Slashdot Mirror
Did Life Originate Underwater?
TuringTest writes "Sciencedaily reports a highly controversial new theory about the origins of life from Professor William Martin of the University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael Russell of the Scottish Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow. The theory briefly states that inorganic cells where first, then living systems evolved inside these incubators which allowed an enough rich micro-environment. The small compartments would have been formed in iron sulphide rocks near hot, hydrothermal vents on the sea floor, not in the atmosphere. Wow, that would answer the chicken-egg problem."
Sure, this makes sense but how do these microenvironments start to self-replicate with a genetic code? I guess that's the leap to figure out.
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
Why is this article news?
If I had any mod points, I would have modded you up as +1 Funny. This is an article about science, not fantasy. And no, throwing the word "creation" in front of the word "science" doesn't make it any more credible.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This one is really, really hard to prove unless you can find the original life-bearing world from which the first cell originated.
Even if you manage that, you're still stuck back with the question of how life started on that world instead of this one. You might as well work on mechanisms for the origin of life on earth, since it remains the only world on which we are sure life has ever existed.
~Idarubicin
Your question is irrelavent. It doesn't answer the basic question: Where did life start. It only adds another layer. Even if life on Earth fell from the sky you still have to answer the question of where did that life start. Otherwise you are avoiding the fundimental question.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Why did the fish cross the road ??????
to get to the other tide?
So, which came first, the chicken or the egg.
(answer) hydrothermal vents. Ok, but a bit evasive.
Actually, I just wanted to say in general that if you believe in evolution, clearly the egg came first, as it was present in the chickens ancestors before the chicken evolved.
Actually, I think that's true even if you don't believe in evolution, since not believing in evolution doesn't make it less true.
-pyrrho
Wow, a religious troll. No wonder you're full of crap.
That was the most nonsensical rant I've ever heard. Creationist beleifs have ablsolutely nothing to do with ethics. In fact, no religious construct does. Ethics is a science based on reason, not blind faith.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Easiest way to to determine if these organisms and more well-known organisms share a common ancestery is through DNA. Do these deep-sea bacteria have similar DNA structures? Don't all lifeforms studied so far use the same 4 genetic molecules (A, C, G, T ??)?
As long as they have chromosomes, and use the same 4 genetic molecules, there is almost no possibility that they are not related to the rest of life on Earth. What are the scientific chances of two lifeforms forming and evolving, with identical genetic processes?
Just because a bit of information doesn't answer ONE particular question doesn't mean it's irrelevant. If life came to earth from a meteor hit, that would have many relevant repercussions, including:
1 - We would know it's a waste of time to try to figure out how life began in the universe in general by looking at the evidence available here on Earth.
2 - We would know life on other worlds must exist, or at the very least, must have existed in the past.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
With all due respect, the question of origins is ultimately a philosophical question and not a scientific one. Since we cannot observe and repeat the universal creation process, we cannot subject it to the scientific method.
What we can do is collect evidence and conjecture theories about what caused the evidence.
Ultimately that is what atheistic cosmologists and Christian cosmologists do - collect data, and have a theory about what caused the data.
You may argue that Christian cosmologists have a bias. I would submit to you that scientists with an a priori commitment to materialism have a bias as well.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I work at a US national lab that does a lot of research in nearly every field of science.
;)
In speaking with the different people around the lab I have found that the -vast majority- of master degree holding scientists are Agnostic.
(which is a very fitting stance...as an Agnostic needs -proof- to trust in something's actuality, just as a scientist does when doing research)
Next in numbers are Atheists (comprised mainly of Theoretical Physicists, Biologists and/or Russians. go figure
And finally, the Administration, Utilities, Facilities people, whom I've found to be
predominately Judeo-Christian. (pictures of Jesus in their cube/always out to recruit)
From what I've seen, people with little education are almost predisposed to believe in a god.
(Insecurities? A feeling of helplessness? or just "tradition"...IDK, anybody?)
FYI : These are my observations, I'm not trying to say that belief in a god can be "taught-away"
as there are a few Jesus-fish toting scientists.
There are always deviants among -any- flock....
I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this, as I've encountered this in many different areas on the country that I've worked...
but never has the education level been this cleanly divided!
