the reality of enormity of that challenge, the logical conclusions they need to resort to range from the mildly improbable (sure, it's a huge longshot, but hey, people win the lottery, don't they?), all the way to the fantastically contrived (in an infinite number of universes, life surely arose on one of them... in short, the "infinite number of monkeys on typewriters producing Shakespeare" argument).

For all intents and purposes, it's only common sense to say that life did not arise by means of abiogenesis. The odds of it are simply too great. A common sense man would say that life came about by God - "God" in the more classical, deist sense of a force or power outside of man's understanding. Note, i didn't ascribe any active intelligence, morality, or religious belief system on that concept of "God" that i just descibed. A belief in God (in the sense of the undescribable higher power) is a very seperate belief in the "God" of a particular religion. Saying can say "i do not believe abiogenesis created life, therefore that leaves God," is not the same as saying one endorses a particular religious belief. It's simply a shorthand confession of the obvious - that we cannot, due to our limitations, know how life arose, therefore, we use the common term "God" to ascribe its beginnings, again, the concept of God being that of the force or power outside of man's understanding, not of a religious God to whom prayer is due (although that depends on your own belief system, and is each man's choice, IMHO).

Now, where the problem for many lies, is that they don't want to open the door to theist beliefs at all, and have to even think about the concept of God, which means that man (and them, by extension) are limited beings who will never be able to answer certain questions. That, to most, is the bigger and thornier problem than even debating mere religious beliefs... they don't wish to think of themselves as finite beings. Instead, they get hung up on the moral aspects of the religious nature of God, i.e. whether "God" has an active intelligence and/or an active role in intervening in the universe. They want to make the argument out to be one of a certain belief system (normally Christianity) and that religion's concept of "God" is incorrect, rather than confront the argument that they are advancing theories so contrived as to make themselves sound like total idiots.

Now tell me, which sounds like the greater intellectual sloth and dishonesty, saying that life came from another planet on rocketships launched by alien beings, or that a force and power outside of our ability to understand, which we'll call "God" for shorthand, created life?

 

[rahvin]

Your assumptions are flawed. What you assume is the most primative form of life could very well not be. There is clay that can replicate it's own structure. Your first task to undertake any sort of analysis would be to figure out what actually defines life. Then your second task is to jump in your way-back machine and see what you are assuming is the most primative form of life was in fact the most primative form of life. What we know as life today isn't necessarily what defined the first "life". In addition your assumption of random reactions is flawed. I suggest you watch the Carl Sagan special Cosmos.

 

[Moonbeam]

Well the question that crosses my mind is, 'what God stuff is God composed of?' Is it more or less complex than amino acids and if more complex what were the chances that it could arise before there was space or time for it to arise in? I would, then, if I were a religious person, throw this theory on the dung heap, not wishing to prefer the unimaginably impossible over the seemingly impossible.

 

[Ornery]

'what God stuff is God composed of?'

Me thinks your physical being and thought is limited to idea that all things are composed of what we can perceive physically. Ever hear of quantum entanglement? Ever wonder what other non physical 'reactions' might be occurring without us being aware of them? And how might they effect physical things around us in the past or present?

Edit: Bottom line is that the chances of a non physical 'being' effecting physical life, would be just as astonomical or probable as chance interactions as the explanation for the complexity we observe in living system.

 

[Ionizer86]

Probability scientists consider anything with a chance of (1)/(10^50) or less to be impossible. Now if anyone remotely knows about scientific notation, (1)/(10^51) is only 1/10 as likely as something with 1/10^50 chance. By the time the chance is 1/10^55, the event is only 1/100,000 as likely to occur as something with a 1/10^50 chance of occuring.

The lottery argument is quite devoid. If 100 million people buy one lottery ticket, the chance of one person winning is an extremely large 1/10^8 chance.

