Slashdot Mirror
Compounds Necessary For Life 'All Over Space'
Kupek writes: "The Washington Post is carrying a story about how simple chemicals, when in space, form structures that resemble the membranes found in all life on Earth. "This discovery implies that life could be everywhere in the universe," said Louid Allamandola of NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. Instead of the life process happening entirely on a planet capable of supporting life, it is proposed that some of the process takes place in space."
But what practical advantage did the proto-giraffe who had a neck 1mm longer than his colleagues have that caused him to be the only one to pass on his genetic material?
Why assume such a tiny difference? Human height variability is much wider, and we're not facing much in the way of evolutionary pressures.
However, the general supposition for this is that one gets punctuated equilibrium. That is, species tend to stay relatively unchanged once they are reasonably well adapted to their current environments. It either takes a significant useful mutation or a change in the environment to get the species to change much; global warming or cooling, changes due to continental drift, a few members stranded on a distant island, etc.
It's even possible that the rate of mutation is itself selected for or against; that is, a species under pressure from changes in the environ might select for higher mutation rates (from DNA transcription errors, etc.) and thus mutate faster than one in a more stable setting. Then, once mutation is not statistically an advantage, species members who mutate less breed more successfully and the mutation rate slows down.
I tend toward saying that the plan is somewhere encoded in nature, but that a plan that detailed had to have been put there intelligently -- that is, God exists.
A reasonable belief for Christians, it seems to me, is that God created us a world to learn about. And creating a multi-billion year history -- even if it existed only in the mind of God -- is one way of giving us information to discover about that world. And yes, an onmipotent God could create one that would be capable of evolving humans through random chance -- when he chose the initial seed value.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
God does not play dice with the universe.
--Albert Einstein
"Albert, stop telling God what to do."
--Niels Bohr
"God not only plays dice with the universe, he
sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen."
--Stephen Hawking
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I don't recall the actual book or verse but somewhere in the old testiment it mentions that God has created other worlds.
If you are going to buy the argument that a single inteligent power ( God ) created a whole univers then it makes little sence that he would only make one habitable planet or a single inteligent spicie.
In other words sume christians ( including me ) speculate at a Star treck like univers theming with life. Some of it more advanced than us.
Under this theory the "fall of mankind" is probebly an anomaly. I.e. Most of those other races never got into this whole sin thing and are thus way ahead of us technologicaly with utopian cultures.
What did you think something with over a billion belivers would have complete unity on such matters as this ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
"How many of us really think it's a good idea to trash the planet and leave the mess for our grandchildren"
Looking at my teenage daughter's bedroom I would guess that she is quite capable of trashing the planet all by herself.
I'll just comment the following point:
1. Our kind of life is very specific. Virtually all of our proteins have a right handed turn, and and our sugars a left.
Fine so far.
This is almost certainly do to the fact that the bright young stars we formed near, polarized the cold molecular clouds with their UV radiation. That doesn't happen everywhere, and that in turn, may be essential for the formation of DNA/RNA type life.
I am not a molecular biologist (or whoever deals with that specific thing), but from what I know the left and right handed versions are always equally common in lifeless systems (and equally created in chemical synthesis). Only in living stuff a specific version is always created/used.
Life could just as well be formed from the different handed version. That all life on earth shares the same handedness when it comes to these parts is not a proof that it couldn't be done otherwise, it only shows us that all life descends from that one proto-life structure that just happened to use right handed proteins and then successfully reproduced.
It may also show that one form won over the other in the early days of life, since either handedness is possibly dangerous (toxic?) for the other handedness (see the Contergan scandal for an unvoluntary molecule handedness experiment on humans).
I have the feeling that, with all the new knowledge about DNA and how life could have begun, within my lifetime people will be able to construct a living organism from scratch.
-- Cheers!
James T Kirk was responsible for putting them (compounds necessary for life in Space) there!!
"Show me this thing you earthlings call love"
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Yeah right. We can't even get past racism, nationalism, regionalism, culturalism and all of the other stupid "us vs. them" isms.
As soon as we find ET's, we're gonna have to kill them in order to preserve our precious Way of Life.
Fucking idiots, all of us.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
No, it doesn't. Evolution is not planned, it has no strategy. If you want a plan, go to God. Evolution doesn't care.
Changes occur in critters. Changes that are bad for the species eventually go away or are displaced by the changes that are good for the species. But the changes are entirely random (unless you believe that something is causing specific changes for specific reasons). The fact that the changes seem to follow a plan or path is entirely coincidental - the "path" is a product of human imagination. Evolution doesn't care.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
False.
If it isn't random, there would have to be a plan. But, no plan is required for evolution to work.
Critters are born with a set of attributes (parentAttribs +/- random changes). Some critters die without reproducing. Some die having reproduced a lot. This is evolution. No plan is required. Random changes will suffice.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
kewl, when will i get to see them? or will it be more like the outlanders?
mmm'k will stop w/ the niven knownspace jokes..
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
Moderation points are often wasted. The previous post was a most excellent, well thought out, thought provoking post that reminds me of a simpler, better time. A time before goatsex, when e-commerce was called a shopping cart and I got more real email than spam. I dunno if this person is right or not, but at least he had something to say and he said it well.
G
longing for the old slashdot
..and you can't prove he doesn't.
;-)
If you could one way or the other, then faith would be called "fact" or a "falsehood"
Existance claims are a waste of time. (Ironically, I'm spending time replying to one
--
This has very little to do with benzene at all. The whole point is that the materials when exposed to various conditions (common in space) and then exposed the result to water (common on the Earth) it spontaneously formed cell like bodies which trap the chemicals. Many of the chemicals were new and complex.
Bitter and proud of it.
If GOD is really infinite, there is no way a finite human mind can possibly hope to encapsulate that infinite being in a book, or creed, or any other set of rules©
Christianity teaches that although God IS infinite, we do not face the dilemma that you describe ¥unable to understand anything about him, or required to understand ALL about him, because he has approached us first© He has revealed what we need to understand about his nature, firstly in a general sense in the Universe and the Earth, and then specifically in the scriptures© In this, it is revealed that God indeed invites all to approach him, and also that God himself provides the means to do this - that his son took the punishment for sin, and we are then credited with ¥in God's sight Jesus' own unsinfulness©
By the way, as a Christian with a background in science, I find these recent discoveries ¥theories©©? very interesting© Seems to me that God "programmed" all of chemistry, physics, subatomic interaction etc to have just the right properties so that life has a tendancy to appear all throughout the universe©
Why is the universe here? -Well, where else would it be?
