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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."
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.
Of couse, because what we all know happened is there was this big explosion in this place called "space", and for no reason this Earth came about, and it was the perfect place for a bunch of water to swirl around, and Hydrogen and Oxygen and Carbon and some other stuff just randomly mixed together in a life form, for no apparant reason and with the greatest of luck, there was this living single-celled creature. Then the one-celled creature became a two-celled creature, again, for no apparant reason, and then three cells, and four, and then, finally, billions. And then all these genetic defects turned out to be really good things for all these creatures... And so humans "evolved" out of nothing and for no reason... but here we are. HO HUM!
[FromTheMorning]
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
Amazing that all those accidents of nature worked out just perfectly, isn't it? I think that is even more unbelievable than Creation.
A while back I heard a joke about how God and a bunch of Evolutionists were discussing the origins of life. The Evolutionists said they could show how to create life. God said to go ahead and show Him. They said "let's take some dirt and water and ..."
God interrupted and said "Wait a minute. That is My dirt and water. Go create your own."
I offer my son as proof that life originates underwater... undoubtedly due to that bit of sex in the hot tub with the wife-to-be one cold August night.
Underwater, UV was blocked, but longer wavelengths could penetrate to permit photosynthesis. Once photosynthesis liberated enough molecular oxygen to produce an ozone layer, life was able to move onto dry land.
What's novel about the theory in the article is that it proposes that living cells were preceded by nonliving inorganic cells.
it's the first time a story of mine got its way to the front page!
Hey, if you're really lucky, your story will get on the front page again in about 3 days!
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.