 

[notfred]

I hate when creationists try to use these statistics to say something is impossible.

basically, what they say is the same as this: "since your chances of winning the lattery are 1 in 1,000,000, you'll have to play the lottery 1,000,000 times before you win"

that's not true. you could win the very first time you play. Likewise, all those molecules, no matter how improbable, could possibly have lined up the first second after they existed.

 

[StageLeft]

Well if we didn't start randomly and something started us, what started it that started us?

If something is one in a chance in hell but definition that thing can happen. Maybe it will take zillions of years. Maybe it will happen tomorrow. If we did start randomly and it had never of hapened then we'd not be discussing it now, but since it possibly did happen we are discussing it.

No matter how slight the odds are on something you can never ever make a positive and conclusive answer based upon it. You can make safe assumptions for non-critical things, but trying to find the true and total conclusive answer to how we started you simply cannot discount the possibility of life randomly beginning itself. Sure it's unlikely, but unlikely things always happen.

 

[PistachioByAzul]

Reminds me of Jurassic Park. It's impossible to predict the way a drop of water will roll off your hand. The only explanation is that it has to roll off some way, if not another. We are here because we can't NOT be here. Maybe we are just micro-organisms in a puddle of water on a sidewalk within another universe. There exists something outside what we are able to apply our logic to.

 

[Cattlegod]

statistics for the most part are meaning less anyway. they are only good when you have exact numbers, no room for error, because once you throw any kind of error in, your statistics get screwed.

here is some more statistics for you, on average every person on this earth has 1 breast and 1 testicle.

 

[xirtam]

O.K., guys, here's my response. If I have misunderstood your position, feel free to clarify:

MartyTheManiak:

<< But if you have an infinte number of universes, then those chances aren't that bad. Plus, there is no reason to think ours would be the only universe out there. >>



Wait a minute... did you just spontaneously wish into existence an infinite number of universes to improve the chances for your claim, or do you have any evidence to indicate that there are other universes actually existing? The "there is no reason to think ours would be the only universe out there" argument doesn't work, mainly because since you made the claim that there are many (i.e. an infinite number of) universes, you have the burden of proof to validate that claim. We can't just dismiss it by saying, "Seems just as plausible as anything else" when we have absolutely no proof to substantiate that claim. Is there any such proof?


Elledan:

<< Riprorin, your post does everything but refute biogenesis. >>



Now that is an exactly true statement. The problem is exactly the opposite of biogenesis, or abiogenesis, which has no basis in science -- that I know of -- and is based on the idea that life can spring from nonlife. Have you seen any examples of life coming from nonlife? That sounds like a superstitious idea to me... termites spontaneously arising from the wood of a tree, etc.



<< But perhaps I'm just not good at superstition. >>

Good. Neither is Riprorin. Neither am I. We want to solve things on a perfectly scientific basis, and theories of abiogenesis at this point have absolutely no support.



Moonbeam:


<< Well the question that crosses my mind is, 'what God stuff is God composed of?' >>



What God stuff? Did Riprorin talk about a God? I don't see that... furthermore, it's a rather ridiculous notion to consider God in terms of amino acids and other such tangibilities. If there is a God, He necessarily transcends the natural world since He created it. But that's not a scientific question -- so we can leave it out, as Riprorin did. It still doesn't excuse the burden of proof to explain how, by random sorting and selecting, life came into being from chemicals that were "just there." What you are proposing is that I take a helicopter up about 5,000 feet and drop a stack of 25,000 notecards. You're arguing that when my cards finally reach the bottom, they will have had enough time to randomly sort and select themselves to spell "Anandtech" on the ground. Ah... but you didn't give it enough time, one might argue. Ok. So now instead of 5,000 feet, I take it up to 20,000 feet and drop the same stack of notecards. Have I helped my situation any? No! That same stack of notecards is going to spread out and form a more and more disordered mess. Now why would this not apply to a pile of unexplainable chemicals that are just randomly "oozing" about with no guided intellectual process?