Correct, but let me elaborate on your answer.
Most people think that the Theory of Evolution implies that organisms have been in a constant state of flux - slowly but steadily changing over the eons. (This is what Darwin himself believed.) However, the fossil record indicates that this belief is flawed.
Through forces not well understood (at least, I don't understand), the climate of the earth periodically changes. Mean temperatures rise and fall, the composition of the atmosphere changes, etc. What's more, these canges occur very suddenly, in geological terms.
The fossil record seems to indicate that species trudge along happily for thousands/millions of years, and then *BAM* suddenly evolve. These evolutionary spurts typically coincide with a climactic change or other similarly catastrophic event. So essentially, evolution works like this:
Anyone who's done any work in evolutionary programming (sometimes referred to as genetic programming) can testify to this. (Evolutionary programming for the layperson is: (1) choosing a bunch of "random" solutions to a problem, (2) grading these solutions as to how well the solve the problem, (3) discarding the poor solutions, and (4) creating new solutions by combining and mutating the last batch.) The initial bunch of random solutions improves in quality very quickly. However, a point is eventually reached where any change is likely to result in a lower-quality solution. (Much to my own consternation, this is typically just before the optimal solution is actually reached.)
So the fossil record and my own programming experience seem to agree.
Oh, and just for full disclosure: I am in fact a Christian.
Boy, that's not a name I like to see come up in theological discussions, but what the hey.
Legion303 replied that "Its precursors were light-sensitive receptors that slowly (remember, it took billions of years) changed into what most mammals have today."
But the fossil record contradicts Legion303's statement. My earlier post mentioned complexity theory - complex structures/behaviours can arise spontaneously - they self organise. It did not take billions of years for the retina to develop. Darwin himself confessed to an American friend that "[the] eye to this day gives me a cold shudder."
I do not reject natural selection, just the view that it is the only source of order. An example was given by Kauffman - consider the multitude of shapes of bicycles that were first spawned - this is complexity. Over time the less efficient designs were winnowed out - evolution at work.
Incidentally, while researching, I came across Complexity applied to GNU/Linux development.
Any Biologist knows that lipids with a hydrophobic and hydrophilic end that are exposed to external compounds will spontaneously form a bilayer membrane. It's simply a matter of the system attempting to reach its lowest energy state. A membrane does not make an organism. There's more to it than that.
No one knows how life began on Earth, whether it was through naked genetic material drifting in a primordial sea or genetic material already encapsulated in membranes. But at some point, the researchers said, membranes became important.
Before that they'd just been kicking around, drinking too much, starting failed oil companies, and buying up baseball teams. Now they think they're all powerful and influential. Damn membranes.
Was that out loud?
lets face it, there really isn't such a thing as undeniable proof when it comes to someones religon. lots of people i know could easily deny anything (even the undeniable proof) that didn't fit into their preconcieved notions of god (whether they believe in him or not). Isn't the power of denial amazing?
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
This shakespearian monkey proposition has been refuted by quite a few mathematicians dealing with random numbers. Sure, the possibility is there, but not on a "Universal" scale. Think of it: mathematically, someone who buys one lottery ticket per week can win the jackpot 100 weeks in a row. It is "possible". The thing is, it won't ever happen. So the sole question is: are we the result of an incredible stroke of luck? It may very well be. (There was an earlier story on /. about this)
Further, I believe that consciousness is the fabric of the universe, therefore it is not unusual that this fabric would try and express itself in the form of plant, animals and god knows what else.
This is a frequent topic at lauralee.com where they deal with science and fringe science.
That very egocentric of you... Perhaps you also believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth....
Eric Aitala
www.f1m.com
There was a show on comets recently on the Discovery channel. This lady was studying a comet that hit Russia. She claimed the plants around the area where it hit where abnormal. The cells had different properties from cells normally found on earth. I wonder if this story could be related in some way.
Nope. He was trying to get a first post that somehow appeared topical.
We're not sure how this "conciousness" thing works :).
Sure we do. Since consciousness evaporates in the presence of alcohol, obviously consciousness is caused by LACK of alcohol.
To test, find someone sober. Note that they are conscious, and have little/no alchol in their system. Take them to the pub. Buy them 10 pitchers of Guiness, and have them drink them. Tada, no consciousness. Now, wait and eventually the alcohol will he purged, and they'll regain consciousness. Eureka!
someday, we'll begin to see life as another property of the carbon atom
What is enlightened about it? Does it shed any light on the underlying mystery?
Rather arrogant and reductionist quote as far as I am concerned.
Properties of a complex system are not necessarily
reducible to the properties of its most elementary consituents. It is hard to imagine
understanding of the process of life coming from understanding chemical reactions
of a carbon atom.
What is so different about consciousness. Perhaps it it
just another chemical property of carbon
I would say the relation of consciousness to life is similar to that
of life to chemical reactions of the carbon atom.
I guess my objection was agains using the word "enlightened" to describe that quote.
Amusing would be more appropriate perhaps.
While agreeing with the above post. I would just like to add that for the most part, human beings seem to be intelligent whilst humanity, en masse, does not.
How many of us really think it's a good idea to trash the planet and leave the mess for our grandchildren (teenagers - don't answer)?
While I strongly support space exploration and can't wait for us to establish colonies on other worlds. I would like that we can choose to do this, not that we have to do this, because we destroyed earth beyond repair.
