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Origins of Life

This one is somewhere in between the first steps of origins of life and us at this point. This one is about after life was made in the sea and how it started appearing on land. So it is more of first steps in land.

Here is a fossil of the oldest "walking" specie to have been found till now. It is from Gondwana and it is 350 million years old!

Oldest scorpion.webp

Yeap, you guessed it! A scorpion!

References:

Gess, R. W. (2013). The earliest record of terrestrial animals in Gondwana: A scorpion from the Famennian (Late Devonian) Witpoort Formation of South Africa. African Invertebrates, 54 (2): 373-379; Retrieved from: Oldest land-living animal from Gondwana found .
 
MoSurveyor said:
The expectation of a full-blown cell popping up from scratch is hilarious.
Obviously there were many, many steps and millions of years between the first stable complex molecules appearing on Earth and the first cell, whatever it's form might have been.
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Yep, and we have people who attribute it to a bio-chemical accident.
 
DDD said:
There are plenty of religious stories about how life originated and thought we should balance that with some scientifically backed one's instead. Thus statements supported with scientific premises could be piled over here.

There are plenty of theories as to how life originated on our world. Most state that the earth for one should first cool, then have liquid water in it initially before life can have a chance of joining enough chemicals to be considered as an organism.

But from where do those initial life creating chemicals come from? They were always here and awaited water and a bit less scorching temperatures? Or did they came from outer space?

You may have heard about meteorites and comets bringing the initial chemicals here. But this latest scientific finding carried out by astrophysicists (Zaleski et al, 2013) suggest that there may be some in the gases between stars also that Earth. This suggests to me that Earth may have pulled those in itself with gravity while passing through them sometimes back billions of years ago. Alternatively a meteorite could pass through the gas, pick them up with its weaker gravity, and crash into the earth bringing them with it.

But just how do those chemicals get into Earth without being fried from the Earth's atmosphere is not clear for me. Asteroids, comets, meteorites, that could also bring the chemicals with them make quite an entry with their blasts before resting their bones on our soil also.

How do the chemicals survive so as to join later and provide life could be one question for our debate?

But what they found lingering about in between star gasses was:



The initial building blocks of such chemicals could probably be primitive bacterial life (hence we come from bacteria!). They may have proliferated without the need of cell walls (Mercier, Kawai, & Errington, 2013) at the beginning. Interestingly today's bacteria can switch to that primitive shape (called L-Shape) if they want to.

Thus to summarize, precursor to DNA life chemicals are found still to be out there. If they are to be put on earth somehow they could join and evolve to become primitive bacterial L-Shape (or shapeless as a matter of fact!). Further evolve from there into multi-cell organisms and into primitive life. The rest is fish, amphiban, dino with feathers, coats, going up the trees with coat, getting smart abandoning coat for the demise of other animals coat instead, and us clicking buttons right now.

A lot of holes I must agree. Care to discuss them? :)

References:

Zaleski, D. P., Seifert, N. A., Steber, A. L., Muckle, M. T., Loomis, R. A., ... Pate, B. H. (2013). Detection of e-cyanomethanimine toward safittarius B2 (N) in the green bank telescope primos survey. The Astrophysical Journal, 765 (1), DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/765/1/L10

Mercier, R., Kawai, Y., & Errington, J. (2013). Excess membrane synthesis drives a primitive mode of cell proliferation. Cell, 152 (5), DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.01.043

Icy cosmic start for amino acids and DNA ingredients

How did early primordial cells evolve?
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Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth."
 
davidtaylorjr said:
Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth."
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Which part of "backing statements with scientific findings" from your own quotation did you not understood?

Never mind that. This religious BS is not welcomed here. Go ahead and dump those to "Religious" area in DP.

Further if you do impose and continue with these claims here you would hijack this thread into a religion vs science thread discussion. That is not the purpose of this thread!

Unless you have scientific findings to support the origins of life do not post this sort of religious BS here for those above mentioned reasons!
 
davidtaylorjr said:
Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth."
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Moderator's Warning:
Notice the sub-forum of which this thread resides. Do NOT derail into religious comments.
 