<< Your assumptions are flawed. What you assume is the most primative form of life could very well not be. >>

What did he assume was the most primative form of life, and how does that make his assumptions necessarily "flawed"? We observe things in nature that can replicate themselves, but that argues more for a designer than for a random process. Think about it -- how the heck could a random process somehow produce a replication system whereby exact copies could be made of some substance? This argument is scientifically absurd, mainly because it doesn't correlate with anything in nature -- or does it? Can you point out to me one instance where purely random and unguided processes can produce higher complex forms? Why are you defining Riprorin's tasks for him? You've completely side-stepped the issue, haven't you? Why don't you address the scientific probability of something complex coming from something even simpler? And while you're at it, can you explain the intricate balances that must be in place to preserve life as we know it? Tell me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you're putting words in his mouth...


Skoorb:
These statistics are meaningless because:

1) Even if something is one in a billion-billion-billion chance it can happen.

Is science based on the improbable and the unobservable? Or the probable and the observable?

2) Keep trying something for enough billions of years and the chances of a hit are higher.

Refer to my helicopter example with Moonbeam. Also, note how you said "keep trying" in your statement. Why are we to assume that anything is "trying"? There is NO INTELLIGENCE and no justification behind this process, so how can anything "keep trying"? Why should we assume that these particles "kept trying" as if they knew what state they were looking for?

3) Nobody in the world is even remotely intelligent enough to get these stastics even mildly accurate.

I could argue the same thing about the age of the earth, saying that nobody is remotely intelligent enough to get it right. Can you explain to me how you have not committed a genetic fallacy here? It looks to me like you're attacking the source or the origin of the argument rather than the argument itself. Now if you just want to say, "these statistics are inaccurate," that's fine, but please at least give Riprorin and the rest of us the courtesy of explaining why the statistics are false and offer some alternative data based on checkable results. That would be a more scientific way of approaching this argument.

4) Yes creation of life is a low probability, but so is some deity who cares about only us. For all you know there are millions of other planets that are also trying to create life based upon the same odds and have not done it yet.

So basically what you're telling me is that you know your position is improbable and weak, but so is every other possible position... right? Is that really what you want to base your argumentation on? Do you have any possible (scientifically verifiable or deniable) justification or reason to believe that there are millions of other planets that are also "trying to create life" based on the same odds and have not done it yet? Furthermore, this "trying to create life" implies an active process. Your position, as I understand it, is supposed to be based on a bunch of random processes somehow randomly creating life. Can you explain to me how this involves "trying" as we know "trying"?

 

[xirtam]

notfred: What are my chances of winning the lottery if I never buy a ticket? I agree with you that a statistical improbability is still possible, but we're looking not at what is "possible" but at what is logical, rational, and scientific to believe. Can you explain to me how your assumption that "somehow, despite the improbability, it still happened" is logical, rational, and scientific?

 

[Maetryx]

<< Well the question that crosses my mind is, 'what God stuff is God composed of?' Is it more or less complex than amino acids and if more complex what were the chances that it could arise before there was space or time for it to arise in? I would, then, if I were a religious person, throw this theory on the dung heap, not wishing to prefer the unimaginably impossible over the seemingly impossible. >>



Theists don't believe that God is compositional, i.e. made up of components. If his attributes are separate components, and God is a composition of those attributes, then his very attributes (love, holiness, justice, omnipotence, omniscience) would supersede him ontologically. God could not be the ontological first, if those attributes are distinct components of God. Theists believe that God is indivisible. He is loving-holy-ominipotent-omnisceint-justice.... all as one word that in the end is simply the long form of God's name.

 

[Martin]

<< Wait a minute... did you just spontaneously wish into existence an infinite number of universes to improve the chances for your claim, or do you have any evidence to indicate that there are other universes actually existing? >>



In case you are wondering, no, I didn't pull that outta my ass.


I read about this theory in Discover magazine a while ago. I can't find a link, but I remember it being a cover story.


One thing that I could find that's somewhat related is this. The idea of an occilating universe.

 

[Wallydraigle]

<< Wait a minute... did you just spontaneously wish into existence an infinite number of universes to improve the chances for your claim, or do you have any evidence to indicate that there are other universes actually existing? >>



Xirtam, you have to read the rest of the thread. Hairrcut wrote in defense of the multiverse theory:



<< I think that the multiverse idea has a very valid reason for existing. Feynman suggested that every particle takes every possible path (just some with a lot higher probabilities) when travelling from one location to another. Hence the reasoning behind Fenyman diagrams.

If we take this idea for every particle in the universe at every instant in time (Planck time) then we have an infinity of different outcomes at each step in time. Of course some will be a lot more likely than others, but there will be an infinite number of universes in existence so some will contain life. It just so happens that we are in one of the universes in which life has happened that we are able to comment on the fact. >>







This explains it a little more (check out the double split experiment, it's pretty neat). Also check out David Deutsch?s Home Page. There are literally thousands of links that come up about multiverse theory in a search engine. Many physicists are turning to it to help fill in the gaps in what we don't understand. It is a legitimate theory on the nature of the universe. Please don't act like we made it up to prove a point. Thanks.

 

[Jeff7]

It also doesn't have to be entirely random. Many other forces are at work here; molecular attractions, gravity, heat flow, etc - it isn't really random.


Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick stated that the complexities of life could not "have arisen by random chance," but required a replication mechanism to perserve beneficial mutations as they occured. Aware of modern life's nearly infinte complexity, Crick then concluded that the earth was not old enough at 4 1/2 billion years to have had life gradually evolve completely on this planet. Rather than acknowledging a creator, he preferred the "directed panspermia" concept, which placed the origin of life long, long ago and far, far away on some other planet in some other galaxy.

See previous on "random chance." Infinite complexity of life - "complex" is relative. Topical now - football seems very complex to me; I can't understand the rules, the plays, player designations, etc. To a hardcore football fan, it's simplistic, everyday knowledge. How complex is life? Seems pretty simple to me actually. Simple organisms are just simple systems doing their thing, the combinations of which enables the unit to continue to do what it is doing - to survive. A tube worm for example, is almost like two organs working together to keep the entire body alive. The worm gathers toxic chemicals from the water, which the bacteria convert into useful matter and energy. The worm keeps going, as do the bacteria. More developed life forms have more systems just doing their thing, and as long as all of those systems keep going together, the organism survives.

there was that Mars asteriod in '96 with the bacteria on it, so I guess its not so fantastic after all.
Actually, from what I've seen now, there have been natural formations found on Earth, not formed by bacteria, that match those found in that asteroid. But bacteria are capable of surviving completely locked inside a rock for a very long period of time. Could have been just a few bacterial spores that were revived by the heat of water when the asteroid hit.

Crick's rocket sperms - Star Trek: TNG already did that. Some dying alien race stuck a starmap into our DNA, and spread that DNA throughout the galaxy. Several aliens and ourselves found these starmaps, and found a projection of the alien that explained it all.


See, here's the thing about 'probabilities': the chance event in question can strike at any time. If the odds of winning a lottery jackpot are 1 in 50 million, it is NOT true that 49,999,999 million losing draws must occur before someone can win. I may win the first time I play, or I may never win despite playing daily for a thousand years. That's the way it goes.

Some project on encryption went like that. I don't remember the details, but the correct decryption key was found after less than 50% of the possible combinations were tried. Probability...


Not at all, in fact there would be an infinite number of universes with life in them. There would be an infinite number of universes that would look identical to our own, with maybe an atom or two out of place. Of course this has severe philosophical implications. Perhaps free will is more illusory that we generally believe.

Messing with infinity can mess with your head. Fun, isn't it?