- Paul
Well, it is possible, but outside of our experience. On Earth, the rule has always been 'find water and you'll find life'. There are forms of life which exist quite cheerfully in anaerobic conditions, however, but in every case which I know of they are influenced by the actions of aerobic life upon which their survival depends. The seeds of life can exist for v. long periods of time in anhydrous, anaerobic, and otherwise harsh conditions however in the form of bacterial spores.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
First, there's an interesting, relevant and relatively easy-to-read article by Jack Szostak and co-workers titled "Synthesizing Life" in the January 18, 2001 issue of Nature (vol 409, page 387). In this article they talk about the challenge of creating vesicles and effecting their replication, creating a molecular information-storage device capable of self-replication and coupling the vesicles to the information-storage/replication device in order to get a living/evolving system. Many of the questions raised in earlier comments are addressed. Most relevant to making life, or pieces of life, in space might be the issue of very low local concentrations? Article here [non-free login required (mrrr!)]. Alternatively, you could likely get a reprint from the authors directly by contacting them
Second, one of the more interesting things I remember Freeman Dyson saying was that he thought we should be looking for extraterrestrial life *outside* of gravity wells. That is, he thought it was more likely that things far-along enough to communicate with us would prolly not be sitting at the bottom of a well.
"Seriously, if you put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters, you will get Shakespear's sonnets"
If thats true, how do you explain the content of the internet?
And if we're doing random mutations, the descendents of this super-giraffe that had his extra millimeter of neck could well get stuck with shorter necks and die off. Even if we posit 50% positive mutations and 50% negative mutations, the expected value of the Markov chain comes out to 0. The truth of the matter is, it's more like 90% negative mutations and 10% positive, which, of course, will rapidly diverge out to minus infinity (extinction).
The system needs a constant series of "nudges" or a "plan" if it is to reach more advanced forms. Perhaps this is encoded somewhere in DNA that we don't yet understand; if you're a 2001 fan, there are always monoliths to explain this. I tend toward saying that the plan is somewhere encoded in nature, but that a plan that detailed had to have been put there intelligently -- that is, God exists.
Really it's the same argument SETI is using -- if we find order in the midst of the randomness, there must be intelligence involved.
>>On some planets, you won't need much intelligence to survive, but on earth you do. The most intelligent species are eradicating the no-so-intelligent species.
Intelligence is not a requirement for survival on Earth. In fact, one can argue that intelligence is a liability on the survival/reproduction scene. Intellectual capacity evolved as a response to a particular set of conditions experienced by a limited number of species. Clearly, natural selection has improved the odds for many creatures by increasing their capacity to think. However, there is more than one path to world domination. (Insert your favorite "plague of" example here.)
Going on the idea that continued existence is a universal (!) goal, I wonder if the formation of the cell-like structure by certain chemicals upon exposure to certain stimuli (e.g. ultraviolet light) can be described as as a survival tactic?
The ability to understand a complicated concept such as evolution lies in the capability of the comprehender to define the variables involved. If something has an impact and you know it, then you can better explain what happens as a result. It seems to me that the reason for the development of similar visual equipment on divergent species is largely dependent on the fact that we all live under the same sun. I would expect that eyes would not evolve if a species had not developed survival techniques dependent in some way on this electromagetic radiation.
I think that people who do believe in God have to opinions about this:
a) This doesn't prove anything, we are still created by God and it's just some crap flying around space
b) Finally scientist have found proof that God does exist. These compounds are building material of God's "body" witch we haven't been able to see earlier, but who has been watching for us above.
Most of the stuff scientist found are so complicated and quite impossible to actually show to be true. This founding is quite important for creating new theories about possibilities of life in other planets, but won't mean anything for a common man, less if he takes bible seriously.
Does this support their theory of panspermia ?
( http://www.wickramasinghe.freeserve.co.uk/ ) It doesn't seem so far fetched after reading this article......I think it could be integrated into their research.
GN
ceci n'est pas une sig
How do explain it when they split before they developed eyes. Octopuses and Squids, split off from vertabrates before the devolpment of the eye. Yet now, most mammals and octopusses have eyes. Not only that, but thier structure is very similar. Some argue that since the eyes perform very similar functions that they have very similar structures. and they call that process parallel evolution.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Actually, I would tend to believe that if this means there is life as we know it elswhere out there, then It would increase the chances of there being intelligent life out there too. It wouldn't nessacarily be intelligence as we know it though.
As you say evolution is a random process, but I would tend to think that intelligent creatures would have a distinct evolutionary advantage, as they do here. The obvious humans versus everything else on this planet not withstanding. Predation that actively seeks food requires at least rudimentary intelligence, see fish, insects, birds, cats versus sea ananomoes (or however they're spelled) or jellyfish.
An ability to think forward versus just react to conditions would be something that would be developed through evolution. And while it might not lead to intelligence as we know it, it just might lead to intelligence.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
It's really quite a straw man that gets set up, and I've never understood why people seem to think that the possiblity of ET life sets up some sort of religious crisis.
I think this is primarily because scientists and science in general are critics by nature. Science's role is to always look critically at a topic and look for more answers. Most of what science is just theories until they get debunked by more science, etc.
But Christianity, on the other hand, takes a "X is the truth, we'll adapt all new information to X." So you have two different philosophies competing. One says, question all. The other says question none. (I'm realize I'm being very very general, so don't please jump up and down saying - Christians question things in relationship to their faith and the world. I'm aware of that and I'm not trying to step on toes) So there's a natural tension here.
Take two concrete examples:
1st science: Ether was believed to be the all incorporating substance between people & things as late as the nineteenth century. Science later debunked that as incorrect and now we know that air is the material we live and breathe. Maybe someday that will be debunked when a scientist becomes interested enough. This kind of questioning is accepted and tolerated.
2nd Christianity: The book of Revelations was written by John and foretold of the 2nd coming of Christ. The Romans would be defeated, and life would be grand. Paul and many other Christians believed that this would happen in their lifetimes. When it didn't happen, and when Rome became Christian under Constantine, now what? St. Augustine then reinterpretted the book in his famous City of God to mean "well, its not a literal coming." This view then held til among others Thomas Muenzer & the German peasant wars, and on and on....The point is that the single idea was not questioned, only reinterpretted
When you have two fundamentally different ideologies, you get conflict.
managers...why god invented purgatory
However, my point was that, in general, science holds no sacred cows, or at least shouldn't, whereas Christians hold the bible, the teachings of Jesus and the trinity to be absolute truths. (Perhaps not literal truths. Interpretation of Christian beliefs is left to the individual Christian. I am speaking very generally.)
This presents conflict if one chooses to try to define God through scientific means. Because one can't come up with an ultimate truth in science.
Do I think that a Christian can be scientific? Sure. Of course. Critical thinking is the hallmark of a learned person. That Christian may interpret the Bible in a more symbolic manner and not find conflict. Or perhaps he will find other ways to meld the views of science and morality/religion or God in a new way.
