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Life May Have Evolved In Ice
Philip Bailey writes "An article in this month's Discover Magazine claims that some of the fundamental organic molecules required for the development of life could have spontaneously arisen within ice. Scientist Stanley Miller was responsible for seminal experiments in the 1950s in this area. He used sparks and a mixture of inorganic chemicals to test his theories, but turned to low temperature experiments in later years. He was able to create the constituents of RNA and proteins from a mixture of cyanide, ammonia and ice in trials lasting up to 25 years. A process known as eutectic freezing is thought to be the basis of these results: small pockets of liquid water, in which foreign molecules are concentrated enormously, increases the reaction rates, and more than compensates for temperature-related slowing."
Was the earth even cold enough back then to have that much ice? My understanding is that life began about 3 billion years ago, and that Hadean Earth pretty much lasted until then.
To be sure, some sparks were still needed for the ice theory but there you have it.
You can't send a takedown notice to an already printed newspaper.
I, for one, welcome our new penguin overlords.
All hail Tux!
Although I can certainly see how the physics of freezing would help concentrate biological precursors, I would expect an icy-origin to have left more evidence in the form of cryophilic biodiversity. With an icy origin, ice-tolerant organisms should have arisen quite early. Indeed they would have probably been the first life forms and ice-adapted life would have been quite common. Unless the Earth experienced a 100% ice-free period, descendants of those original cryophiles would be with us to this day. Moreover, many "normal" species would still arbor a shared genetic basis for evolving ice-tolerance or cryophilic lifestyles.
Instead, we seem to see limited scattering species that have independently evolved various forms of ice-tolerance. I could be wrong. If so, I'd love to hear if biologists have found evidence for a widely shared mechanism for ice-tolerance that speaks to a frozen beginning.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Some say in ice
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire
But if it had to bootstrap twice
I think I know enough of genes
To say that for mutation ice
Is also keen
And would suffice
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Sir, do you realize what you are doing is illegal in nerddom? Having ESPN and Slashdot in the same window could result in a nerd-jock cancellation reaction resulting in the destruction of the universe as we know it? Your nerd license has been officially revoked for participating in this dangerous behaviour.
Knowing where something came from allows more insight into where it is going...
Yes.
If we want to look for life on other planets then this research may help us, if it can be shown life is possible or even likely on frozen planets.
"We're here so let's make the most of it."
Yeah, let's not study ourselves, our origins, or science at all. Why bother with history? We're here, lets make the most of it.
Genius.
Yes, it does really matter. Knowing how life evolved gives us insights into how life works here and now. Answering these questions most certainly WILL change issues of today. And, even if they don't, who cares? It's knowledge. Humans have this insatiable urge to know everything they can, leading to today's technologically and medically advanced world. However, occasionally we get people who decry the process without understanding it.
I think they are saying that the molecular precursors to life on earth, can be created in ice. We see large chunks of flying ice in the universe. Our planet may have been implanted with the required precursors for life from ice flying into the planet.
I don't know so much that they are intending to say that the earliest life forms were created in ice.
But I don't know, I didn't read the article. Just taking a break from the superbowl.
If we all had that sort of attitude, we would still be banging rocks together...
In Soviet Amerika the ballot boxes YOU!
I'm in no way qualified to even speak on this subject, but could it be that the Oxygen Catastrophe, in wiping out the great majority of life on Earth, provided sufficient selective pressure that any previous bias toward cryophilic life was effectively erased? I'm just speculating wildly here.
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
Another early experiment, in which he added Vanilla to the mix still haunts Professor Miller to this day.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Now all the crazy evangelicals will be saying that scientists think we all came from ice cubes.
I'd argue that a good hardware design (digital logic, verilog, gate construction, basic circuit design) course and an assembly language course would be invaluable to the modern computer science major.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill