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Amino Acids Created in Deep-Space-Like Environment
klevin writes "NASA scientists today announced the creation of amino acids, critical for life, in an environment that mimics deep space. The above link is the press release, with additional details here."
Do we really need to waste time "competing" with religion to "prove" evolution?
Why can't we concentrate on science that matters. If they want to believe some fairy tale about a magical man with a long white beard that had a busy week, let them!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Until they under the same conditions:
1) create a protein
2) create a cell
3) make it a living cell.
Also notice that the headline used the word created?
You're using her as bait, Master!
What do you expect NASA to do? The only people who aren't pissed at them for wasting tons of money are the people pissed at them for not doing anything they're interested in.
It's like this: You give them 40 billion, and we'll go to Mars.
A bit of relevance... This does not disprove God. Christianity is based on faith. The whole system is based on faith. Were we to have ANY proof that God exists, we no longer need faith, and so the system would fail. Therefore, if God exists and He is all powerful, He would have hidden all traces of his existence and acts in order to preserve the need for faith. So there will always be a rational explanation. Case in point: amino acids formed.
By the way, I'm an agnostic communist with Zen and Tibetan Buddhist sympathies. Thought that might be interesting.
-Skeld
Amino acids don't make DNA. Amino acids make protein. Check your facts.
Here is how protein is made:
Base pairs (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine) self-assemble into DNA. If you put base pairs together, they will assemble, all completely by themselves. Base pairs are 2 bases (adenine and thymine, or guanine and cytosine) connected to eachother by hydrogen bonds. These base pairs are connected to other base pairs by alternating deroxyribose and phosphates.
Now, BTW, I haven't mentioned this important bit: DNA and RNA are divided into sections called codons. These are 3 base pairs that code for a particular protein.
DNA can catylise single-stranded mRNA. The DNA splits, and an RNA molecule forms on each strand of DNA. RNA is the same as DNA except it is single stranded and instead of Thymine it has Uricil. Now when the RNA molecule forms on the DNA, it makes a perfect anti-copy of the DNA.
They split, and the 2 single DNA strands recombine. Then the mirror-image mRNA binds to tRNA codons, and this creates a perfect copy of the original DNA, at least in respect to protein coding.
Now, if you have digested that, I will talk about how the protein is actually made:
Now the tRNA is at the ribosome, which is the protein manufacturing organelle of a cell.
Amino acids from around the cell then bind to their respective corresponding codons. This eventualy forms a protein chain. All our DNA does is make protein. That is how all life is made.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
Now, even though it is novel to see amino acids under such conditions, we should hasten before we leap to any conclusions related to life on Earth or other planets. Dust grains live a very harsh life, even in relatively cold, dense molecular clouds. And then every so often, a shock passes by and will tend to strip the grains of their mantles. Finally, if they survive all of that, they may eventually make their way into a protoplanetary nebula around a star, get smacked together to form protoplanets, and eventually planets like the Earth. It is most unlikely that volatile organic molecules would survive that process. On the other hand, they could be incorporated into comets in the outer reaches of stellar systems, and survive relatively intact, though again subject to the harsh conditions of space.
While the part about their harsh conditions is true, there is still an enormous chance for the survival of these dust grains. This is why meteors that strike the Earth contain a veritable wealth of amino acids. If what you said was correct, we would be hard-pressed to find anything in the chunks of space-rock.
Not only do the amino acids survive the rough conditions of space, but they also survive the harrowing trip through our atmosphere, which I think says something.
No comment.
It is ridiculous to debate the existence of evolution today.
Somehow I doubt that will stop you from doing it anyway.
We see it all around us, with bacteria and such becoming resistant to antibiotics. The fossil record supports it, genetics supports it, as does virtually every other realm of science.
Congradulations. You slayed a strawman by lumping several different empirical datasets that record several different kinds of changes in several different kinds of organisms into one very vague term, "evolution". Empiricaly all one can probably grasp from that is that things change, but I suppose that doesn't stop you from reaching for so much more.
In some bacteria, generations can be measured in seconds, or less. Within a few generations - a few seconds - they can evolve to become resistant or immune to antibiotics or certain bacteriophages.
Bacteria have many mechanisms to support change, mostly from incorprating or jumping genes more than random "mutation", but that isn't important now. The poster is pointing out the statistical probability of the random production of the building blocks of life. Since it is not alive, it does not take advantage of the intelligent (although not entirely controlled) gene splicing that Bacteria and viruses use to propegate changes.
Life on Earth is said to have began around 4, to some estimates as far back as 5, billion years ago.
Again, I think you jumped off the mark early and throught your post. He's talking about the mechanisms that existed to create life, not change it.
As per 2, couldn't it also be said that it only takes one gene to create a functional allele from a nonfunctional one?
Here is another example of over-reaching pseudo-science. This is not a symetrical relation between a one-away allele and a functional allele. Assuming that a non-functioning allele is one gene away from functioning, the probability of out of all the random gene changes that it occurs is astronomicaly low. However, the likely hood out of all the possible changes of making a change in a functioning alelle to render it non-functioning actually pretty high.
But taking away a gene doesn't always destroy a nonfunctional allele. It sometimes makes a variation, a mutation, that works. And that is how evolution works.
I've not seen any flying pigs over Chernobyl, super-humans, or new species for that matter. As was brought to my attention long ago on Slashdot, there have never been any observed beneficial random mutations. Subjecting thousands on thousands of grasshoppers to radiation never once produced a beneficial mutation. Changes occur, and mutations occur, but only when they occur along certain natural laws do they produce a limited beneficial result. Check out the "Observed Speciation" page and with some luck you'll find out what the common thread is.
Now, lets end this with my favorite non-sequiter...
Also, your whole post can be discredited based upon the fact that you know not what abiogenesis means. Abiogenesis is the spontaneous formation of life from a primordial soup. Not evolution. Abiogenesis is not factual, but it holds a great deal more credence than creationism, or any other theory for that matter. But evolution, sir, is an empirical fact.
Yet the person you are disagreeing with (as far as I can tell) was talking about the [p]robability versus chance of creating functional proteins. . Sounds like he understood quite well.
The money isn't wastet. The scientists (and all the other ppl around there) get the money. And if the pay thousands for a pice of electronic, some body has to build it. Since even scientists need sth to eat etc. they spend the money say to the pizza boy -- and what would the pizza boy do, if there were no NASA scientists. ;-)
..that glycine, alanine and serine, the amino acids formed, are three of the smallest and structurally less energy-consuming amino acids?
You do not exist. Go away.
Hmmm, I wonder how many of some of the things we consider indispensable to modern life and commerce came as a result of NASA and "irrelevant" research in general.
Although I agree that it seems like there are more pressing issues here on Earth...I bet you were one of the kids who was always whining about having to learn math.
Put lots of energy in to break everything apart and hope the bits come together in the right way with a means to carry off the excess energy (so the acids stay together)
And if they don't come all the way apart, how do you know?
Every square centimeter of every piece of lab equipment everywhere on the planet is covered in bacteria and virii. Merely killing the little critters is not enough for this type of experiment to be valid. Their bodies must be done away with. All amino acid and amino acid fragments must be removed. Not 99% removed. Not 99.9999% removed. Everything must be gone. Otherwise, all you're showing is that:
Raw material + energy + amino acids -> amino acids
instead of
Raw material + energy -> amino acids
Until all organic compounds are removed from the system (which we can't do), claims of creating spontaneous amino acids are invalid. In fact, the only thing that these experiments demonstrate is how difficult it is to wipe them out.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
I'm not sure. If science manages to create a very artificial environment within which they're somehow able to coax life into existence then, yes, you might be right. But if if it can be demonstrated that those were precisely the conditions and circumstances that existed on a primordial earth, I'm not sure I agree. In that case, scientists would not be creating artificial conditions, simply carefully reproducing conditions that had already occurred naturally.
In essence, the scientists are then the trancendent entity that created life.
The problem is we needed to use the word "create" with greater precision. "Creation" can be understood in two senses: 1) creatio ex nihilo, or creation by fiat from nothing. And 2) a derivative creation, in which something is created from previously existing materials. Human beings are masters of the latter; only God is capbable of the former.
Assuming humans eventually succeed in producing life by reproducing the conditions under which it (presumably spontaneously) originated doesn't de facto disprove intelligent design. Scientists are not trying to disprove God; they're simply trying to better understand the conditions and processes that led to the emergence of life.
I suspect that once science manages to create life, we'll simply be right back at ground zero in the whole creationist debate. Non-theistic evolutionists will claim they've disproven God. Creationists and theistic evolutionists will continue to argue that reproducing the primordial conditions does not in itself prove that those conditions could have arisen as simply a product of chance plus time. I.e., that we've simply managed to reproduce conditions and processes which required the direction of an Intelligence.
The difficulty with the argument against abiogenisis as articulated in your post (and by sophisticated creationists) is that the probabilities are forensically analyzed...I agree that this particular piece of evidence (i.e. amino acids existing in a deep space environment) does not discredit the probability argument often cited by creationists...however, let's calculate the probability that an omniscient and omnipresent being exists.....kind of makes abiogenisis look like simple arithmetic.