Reminds me of Jurassic Park. It's impossible to predict the way a drop of water will roll off your hand. The only explanation is that it has to roll off some way, if not another. We are here because we can't NOT be here. Maybe we are just micro-organisms in a puddle of water on a sidewalk within another universe. There exists something outside what we are able to apply our logic to.
Anything is possible to predict. You just need an infinitely powerful supercomputer to be able to analyze all the existing data in an environment and run simulations faster than realtime to really predict anything accurately.

 

[Flat]

<< Brain....hurting......so many letters....soooo many words. >>



for real!

 

[Moonbeam]

xirtam, let me see if I got your argument right. You are saying that life can't scientifically arise from the inanimate. Now that that is settled we can introduce the notion that it must have been God that created it.

Well why get so fancy. Lets just say that life creates itself, it has the magical property that it is sui gereris. Thus we can leave the idea of some other type of creator with all the add on complexities that create such logical paradoxes behind. So life creates itself or there's something wrong with the theory and life does arise from the inannimate. Much simpler.

 

[xirtam]

Sorry if I failed to communicate clearly -- I wasn't acting like you were making this up to prove a point. Rather, I wanted to see what support you could offer... mainly because none was given (I did read Hairrcut's "defense," but I didn't find any support.) I had heard the multiverse argument before. But I still find no proof... only speculation. Surely nothing on which to base a scientific stance. I have no difficulty with Copenhagen's wave collapse theory or the dual nature of light.



<< Many physicists are turning to it to help fill in the gaps in what we don't understand... don't act like we made it up to prove a point. >>

What's the difference? It seems to me like physicists started with the answer they wanted and wound up needing to create multiple universes to justify themselves. Now, as long as they leave this in the realm of "one possibility" (that web site you pointed me to explained that there were many interpretations of which multiverse was just one), I have no problem with that. But it has to stay there until there's more proof or actual evidence or support for this thing.

I still have a few questions on multiverse. Yes, I did check out the experiment, but I find the inference that there must be multiple universes as a result of shining an electron gun through a couple of slits to be a bit far-fetched. First of all, what test exists to prove the multiverse theory wrong? These multiple universes are beyond our observation, correct? It seems to me to be a bit presumptuous to create universes to explain something we're observing within our known universe. But hey, I recognize that I'm not an expert on this. Is there any evidence to indicate why I'm wrong? Do you actually believe this theory of multiple universes to be true, and if so, why do you believe it?

Moonbeam:


<< xirtam, let me see if I got your argument right. You are saying that life can't scientifically arise from the inanimate. Now that that is settled we can introduce the notion that it must have been God that created it.

Well why get so fancy. Lets just say that life creates itself, it has the magical property that it is sui gereris. Thus we can leave the idea of some other type of creator with all the add on complexities that create such logical paradoxes behind. So life creates itself or there's something wrong with the theory and life does arise from the inannimate. Much simpler.
>>



Boy, I sure wish I could buy that theory. You're right... it would make things much more simple. But just because we can think of a simpler explanation doesn't make it any more true... or any more plausible. That's like saying: Why learn about all these arithmetic rules and algebraic rules and calculus rules? It introduces all kinds of weird paradoxes and complex notions, like infinities and division by zero, for which we have to come up with notions like limits and derivatives and integrals... Well, why get so fancy? Let's just say that the solution to every math problem is 5, and then we can leave all these add-on complexities. Right? Wrong. Why? Because I'm not concerned with how simple of an explanation we can concoct if it isn't TRUE! So unless you have reasoning and scientific evidence to back up how -- contrary to everything we can observe in nature now -- life spontaneously produced itself, there is indeed "something wrong with [this] theory." So far, the only reason you have given me is that it's easier to believe that life spontaneously came into existence. No, I'm sorry, that's not a valid assertion of faith. Furthermore, I'm not interested in faith -- what does the scientific evidence point to? Oh, by the way, does adding infinite universes detract at all from the "simplicity" of your argument?

 

[xirtam]

Lirion:

One more thing. I just typed in Santa Claus into Google and wound up with 498,000 hits. Just thought you should know.