What kind of conflicts could arise? Any number. Conflicts between the stories of the gospels themselves, conflict between evolution & creationism, conflict between the Genesis creation of the world & Big Bang and other universe origin theories, the list is endless.
But how a Christian deals with that is his business. But there is potential conflict.
managers...why god invented purgatory
> read about the experiments in which amino acids can form spontaneously
spontaneous generation, eh? if anyone has a few links to something documenting this, I'd be all ears (...er... eyes). as far as i'd heard, noone had been completely successful in proving this had happened.
However,
Good point. As with any science, we can make a lot more advances if we shed our paradigms and look at problems from every view possible. Just because life on our planet was formed under one set of laws, that doesn't limit life as a whole by our laws.
However,
Hey -- isn't space that _lack_ of matter? So if we put compounds into space, it ceaces to be space? hmmm.... :)
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
This is cool, and greatly increases the expectancy of life on a planet, but you need favorable conditions and temperature, and climate. How common is that?
Even without some of those characteristics that you mention, intelligent life could still evolve. It's useful to have certain abilities, but IMO not needed. Sure, to use your example, opposable thumbs are useful in the situation humans evolved, as originally arboreal creatures, but who's to say that a species which started out elsewhere could have developed means to use tools that don't require thumbs; they could be saying right now that intelligent life couldn't evolve without tenticles, for example. Life is adaptive, it can exist in the deepest volcanic vents and it can exist in the harshness of space, and I'm sure that intelligence can develop without the same conditions that are favorable to our species becoming intelligent.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
What a great programming language he invented. GATC are the only four characters in it, and yet the billions of pairings produce things from pigs to people.
Genome++
Andrew
Drake's Equation.
On some planets, you won't need much intelligence to survive, but on earth you do.
I wouldn't say that it's necessary on Earth to be intelligent. That has been one very good strategy (for us), and with enough effort, we could probably outcompete (destroy) almost any species. However, our ability to do so is almost directly proportional to how complicated (advanced) that species is. We could take out the apes, no problem. Squirels would be harder. Any particular bacterial species would be well-nigh impossible.
Also, some of the most successful species on Earth are not intelligent. Sharks have remained almost unchanged, and at the top of the food chain, since the time of the dinosaurs. As I said above, we could destroy them if we really wanted to, but we don't directly compete with them, so they don't need intelligence to be successful. Also, pure numbers are a good strategy that requires no intelligence. Examples are bacteria, grass, and locusts.
The most intelligent species are eradicating the no-so-intelligent species. For example: humans are more intelligent than apes. The number of humans is rising, the number of apes is declining. I believe that when apes had an IQ of 180, humans would get a very tough time...
We've got a good head start on them... I think we could take 'em, with pure numbers. :) However, I think this is actually evidence of fewer intelligent species in the universe, since it is likely that two intelligent species on a planet would compete with each other, and possibly result in the destruction of one.
I think it is extremely unlikely that when life exists on other planets, none of these require intelligence for survival but earth.
I'd be surprised if any planets required intelligence for survival.
Also, I think it is unlikely life only exists on just one planet.
No argument there.
Therefore, given the sheer number of stars and planets, many intelligent species must exist in space.
I also agree with this, but I suspect that my 'many' may be less than yours.
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Ok sir I was responding to the parent article, and the one who would like to find life in space is me.
I don't care if the article didn't say anything about it...
While i think this discovery is very important in the sense it makes complex space life possible, we still don't know how basic life could evolve in space.
The fact is that membranes, though an essential component of actual lifeforms, didn't appear until the chemical reactions that are the basics of life, and it's catalists we're firmly established. At that point, these catalists and it's substrates started to group themselves inside membranes, because there they could have much more density of substrate and be more efficient, and these we're the first cells.
So, while membranes help a lot en the efficiency of life, they aren't necesary;
To prove life is present in deep space we need to find protein workalikes in space. Membranes are useful, but not primordial.
> > Seriously, if you put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters, you will get Shakespear's sonnets.
>Sure - but how long until you get a copy of Windows2000?
Well, obviously enough it was a room full of monkeys that created Windows 98...
This research sounds a lot like Sidney Fox's work on self-organizing membrane structures from abiotic components done in the 1970's and 80's. His work dealt with self-organization in plausible primordial earth conditions, but it's interesting to see that it works in deep space conditions as well. One of the Creationist objections to Fox's work was that they felt it required an implausible confluence of conditions in order to work (despite the fact that it can be done in a high-school science lab at room temperture and pressure). That it can happen under deep-space conditions can only be seen as further support for abiogenesis.
Well, since everyone is getting into this thread, I guess I'll jump in with my 2 cents. I really have been meaning to pose this question to my uncle who has turned down nomination for Bishop of Grand Rapids.
The statement that God is beyond our understanding is the crux of this debate. Every scientific breakthrough can be interpreted by the religious as more evidence that God is beyond us because we haven't found Him yet. But the non-religious use it as evidence against God because, well, He's not "there."
Do I "belive in one God, etc.?" Yes. Do I believe that we are not alone in the universe? Yes. Do I see a contradiction? No, because if God is beyond our thinking, then isn't is possible that He gave us the Bible because that was all we could understand or all that pertains to us?
Anyway, IHBT, IDC (I don't care) Anyone want to continue this over there?
I had a feeling you were going to say that.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
The system needs a constant series of "nudges" or a "plan" if it is to reach more advanced forms.
Classic case of mis-stating the theory of evolution. Charles Darwin himself stated that if any lifeform, or even a part of a lifeform could ever be found that could not possibly have evolved by a series of simple steps, his whole theory would fall apart and need to be rethought.
Over one hundred years later, with all the "Christian Scientists" in the world trying, not a single example has ever been found and the theory stands (enhanced, but basically the same principles).
And the argument about SETI is not a good analogy either. Order in the midst of randomness is common (rock faces that resemble human features, or pebbles being sorted into size order by waves). SETI is searching for designed signals, which is quite different. No part of any lifeform has ever been found to show any indication of design (the eye, for example, though complex is an incredibly poor organ if it was designed deliberately that way; a first-year undergraduate could design a better system).