Despite the fact that intuitively thermophiles seem like weird kooks, in many molecular phylogenetic analyses, thermophiles occupy the deepest branches, suggesting that life adapted to low temperature from high temperature rather than the inverse. This is also supported by the fact that the origin of life is constantly being forced backwards in time due to new evidence. As the early earth was very hot, this also supports a thermophilic origin of life.
That being said, not all phylogenetic analyses support the thermophile-early hypothesis. That's because different genes may have different histories due to horizontal transfer. Further work on whole genome phylogeny will be useful for clarifying the issue.
Ethics isn't based on science or reason. What we call ethics is based on our evolution as a social primate. Killing and stealing are "wrong" because a small social group can't do very well if they're killing each other and taking each other's stuff.
-B
The first says that life formed in shallow pools, which would help shield harmful UV radiation.
The second is that it was carried to Earth from an extraterrestrial collision with something like a comet; this theory was supported but not proven by the pass-by of comet Hale-Bopp, i believe, due to the fact that spectrometry revealed that it had some organic substances (IIRC, our book has no mention of it).
The final theory (before the advent of this theory) is that life originated from volcanism at eep-sea vents. This would be supported by the life at deep-sea vents like tube worms and the like.
This is NOT to be confused with the 1953 experiment by Stanley Miller where he syntheized amino acids using lightning-like electricity and a proto-Earth atmosphere of methane, hydrogen, ammonia, and other gases. Amino acids are NOT life forms!
I think the title is a little misleading. This theory of life really means that life originated in porous underwater rocks, which is either an extension of the first theory or a completely new theory depending on how you view it.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Yes, before significant amounts of ozone were produced, UV rays would have prohibited life developing on land. That's true.
But, that's not evidence that life formed in water. The evidence for that is the fact that we have water in us, that most of the substance that makes life is water.
Why would life develop with this enormous reliance on water if it developed away from water?
Likewise, DNA contains a rather uncommon mixture of somewhat exotic chemicals. If areas of the seas were found with features that contained large amounts of these chemicals, it would be strong evidence suggesting modern life originated from that area.
If scientific theories are correct, life formed out of a lot of time and specific events happening by chance. Rather than explaining how such an extraordinary chain of events happened, we should be looking for a place where these events aren't as extraordinary. A place where the creation of life is somewhat probable.
P.S. Saying that DNA is amazingly intricate and the nature of inhereted traits suggests an alien "seed life", or even worse, that God must have done it, is not correct.
Life came/originated/manifested itself here billions of years ago. The only life that would survive that long must have been life that could reproduce itself and create similar offspring. The alien/God argument is akin to having a box filled with different sized marbles, cutting a 20-mm hole, and claiming that there was some mystical force at hand, because when you shook the box only 20-mm and smaller marbles came out.
IOW, DNA isn't amazing or miraculous. It had to work that way.
"God wasn't the creator" is not a presupposition. It's the default hypothesis until evidence sways us otherwise. NOT believing a theory yet is the default, and in the case for God, the ones who say "yes, god exists" are the ones that have taken on 100% of the burden of proof.
There is as much evidence--that is, legal evidence, not scientific evidence--for the existance of God as there is that there was a King Richard of England who fought in a war called the Crusades. The theory that (a) God exists is just as sound as the theory that existance is older than the sum of human memory & created through random chance.
Science stops being science when it gets past what can be tested and proven--and it's impossible to prove that a being that can read every human thought and takes action only through apparant random chance does or does not exist.
Your rejection of God Almighty is a religious choice, not a scientific conclusion. Don't pretend it is, or you're as bad a zealot as the church officials that burnt witches or excommunicated early scientists.
You could also ask, "Where did God come from?".
The answer I always get: He created time. Before that he simply "was".
Ok, but if the initial state of the universe contained all the matter we see today (recklessly chopping through some theory here), we could also say that it contained "time" (spacetime) and there was no way to measure "when" or "where", for that matter.
Maybe that initial clump of energy always "was".
Just food for thought.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.
Science stops being science when it gets past what can be tested and proven
Small correction from a practicing scientist: science stops being science when it gets past what can be tested and disproven. You can't prove a theory in a strictly scientific sense; you can only show that theories are not supported by the data (are disproven) or are currently (this being the key word) not ruled out.
Of course, you may have meant proven in the colloquial sense, in which case I don't necessarily disagree.
after looking at the current mood going on this topic, i'm pretty sure i'll get hammered on moderation for this... but here we go...