Green Balls said:
It's true that we can't imagine something surviving on a meteor travelling through the earth's atmosphere. They key point to remember here is not to think about our atmosphere today, but to think about what it was billions of years ago. It may have been feasible for life to survive a trip through the atmosphere back then. Also, there could have been other things at play that caused dormant cells to awaken during the trip through the atmosphere.

Think about it like this: You can freeze a flea (just as an example) in an ice cube. It will remain alive in a state of suspended animation until you thaw that ice cube. At which point the flea springs back into action. Apply the same principle to bacteria on a meteor. It's probably in a similar state of suspended animation, thawing as it passes through the atmosphere, springing to life when it contacts the surface of the planet; my guess is if the meteor lands in water or another liquid. It doesn't make much sense for bacteria to survive on a meteor impacting the ground.
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That's essentially the Panspermia theory. Although the scientific community is much more accepting of Abiogenesis, that doesn't necessarily mean Panspermia is incorrect. But, it's sort of a moot point; whether you believe life was due to Panspermia or Abiogenesis, there essentially the same theory, Panspermia just pushes back the timeline. Even in Panspermia, life had to start somewhere, barring the belief that it was here since the big bang, or a supernatural force (Not likely).

In practice, we can't really prove Panspermia, and Abiogenesis is ultimately required in either case; In my opinion, it's much more effective to put our efforts to proving Abiogenesis outright.

MoSurveyor said:
The expectation of a full-blown cell popping up from scratch is hilarious. Obviously there were many, many steps and millions of years between the first stable complex molecules appearing on Earth and the first cell, whatever it's form might have been.
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The trick is to just get any self replicating chain of molecules. It doesn't really matter what they are made of or how they fuel the self replication, they are instantly open to possible mutation. That paves the way for evolution and all the other forms of cell life. It really doesn't even need to be DNA or RNA, it could theoretically be anything, so long as it can produce itself, given energy and raw matter. I think scientists are doing themselves a disservice by focusing on the chemical makeup of current terrestrial life; in the search for evidence of panspermia, abiogenesis, or even ETs, they should be open to the possibility that they're missing evidence simply because it's not chemically similar to DNA/RNA.
 
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DDD said:
Which part of "backing statements with scientific findings" from your own quotation did you not understood?

Never mind that. This religious BS is not welcomed here. Go ahead and dump those to "Religious" area in DP.

Further if you do impose and continue with these claims here you would hijack this thread into a religion vs science thread discussion. That is not the purpose of this thread!

Unless you have scientific findings to support the origins of life do not post this sort of religious BS here for those above mentioned reasons!
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If we are going to have an honest discussion about what really happened you have to include religion.

http://www.icr.org/evidence/

You wanted evidence to my claim, feel free to read.
 
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douglas said:
That's essentially the Panspermia theory. Although the scientific community is much more accepting of Abiogenesis, that doesn't necessarily mean Panspermia is incorrect. But, it's sort of a moot point; whether you believe life was due to Panspermia or Abiogenesis, there essentially the same theory, Panspermia just pushes back the timeline.
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Very nicely put, thanks.

Back in the timeline then. This meteorite found near a gold rush area was found to have molecules unlike in any other meteorite before. The inventory of available molecules from meteorites may have been greater back when earth was being created millions of years ago.

References:

Pizzarello, S., Davidowski, S. K., Holland, G. P., & Williams, L. B. (2013). Processing of meteoritic organic materials as a possible analog of early molecular evolution in planetary environments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1309113110; Retrieved from: Organic molecules found in Sutter's Mill meteorite, not previously found in any meteorites .
 
Just like the fossil of that old scorpion a few relevant posts above there was a sudden burst of a variety of life forms (mostly insects) during the Cambrian period (i.e., 540 million years ago). The next step from the origins of life is how did this huge leap of evolution occurred so fast. Even Darwin's himself had a dilemma over this since his theory does not explains such fast evolutions to occur to explain the gap in time and evolving.

Today this dilemma has been explained with mathematical models and environmental conditions then. It was concluded that even moderate accelerations cover the gap to a satisfactory level. Details can be found at the actual journal.

References:

Lee, M. S. Y., Soubrier, J., & Edgecombe, G. D. (2013). Rates of phenotypic and genomic evolution during the Cambrian explosion. Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2013.07.055; Retrieved from: Darwin's dilemma resolved: Evolution's 'big bang' explained by five times faster rates of evolution .
 
Similar meteorites with molecules as mentioned in post 59 could have survived the impact to earth. A planetary scientists shot rocks with algae at speeds reaching 7km a second! Though most algae died upon impact to water at such speeds, not all did! Further rock and ice could protect molecules from space radiation if they are deep within the rock. While the burning caused from entering Earth's atmosphere only burns a thin layer of the fusion crust, not the molecules that could be inside it.

References:

Could life have survived a fall to Earth?
 
davidtaylorjr said:
If we are going to have an honest discussion about what really happened you have to include religion.

Evidence for Creation

You wanted evidence to my claim, feel free to read.
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Quite literally, that "evidence" already requires you to believe in the theory it supports. Evidence is supposed to support the theory, not the other way around. If you have to already have to believe in Biblical Genesis to understand it's "evidence", it's not really evidence. That's one of the main reasons why we don't believe in Biblical Genesis; it's only supported by itself.

Show me evidence of the Biblical account of creation, and we'll start debating, but if that "evidence" is from your book, it's not evidence to anyone except theists. Show us secular evidence of your claims, and I assure you that you'll change some minds.
 
douglas said:
Show me evidence of the Biblical account of creation, and we'll start debating, but if that "evidence" is from your book, it's not evidence to anyone except theists. Show us secular evidence of your claims, and I assure you that you'll change some minds.
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Yes show us real evidence and secular evidence BUT do that in other threads. This one is intended for presentations and debates related to growing findings that suggest theories for the origins of life.

Religion and science could have debates in neutral grounds of philosophical discussions in DP.
 
More on why evolution boosted back at the Cambrian explosion times some 500 million years ago. The explanations come from geological, geochemical, and biologic sources that work as a standalone proposals. The latest proposal is about combining all of those sources and you have grounds about evolution taking place at a greater speed at the time (and not at current time for those geological, geochemical, and biological events are not the same now) and appear to have slowed now (Smith & Harper, 2013).

The Rushby et al (2013) study even aligns the evolution in the following times:

"Looking back a similar amount of time, we know that there was cellular life on earth. We had insects 400 million years ago, dinosaurs 300 million years ago and flowering plants 130 million years ago. Anatomically modern humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years - so you can see it takes a really long time for intelligent life to develop.
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But it also predicts that though life originated here it will not last forever. Expected habitable circumstances for life to exist here (that is largely related to water remaining liquid) before it becomes to hot from the sun ranges from 1.75 - 3.25 billion years from now.

So for a sense of timeline, it all started some 500 million years ago and it may end the most some 3.25 billion years from now (if not sooner). That is the estimated floor and the ceiling of life on earth.

References:

Rushby, A., Claire, M., Osborn, H., & Watson, A. (2013). Habitable zone lifetimes of exoplanets around main sequence stars. Astrobiology, Retrieved from: Earth expected to be habitable for another 1.75 billion years .

Smith, P. M., & Harper, D. A. T. (2013). Causes of the Cambrian explosion. Science: 1355-1356 DOI: 10.1126/science.1239450; Retrieved from: 'Cascade of events' caused sudden explosion of animal life .
 
Fenton said:
Yep, and we have people who attribute it to a bio-chemical accident.
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I wouldn't call it an "accident", just the natural laws of the universe at work.
 
In other words, none of you have any clue as to the origins of life. Cute theories though, it's like being at a science fair back when I was in school.