---------------------------
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
You bring up an interesting point, but your logic is flawed. Evolution is a very interesting concept in that it is bound by the randomness of the universe (which asserts your idea of evolution being random) however it acts towards a single goal (which counters your idea that it lacks direction).
That goal is of course replication and proliferation, i.e. the continued survival of the species. That is the ultimate aim of all life (from the point of view of a Biologist, at least. BTW, IAAB -> I am a biologist).
Now, from an evolutionary standpoint, being intelligent may not be the ultimate goal of life in order to proliferate itself. The idea of "the strong survive" holds very true. However, evolutionarily speaking, if you are not strong, you can either die or get smart, to put it simply. Granted, this is way oversimplifying things, but the gist of the statement holds true for this example.
So, assuming life does exist out there and has had time to evolve, then it seems to me that the odds of "intelligent" life evolving are actually quite good, because all species have a "desire" to survive and proliferate, and there is *almost always* a weaker species.
Anyway, enough rambling from me. One last thing though, just so we can boost our egos a bit. I would wager that humans are unique in the universe. As has been stated, evolution is random and the odds of another planet evolving along the exact same lines are probably pretty slim. So, in a sense we are "alone" in the universe. We are unique.
So let's shape up a bit so we can make a good impression when we meet the others. :-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
So which is it, existentialist or determinist? They're pretty mutually exclusive points of view.
(maybe the wording was even more careful.)
In addition, you can argument around any scientific facts by saying that "God made the universe such that man/intelligent life can exist."
If you think that, if proven that life can emerge without divine intervention, this defats christianity, you already have halfway fallen to the fanatics who want to make you take the bible literally - ( note that there not even exists such a thing as "one bible" ) - and to believe that earth and man was created 5,000 years ago.
That belief simply is a kind of test that you have to pass to be a fundamentalist christian - to be either dumb enough, desperate enough or enough of a liar to believe in that.
And I really like how christianity weeds out the stupid by inviting them to a monastery, and forbidding reproduction. This is most ingenious.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
That would seem to be difficult, at best, however, the main issue would be whether any condition could exist where water could be at least in part, liquid. Unless, of course, you want to argue that you don't need water to have the chemicals reactions required...
Christianity is silent on the possiblity of extraterrestrial, material life. Therefore, our finding or not finding it is irrelevant to the truth and teaching of Christianity.
I wonder what would happen to your faith if humanity encountered a material life which said: "your Christian doctrine is bull-pucky". Would that change the relevance of the truth and teaching of Christianity?
I guess you would then just shift to the "these material beings are God's test of my faith".
Mathematicians have long known that a single contradiction can logically lead you to prove all contradictions. But religion has know this for thousands of years: use faith in your arguement and you are set!
dabacon
(working on cloning Jesus from the shroud)
The whole process is a grand plan put in place by an ancient master race/God to seed the Universe with life. The process of evolution is actually a computer program, the result of which is a species capable of repeating the process - sort of like a program whose output is its own source code. As a failsafe, built into the program is a feature that compells any species to pollute its environment to the point where it eventually must move on to a new place.
The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Secondly, its more like 10% positive, 10% negative, and 80% neutral. How would that "rapidly diverge out to minus infinity"? I think you are grossly overestimating the number of mutations per generation.
Thirdly, how does the system need a plan to reach more advanced forms? And just what do you mean by more advanced anyway? If you mean more complex, then no it doesn't. Chaos theory and cellular automata theory takes care of that. And if you mean intelligence, it doesn't either. Intelligence is the natural solution to the problem of having to adapt to a changing environment. The more intelligent you are, the more you can influence the change to your benefit, and therefore the more you can reproduce.
And finally, SETI has never used that argument, if they did, they would be hailing each and every pulsar as a beacon of a huge galactic civilization. The argument they use is, rather, if we find something that is different from what we are used to seeing, such as a broadcast series of primes, then its is likely to be a sign of intelligence. To apply this argument to evolution, we would have to have a planet sufficiently like Earth to campare ourselves to.
Smarter than ME? Really? OK, then I am wrong. Thanks for the tip.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
I am firmly of the belief that wherever there is a hand supply of the right kind of chemical materials and at least fair conditions, you will get life of one kind or another soone or later. The jury is out on whether water is absolutely necessary.
The truth is out there but the lies are all in your head.
Elgon
I believe in God. I don't "believe" in evolution, but I think it's almost certainly true.
z
The Electronic Telegraph (story here) has an earlier article than the Washington Post. The ET article also gives several interesting offsite links (see under the "External Links" section on the news story).
Scroogle
Personally, I think these kinds of discoveries only bolster my belief that God created this universe. Here's why.
The Bible (and perhaps the Torah, which shares some similar (same?) text, but I'm not Jewish, so I'm sure) states that man was created in the likeness of God. People speculate as to what that means -- God is about 6 feet tall, or God experiences love and hate and passion as we do, or whatever. But I think it is mostly our drive to create. God took the ultimate step in creating this universe, but we take similar steps every day -- from programming complex gaming worlds to virtual life to buildings to atriums to everything else. Our ability to create is unparalleled -- for instance, dolphins are likely just as intelligent as we are, but I am hard pressed to point to their many underwater creations.
The ultimate creations, at least the creations I am most satisfied with, are the ones where a foundation is laid down for evolution. Preprogrammed creations are okay -- the characters in Diablo, the simple AI in some scientific experiments, etc. But what is sooooo satisfying is to create a framework, some general parameters for a learning program, and then letting the program loose in the environment. Because it may take advantage of your framework in ways you NEVER imagined, even though you built it!
And to come full circle, back to the point of this thread: I think God may turn out to be the master programmer, the ultimate scientist, who built a framework so astounding, so complex, and so consistent, that we could eventually become "self aware" of our own framework, and master it in ways unimagined. I don't believe that God preprogrammed everything here, and I expect that whatever base God did create is "open" enough to surprise us with other life forms, misconceptions about life and our role in the universe, and just about anything else. To see us discovering the foundation God laid down for us is a little beyond exciting. I wouldn't want to live at any other time in history.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I didnt even think of b)
I forgot how stupid people are, but only for a second.
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
(Do not sign anything.) -- Fell, Planescape: Torment
To put it in slash-ese, the universe is a beowolf cluster of evolution experiments.