Macro-Evolution is a THEORY. And despite what biology teachers like to profess in modern educational institutions, there is absolutely no more proof for it than there is for creationism. Evolutionists like to use the arguement of how easy it is to see the proof of it... but the exact same can be said for Creation. You just have to be willing to look. No matter which way you go, you must be willing to take a leap of faith.
I had the opportunity of seeing a Creation-Science vs. Macro-Evolution debate at my university not long ago. Amongst other things that infuriated the hell out of the evolutionist, was this interesting tidbit: while many species share body parts that are quite similar in design and function (ie. eyes), the genetic coding for those similar parts is not only completely different, but located in a completely different part of the creatures' DNA. Example: Logic would assume that if birds evolved from reptiles, then the genetic coding for the body parts that they share in common would be located in the same place, and be relatively similar. This does not hold true, however. At the genetic level, there is no proof of evolution... as the genetic differences between different families can be immense . Not to mention the broad genetic differences between different classes, orders, phylums and kingdoms! But the physical similarities between different species is often undeniable. So, this begs the question: if there is no genetic similarities (read: evolutionary relationship) between two physically similar creatures of different biologic-families, why do they have so much in common? The answer could very well be a common Creator.
Personally, in the absense of any real, solid and factual proof of evolution, I choose to believe in God and Creationism. At the heart of it, all evolution really is is a religion. Only with evolution the priests are called "biologists."
/dev/random
I would agree with you... I'm a skeptic (pyrrho, hint hint) too.
Theories are never proved right... however, remember as you said, they can be proven wrong. So the possibilities are not endless, while nothing as probability of 1 (100%), many things have probability 0, so the field of possibility is reduced by process of elimination. Therefore theries can be compared and contrasted and, especially important, can their predictions can be shown to be accurate to some degree.
Newton's laws of gravitation might be updated again (one solution for "dark matter"), but Newton's laws won't be "less accurate", the new law will merely be "more accurate".
However, the theory of evolution does make creationism "less accurate". Indeed the internal coherency of creationism (which it's lacking) implies to me it's probability is 0. The only exception are hybrid theories, i.e. a New Creationism, that says... "well, god started evolution", and the like.
-pyrrho
Even if ... evolution is the answer, it doesn't answer other profound questions. It doesn't answer what was there before space, what is outside of space, and what is outside of time.
The theory of evolution -- that is, the theory of environmental conditions exerting a cumulative, non-random pressure on life-forms to adapt -- does not have anything to do with what was around before the universe or what is outside of space and time. The only question it seeks to answer is: given that life exists on this planet, how did that life come to exist in the present form in which we know it? "Evolution" as a pejorative used by those who argue for intelligent design may seek to answer the aforementioned questions (with, one assumes, an antagonistic assault on the god of the Bible), but that's a theoretical straw man used by those who are constantly sharpening lances and watching for windmills.
Even if you don't believe in the God of Abraham (I happen to), I fail to see how everything can be explained with no high power involved.
If you're looking for a good book to explain very clearly how a series of random events can over time add up to a non-random outcome, I'd recommend Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker (ISBN 0-393-31570-3). Although there are some portions of the book which are a bit heavy-handed (I thought Dawkins was a bit harsh on Stephen Jay Gould and other punctuationists, and that he made positive feedback loops sound much more difficult to understand than they are), it is all in all a cogent, literate, and witty (in a very British way) treatise on natural selection.
I honestly don't understand what atheists believe in this area. Nobody has ever been able to tell me what is outside of space and time.
Again, there's a straw man present here. "Atheists" are a diverse bunch, just as diverse a group as "religious believers." If I were to say, "Religious believers believe that a god named Yahweh or Elohim exists omnipotently, omnisciently, and omnipresently beyond all physical restrictions, and that this god came to earth in the incarnation of a man named Yeshua," I'd be doing every group but Christians a disservice. There's really no way to know what any given atheist thinks exists beyond the boundaries of reality (or even if there is anything beyond them) without asking him.
On further reflection, it seems to me that your original premise is a bit tautological. You believe in a god as described in the Bible or the Torah, so you can not explain existence without using Yahweh as a reference point. The very statements "before space," "outside of space," and "outside of time" beg the question: is there anything there? You assume that there is (an eternal, mystical being), but there's a problem there:
To answer your final question, this particular atheist believes that nothing's out there beyond the borders, as it were. Even if there were, it's irrelevant because there's no way to observe or prove its existence.
They that would sacrifice their
Actually you didn't answer his statement about you stating that you were somehow being "forced" to believe in God.
I had a nagging feeling 'force' would be misconstrued and you would jump over my words instead of ideas.
I consider myself being forced if i'm sitting in the subway or walking down the street minding my own business and some fellow decides to start shouting for me to repent to Jusus or Allah. Or when I find myself ripping a 'believe in Jesus before it's too late' flyer off my car. Maybe not 'force' but I am annoyed with the people who believe in some religion or superstition but can't just be content with feeling better about it without having to tell everyone they meet how great it is and how wrong they are and why they themselves are right.
Well keep in mind that at one point the general scientific community thought the earth was flat
This was an assumption, NOT something that was thought fact because the so-called "scientific community" had proven it throught some sort of experiments or research.
You know eveolution in entirely a plausable outcome (except perhaps the 'original spark' (who knows maybe that was God?!)), but what is more plausable: that beings slowly evolved through minor natural selection and genetic mutations and punctuated evolution (due to local/global cataclysms) OR is it more plausable that and invisible, omnipotent, super-intelligent has existed since the beginning of time and created the trillions of galaxies each with hundreds of millions to trillions of stars,planets,etc and only one of those planets he magically created what we call life and intelligent life? (Occams Razor??)
Now I ask you, honeslty: Which is more plausable?
why run from Vincenzo?
The theory that (a) God exists is just as sound as the theory that existance is older than the sum of human memory & created through random chance.
Nope. A theory must explain the evidence, make testable predictions, and be falsifiable. "God exists" fails on the last two. Therefore, it is not a theory.
Ok, suppose I'm a follower of Christ, an apostle. I've seen him with my own eyes, listened to him speak. Good guy. Then the Romans kill him, nail him to a cross. So me and my buddies, we decide to steal the body and concoct this resurrection story. We know it's a fraud, but nobody else does, so we keep our day jobs and go around telling everybody what we've "seen." Some years later, I'm jailed. They're telling me I'm going to be killed. Would I be willing to die for something that I knew was fraudulent, because I was one of the guys who dreamed it up?
Not a chance. Yet, the apostles didn't exactly meet pleasant ends. It's one thing to die for something you truly believe in, but quite another for something you know to be false.
That, to me, is one piece of fairly compelling evidence, and it's supported by historical writing outside the Christian Bible.
I'm always doubting that God exists... but I've found, personally, that there's enough reason to ask myself "what if" and to entertain the possibility. The assumption here seems to be that Christianity (or any religion) is for simple-minded folks easily brainwashed by some big-haired televangelist that pronounces "God" with up to four syllables. I don't see it that way; faith is hard, and it's one possible consequence of asking some very interesting questions.
Science believes in what can be seen, whereas faith asks one to believe in that which cannot be seen. Which is the easy way out?
I'll concede that my beliefs may be entirely wrong. I wasn't there; I didn't personally witness the origin of life, and will never have the opportunity to do so.
I can say this with certainty: I have nothing to lose by believing, or at least trying my best to do so. If I die and there's no God, well, I'll never know it.
On the other hand, if there truly are eternal consequences for what we believe... if there's even the smallest chance... "what if..."?
Still want to cling to science? Try reading The Physics of Consciousness by Evan Harris Walker. It's not about religion but attempts to lay down a scientific foundation for consciousness. It's an interesting read, but more than what's in the pages, it may have you asking yourself questions that you've ignored for much of your life.
Right! All we need to do is find fossils that are four billion years old, containing intact genetic material. Oh yes--they have to be from other worlds. No problem there.
Panspermia doesn't bother me as a theory; it is definintely a plausible explanation, particularly for the transfer of life from one world to another within the Solar System. But it is by no means the only reasonable solution, as you would imply. And proving it is much more difficult, practically speaking, than you think.
~Idarubicin
I simply include "God Exists" as a basic proposition needing no proof, because it's as obvious to me as the nose on anyone's face, it's natural reasoning.
The nose on anyone's face (well, apart from Michael Jackson) can be rather easily demonstrated to the satisfaction of most anyone. How can you do the same for the existence of a 'god'?
Of course, 'nose' itself has a pretty common accepted definition. I can ask several different people to define 'god' and I will likely receive several different (and sometimes contradictory) answers, so you'd better start with a concrete definition of what you mean by 'god'.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!