And honestly, why would you have any clue how life originated? Ignorance on the matter is to be expected, for the simple fact that life springing in to being all by itself is so vastly improbable.
 
MoSurveyor said:
I wouldn't call it an "accident", just the natural laws of the universe at work.
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A really important distinction. If something is naturally possible then given enough templates and time it will occur. The chances of it occurring at a particular point in time at a particular place are minute, but spread across billions of years and quadrillions and quadrillions of locations and it becomes almost a certainty. I've always liked the die analogy. If one person rolls a die the chances of rolling lets say a 1 is relatively low. If however six people roll a die the chances of at least one of us rolling a 1 is much higher. If there are a hundred quadrillion of us rolling a die over billions of years the chances becoming astronomically high. Limit it just to Earth and refer to molecules forming protein chains (as we have seen is possible in things like the Miller-Urey experiments among others) and run that over billions of years and once again it becomes a very high probability, not an accident.
 
The reason why I believe present and past and future life forms come from outer space is the beginning was an explosion. An explosion is too random to pinpoint much of anything. Michio Kaku says before the bang all was uniform then boom all is chaos like hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. The earth gets hit with tons of debris every single day from all parts unknown in the universe. Too much for me to figure out. I'm goin' fishin'.
 
rhinefire said:
The reason why I believe present and past and future life forms come from outer space is the beginning was an explosion. An explosion is too random to pinpoint much of anything. Michio Kaku says before the bang all was uniform then boom all is chaos like hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc. The earth gets hit with tons of debris every single day from all parts unknown in the universe. Too much for me to figure out. I'm goin' fishin'.
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Take this with you on your trip!

According to this latest theory time and space (and everything in it) was not merged in a single point called "singulariy." Its mathematically testable statements support the latest theory that our 3 dimensional universe came from 4 dimensional exploding massive star, whose material was picked up by a 3 dimensional black hole that too was in a 4 dimensional time and space like that exploding massive star. See in the 4th dimension there is a 3 dimensional black hole just like in our 3rd dimension there is a 2 dimensional black hole. Thus in 2 dimension there is a 1 dimension black hole, and so on and so forth.

The theory both explains where the stuff go in a black hole (i.e., it apparently goes to the lower dimension) and pushes/complicates the origins of life. If the theory holds then we are the debris of an exploding massive star on the 4th dimension (or probably higher, bare with me) picked up from a 3 dimensional black hole. But that massive star in the 4th dimension may have came to be from an even more massive 5th dimension star that was picked up from a 4 dimensional black hole, so on and so forth.

Thus ff there are unlimited dimensions (i.e., N), then the material from a star from an according dimension (i.e., NS) was pulled from a lower in rank dimension black hole (i.e., N-1). Leading the chain of events from the unlimited dimension until our mere 3rd dimension.

We are just 3rd dimension citizens compared to higher dimensions out there! Lousy snobby have it all 4 dimensional citizens! By which right do they get to have everything!!! ;)

So this is how space and time gets its dimension downgraded (i.e., through a black hole). How can one upgrade their dimension though?

References:

Perimeter Institute. (2014). The black hole at the birth of the Universe. ScienceDaily. Retrieved from The black hole at the birth of the Universe -- ScienceDaily
 
None of us know what we are talking about.
 
Peter Grimm said:
In other words, none of you have any clue as to the origins of life. Cute theories though, it's like being at a science fair back when I was in school.

And honestly, why would you have any clue how life originated? Ignorance on the matter is to be expected, for the simple fact that life springing in to being all by itself is so vastly improbable.
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Improbable? Seems inevitable to me. Life on this planet is made of the most common materials in the universe. Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, that's like 95% of your body right there. Since elements don't just arbitrarily change their behavior, it is reasonable to assume that the same elements found elsewhere in the universe mixed in a similar fashion would also probably form into the basic building blocks of life.

We don't know how that first happened. But your claim that it is "so vastly improbable" is based on... what, exactly? Explain how you think you have an idea of how probable that is.
 
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