Naeser's Law:
Religion's been going down since they tried to make god so fucking friendly and appealing.
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
God does not play dice with the universe
- someone a lot smarter than anyone here
Sure - but how long until you get a copy of Windows2000?
I think there are still several big unsolved problems before we know the answer, such as: How do single-cell organisms evolve to multi-cell ones? and: How common are Earth-like planets? However, this is a very important step toward answering the big question. I think the most important thing is that the question has been asked, and some people are trying to find the answer.
Earth and humanity are still unique.
Hope that there is intelligent life somewhere up in space, because there's bugger all down here on Earth. - Monty Python
What does it mean to be human? What happens when we do make contact, and the species is totaly different from anything we could imagine? We humans have to realize that just because we know mathmatics and such, and have aposable thumbs, that does not make us dominant in the universe.
I don't think any respectable researchers in the field expect that synthesizing a living organism from "raw chemicals" (atoms, elements, simple molecules, whatever you want to define it as) would give us the "ultimate understanding of life". But we are making remarkable progress in the field. Not too long ago (less than two centuries ago) people still didn't even have the concept of a microscopic germ. Now we have identified essentially every molecule involved in the life cycle of a simple bacterium (say, E. coli for example). In fact, we have such a great understanding of such bacteria, that scientists are working on identifying a minimal set of genes that allows reproduction and respiration (some basic, more or less well-accepted properties of life). I've read several articles about this, but I don't have any specific references off the top of my head. I'm sure a small amount of research could turn up some related articles, though.
Steven N. Severinghaus
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
Life may be trivial, but intelligent life is not. Let us be aware that we are truly remarkable as a species, and have a manifest destiny thanks to our special status. We should not mess it up.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
Someone mod this up! This is pure gold!
We didn't have space. All you's with you's fancy schmancy technology. All of it be hogwash! Hogwash I say! Come here little lady and let papa Strom say howdy... Wooo.
Strom Thurmond; the dean of the US Senate...
Strom Thurmond; the dean of the US Senate...
the deadest fart on slashdot.
The current state of xenobiology and proof of the existence of life in deep space is still "WAY THIN"!!! I won't argue that the possiblity is tantalizing, and that there is good science to point at a solid possibility, it just doesn't mean anything certain, and until you find yourself shaking ET's hand (or whatever psuedolimb it may have.) You've got to keep your head screwed on straight, your skepticisms on full bright, and keep asking the hard questions. That's the only way you keep yourself any kind of honest.
We've proof that heavy organic molecules form in cold molecular clouds in our part of this galaxy. Quinones and amino acids and even structures that ressemble cellular membranes do in fact just form out of the building blocks of interstallar dust and gas. We have done some truly cool experiments in the lab, and demonstrated, with a level of confidence that the building blocks of life can and do form in the cold clouds found in this neighborhood of the Galaxy. This doesn't mean that life is in any way ubiquitous. Let's look at this by the numbers;
1. Our kind of life is very specific. Virtually all of our proteins have a right handed turn, and and our sugars a left. This is almost certainly do to the fact that the bright young stars we formed near, polarized the cold molecular clouds with their UV radiation. That doesn't happen everywhere, and that in turn, may be essential for the formation of DNA/RNA type life.
2. You need to have a good dust, chemical mix for the right things to happen. A cold molecular cloud without sufficient dust grains to seed gas condensing and forming ice, or the right chemistry to assemble the primitives of life from, preclude the beginning of life as we know it.
These two facts alone cut the odds of life being everywhere way down. In fact the conditions for life may uniquely exist just right here... but that's also a low probability.
3. You then have to gather a bunch of proto-life together... put it on a new forming planet without it ending up crushed and cooked inside the new planet, cooked on entry colliding with the planet, destroyed by hard UV from a young star, fried by hot solar wind, or blasted by young unstable neighbors going nova or supernova. Actually, that's a pretty tall order right there.
4. The proto-life has to hide far enough from the surface of a new planet with a cool crust, so that if/when atomosphere and oceans form, it can get to the necessary water, but not be abused by the hostile environment at the surface of a world in a forming solar system.
5. You have to have a world that has few enough cataclyms that life isn't totally destroyed, but that the change for real evolution to occur, exists.
This doesn't sound like such a big deal, but think about it... if we didn't have Jupiter blocking for us, and the moon sweeping up the untiddy bits, we'd be a cold desolate rock with no trace of life. On the other hand, add another Jupiter, or a couple more moons, and we'd never have gotten past bacteria. I mean as it is we spent two thirds or the history of life as prokaryotes. We almost missed higher lifeforms altogether.
6. So that's the next part... evolution... sex... eukaryotic cells, multi-cellular organisms... and finally the evolution of a sentient being. None of these are givens, all of them a rarity (looking at lengthy stretches of our own biotic history suggesting the machinery of life did just fine without the existence of any or all of these things.) The chance of another intelligent species is astronomical (pun intended). If it wasn't for the shear number of possible places for life to happen it would almost be a dead certainty that we are all there is.
So life is probably a spotty affair happening in little clumps in around third or forth generation star forming regions. It requires pretty exotic conditions to occur, but those conditions exist here and from what we can see elsewhere as well. We only know about life like our own (RNA/DNA organic life). There may well be other forms that we have no idea about, and won't until we see it for ourselves. I would hesitate to call it ubiquitous, but it very well could be in many more places that just here. I'm guessing thinkers are rare, and if they exist, are so far ahead of us that we don't show up in their scale of consciousness... we're just too primative. That's what happens when you have countless tracks of stars and galaxies, and billions of years to fiddle around with. It's a cool conversation though!
Genda Bendte
- In magnificent fit of idiocy, this nation has made the choice of going from a President who can't tell the truth to one who can't pronounce it.
Ugh. I sound like I'm writing a science paper. How dry. Hope that was interesting to someone out there.
Why would it have any impact? Right now, the story is just in the realm of "Isn't that interesting," not "Look, it's undeniable proof that God is dead and evolution is true!!!!"
Frankly, it doesn't benefit anybody to start making grand assumptions about the data until all of the facts are in. The article itself states,
John Hayes, a biogeochemist at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass., who was not on the discovery team, said the work is significant in that it provides a mechanism "in the right place at the right time to deliver a lot of complicated organic material to early planetary surfaces."
But he cautioned that there are "a lot of banana peels" between there and the rise of living things, and that "a lot more study needs to be done" on the nature of these structures.
if you put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters, you will get Shakespear's sonnets. Life is out there kids.
...
Are you implying that we're the result of monkey work? This would explain a lot of things
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
These compounds are building material of God's "body" witch we haven't been able to see earlier
Or maybe more like dandruff.
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
This reminds me of the old SF book, The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle, in which a black cloud (an "interplanetary" life form) voices his surprise, when reaching Earth, that intelligent life had evolved on a planet's surface.
- Tal Cohen (see my SF reviews page)
- Tal Cohen
now all we need is a starship on a five year mission to accidentally fly into it's stomach and spend the next 3/4 hour making a dramatic last minute escape.
Spock out
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The behaviour of lipid molecules is no more mysterious than the behaviour of a bimetal strip or the self-organization of crystals. The molecules that this article describes are elongated, and have their charge distributed such that there is a positive, hydrophilic (water-attracting) end and a negative, hydrophobic (water-repelling) end. Common soap has the same property.
When you get a lot of these molecules together, and place them in water, think about what's going to happen. The molecules are going to point their hydrophobic sides are towards each other, and their hydrophilic sides away from each other, organizing into two-dimensional sheets. Lateral attraction becomes surface tension, and voila, it wants to be a sphere instead of a sheet.
So these molecules are still very simple, and nothing anywhere near as complex as an amino acid or DNA. And no, it is not surprising. You make lipids, you put them in water, you get tiny bubbles. The author seems to imply we expected something else.
I recommend interested persons read an introduction to cell membranes.
I can see the fnords!
Despite all this talk about biological chemicals
in space and exponentially increasing databanks
of biochemical compounds, no one has succeeded
in constructing living matter from raw chemicals.
That would be the ultimate understanding of life.
You're missing the point. I did not say "Aquinas is superior to Aristotle because he was a Christian." What I'm pointing out is that the stereotype of "Christians can't be skeptical scientific inquirers because they use Faith not Reason" is exactly contradicted by the historical examples of Aristotle and Aquinas. After Aristotle wrote his treatises, his followers (pagan, Muslim, and even some Christian) practiced "science" for centuries as an appeal to the authoritative writings of Aristotle. After Aquinas wrote his treatises, his followers for centures practiced skeptical inquiry into natural phenomena without deferring to the authority of ancient authors such as Aristotle, or even Aquinas himself.
So, it's exactly relevant to note that Aquinas is Christian, and perhaps the most influential Christian philosopher of the last millenium.
I certainly did not claim that Aquinas never got anything wrong (although use some perspective; alchemical theory looked a lot more tenable on the basis of available data in the 1300s than it does today), or that Aristotle never got anything right. Or that Aristotle was "evil" simply because he was a pre-Christian pagan. Please do not put words into my mouth.
Belief in a supreme creator, superstitions, irrational phobias, etc. are all part of the frail human psyche. No rational logic or argument will ever eradicate it completely. You may as well ask your dog to prove Fermat's last theorem.
The BBC ran this article yesterday; their version is a little less in depth however.
~caliban
Evolution is not a mostly random process; if it were, we'd be as likely to see animals shift to a less-fit-to-survive state as to see one shift to a better-fit state. This may or may not be true on an individual level (speciation is a hot topic of debate); it is definitely false on a species level.
Why?
Because all the animals unfit for their environment die off, leaving only those better-fit. The better-fit pass on their advantages to their offspring, resulting in a general promulgation of the better-fit over the lesser-fit.
..don't panic
What impact will this have on people that believe in god? This can be proof of the ability to have e.t. life. Not proof per se, but that its possible. Does anyone that reads slashdot even believe in god?
I have some ideas about GOD (a symbol) but i don't have any beliefs on the subject. If GOD is really infinite, there is no way a finite human mind can possibly hope to encapsulate that infinite being in a book, or creed, or any other set of rules. No matter how much we may be able to infer about GOD (still a symbol) we must rest assured that there is INFINITELY MORE TO GOD THAN WHAT WE'VE DISCOVERED!
I'm of the opinion that the reason the major religions seem to contradict each other is because of this reason!
A Parable in Paraphrase:
Four people were blindfolded and led into a room with an elephant. When they came out they were asked to report on what they found.
One said it was like the trunk of a tree, another said it was like an enormous leaf, the third said it was like a solid wall and the last one said it was more like a big snake.
Each was correct, but only in part. They were all relating accurately their experience of the same thing, from different perspectives. None of them had the whole picture, so their facts seemed to disagree with each other. Same with religion.
GOD is that entity/force/energy that makes up our universe. Any attempts by anyone or anything WITHIN that universe to describe that which MAKES UP the universe will be flawed from the start.
That being said.... any universe as large as ours is bound to be full of life.... and that life is just as much a "child of GOD" as humanity is (as are plants, animals, insects, bacteria, etc.)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
-The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)
=(.\')=
"It is not irrelevant to note that Aristotle was a pagan and Aquinas was a Christian"
yes it is. it's as irrelevant as noting that Aristotle had something like the hydrologic cycle(in his writings "meteorology") all but figured out; while several treatises on the false theory of alchemy are attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas. The point is, it does not matter what the religious beliefs of either person were, the correct insights they gained stand on their own. Your implication that since Aquinas was christian, therefore his ideas must have been superior to that oh-so-evil-pagan Aristotles' are plain old post hoc ergo propter hoc and guilt by association logical fallacies.
and uhm.. hello? how could Aristotle be considered a pagan if he lived before christianity existed.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Kaaaahrk!
The problem I have with this:
Using God to explain this and sitting back contentedly just pushes up the problem one level. It explains nothing. You've moved searching for the reason the giraffe's neck was long from a scientific search to "God did it". As I said: nothing has been explained, the problem has merely been shoved up a level and forgotten.
But who created God? Surely if it takes an intelligence to give these set of "nudges", then how did God get there in the first place?
If it were proved tomorrow that God exists, I would be no more satisfied that we've found where we come from: I'd want to know where God came from, too.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
We believe that there are on the order of 10 to the 21st power stars in our Universe. If you write that number out, it looks like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. This is a lot of stars.
It is quite probible that with all the pre-organic matter floating around that the SETI boys may have a point: It ain't IF there's life out there, it's how far away and do they have radios yet.
Seriously, if you put enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters, you will get Shakespear's sonnets. Life is out there kids.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
We are a science experiment. The entire universe is simply one gigantic quantum computer that runs the same simulation over and over again.
The point where they stop the simulation is when some form of "life" exists that figures out wha
*UNIVERSE HALTED. *REBOOTING SYSTEM.
------------
Naeser's Law:
So they figured out how cell membranes can be created. And it falls on earth(and other objects) all the time. But how the DNA molecules could get control over membrane creation. DNA reproduces itself by chemical reactions, with or without membranes. But at a special state this reproduction of DNA has to trigger the reproduction of membranes, and more improtant, control special attributes of the membranes.
Cathalytic effects?
I'm confused.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
It seems that a fair few people on sadsloth/dashlots have some acquaintance with Stuart Kauffman's At Home In the Universe - complexity theory and autocatalytic sets:
"It is not necessary that a specific set of 2000 enzymes be assembled... Whenever a collection of chemicals contains enough different kinds of molecules, a metabolism will crystallize from the broth."
Concrete evidence for spontaneous complexity:
"Random selection" wouldn't get organisms very far. Fortunately for us, there's no such thing in evolution.
Even if we accept selection in this way, we are left to wonder about structures like the retina, which require a staggering number of precise conditions (proteins, cell types, etc.), and according to the one gene one enzyme principle, couldn't be brought about by a single point mutation. However, if any of these chemicals, cells, etc. are missing, the retina doesn't work. That is, we would have to posit millions of years of non-working retinas that still managed to naturally select until they got to the point of a working retina. The fossil record doesn't bear this out.
This is another common misconception of evolution that creationists keep ladling up, even in the face of logic (note that I'm not blaming you for it; it sounds reasonable to many people who read it in books like those of Morris). The retina (an imperfect "design," by the way--why the blind spot where the nerve bundle goes through the retina?) of today is the end result of billions of years of change. Its precursors were light-sensitive receptors that slowly (remember, it took billions of years) changed into what most mammals have today.
-Legion
This shouldn't really come as a suprise to anybody who has given serious thought into the problem of time scales in the development of life, or who has read about the experiments in which amino acids can form spontaneously from their components in an electrical field, conditions analogous to those found on primordial Earth.
Hopefully we're now coming to the end of the humanocentric period of our history in which we view life on Earth as something unique, rather than the almost-inevitable consequence of the way the Universe has been ordered. There is nothing special about humanity per se, rather it is Life itself that is the miracle, and findings like this serve to drive home just how amazing it is.
The question of whether or not this means we are alone in the Universe has not really changed, but this discovery makes it more likely life will be found elsewhere in some form. And although I doubt it will happen in my lifetime, I envision a future where humanity discovers life in the most unlikely of places, just as it was meant to be.
What impact will this have on people that believe in god? This can be proof of the ability to have e.t. life. Not proof per se, but that its possible. Does anyone that reads slashdot even believe in god? And if you do, do you believe in macro evoloution?
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Why is it assumed that life always requires the same things (water, air, etc..) to grow and adapt? Isn't it possible that there are other forms of life with entirely different requirements?
Yet again, the tired old "conflict" between Christianity and (capitalized) Science(tm). A little reality checking is in order here:
Air was understood as being a distinct thing from "ether" for a long time before the Michaelson-Morley experiment showed that the ether theory to be untenable.
You really need to look into the history of scientific inquiry a bit more. The idea of ether was a holdover from Aristotle, who held that the Universe needed an absolute frame of reference. For a long, long time, Aristotle's viewpoints were held sacred and unchallengeable. Eventually, along came Thomas Aquinas who said that instead of holding to the tradition of Aristotle's teaching, we ought to simply look at reality and accept that what we observe is the way it is, regardless of whether it contradicts Aristotle or not.
It is not irrelevant to note that Aristotle was a pagan and Aquinas was a Christian
C. S. Lewis covered this quite well back in the '50's with his essay "Religion and Rocketry," where he discussed the (non-)implications of extraterrestrial life on Christian belief. (You didn't specify Christian, but I'm hardly qualified to comment on the implications of ET life on other religions.)
A few points to keep in mind about Christian doctrine on the subject:
The critics of Christianity for decades now (this is documented by Lewis, and it hasn't let up since) have been enjoying the hobby of taking whatever the latest discoveries and theories on ET life and using them as a stick to beat Christianity with. "The Universe is cold and lifeless! Therefore God is dead!" "The Universe is teeming with life! Therefore God is dead!" While this may be fun for the critics, it's not terribly logical and it ignores the actual teachings of Christianity on the subject. Ecclessia delanda est, I suppose.
So, the bottom line should be "no effect, really." It's really quite a straw man that gets set up, and I've never understood why people seem to think that the possiblity of ET life sets up some sort of religious crisis.
Benzene is a rather difficult molecule to make, but once made, is extremely stable. A common chemical engineering problem is to try to make benzene from cyclohexane (C6H6 from C6H12); it's not too hard to extract 4 hydrogen atoms to leave cyclohexadiene (C6H8), but that last pair of atoms to convert to C6H8 to C6H6 is impossible to extract under the same conditions used for the first two steps; fortunately, elevating temperature and other factors gets the job done. Similarly, trying to add two hydrogen atoms back to 'saturate' the benzene is very tricky to get going, but once it's no longer benzene, it rapidly converts all the way back to cyclohexane.
In addition, we're talking about the formation of carbon-carbon bonds, nearly the most difficult and most stable bond that you can make. There is research that is trying to take carbon {mono|di}oxides and hydrogen and convert these to pure organics, thus requiring some C-C bond formation, but it is very slow even under intense conditions.
This all boils down to the fact that if the results that the astromers observed is true, then all we are seeing is that there a area in space that was sufficient in carbon content, temperature, and the like, for benzene to be formed, which is a very difficult reaction, but one necessary that would eventually lead to amino acids, and the possibility of life. All I think this would do is help to quality the possibility of life term in that one equation, the name which I forget, but goes something like "Number of stars in the universe, x fraction of stars with planets..." etc.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST: