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Old Materials Resurface For "Prebiotic Soup"
AliasMarlowe writes "Stanley Miller performed the famous experiments in the 1950s showing that amino acids and other building blocks for biomolecules could be produced by passing lightning through a mix of simple hydrocarbons, water vapor, and ammonia (thought at the time to approximate the Earth's early atmosphere). Other experiments approximated the environment around volcanic eruptions, but those results were not published. Following his death last year, a former student discovered the materials from those experiments, in labelled vials. Analysis of this material indicates that the conditions around volcanic eruptions (still thought to be representative of such events in the early Earth) resulted in a higher yield of amino acids than the simple lightning experiments, and resulted in a greater variety of amino acids." Pharyngula has a discussion of the Science paper, including a graph of the amino acids produced.
We have since discovered that complex organic molecules form even in space.
(I am not a molecular biologist), but can someone explain if there we could expect some changes to the composition over 60 years? Are some chemicals produced going to break down in that time?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Here's an interesting philosophical question. After the first autocatalytic sets and simple replicators, but before the first cell walls, was the entire Earth a single organism?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It sounds like it would be interesting to check the amino acids and genome of the life that exists surrounding the undersea vents. Since our oceans are no longer "prebiotic soup", there probably won't be anything truly remarkable (previously unknown amino acids in the DNA for example), but if there is anything, that would be an incredible breakthrough.
We are the 198 proof..
My tutor at university used to get us to produce reports on old papers from the really early days of compsci, the 50's and 60's.
What amazed me was how many great ideas were put forward which just couldn't have been implemented successfully at the time, and how many have turned up again many years later as "new" ideas.
There are many ideas that were invented decades ago, but people have just forgotten about.
It makes you wonder what great ideas and discoveries are lying hidden in old journals that no-one ever reads.
Paul Leader
I would say this is another potential blow to young-Earth creationists, but I think most of them aren't going to give this particular experiment much credit. It's unfortunate that we can't just look at the results of scientific experiments at face value without requiring a religious interpretation tacked on to the end. We'd all get along much better that way. Theists could do generally accepted scientific study without getting discredited for their beliefs. On the other hand, enough science already goes on with predetermined goals in mind, so maybe it's a moot point.
Disclaimer: I am a creationist, although not a young-Earth creationist, and I don't disagree with most of the tenets of evolution. I won't engage in debate over the merits of evolutionist vs. creationist perspectives, because there's little to no meaningful debate to be had. At this point, both sides of the debate are taking whatever evidence comes up and claiming it supports their perspective.
In other words, don't expect me to argue over the existence of God in this thread. Interesting findings, though!
I was thinking about this subject the other day, and I thought: life must have spontaneously appeared out of structures that were self-assembling and contained RNA or DNA and proteins. Why doesn't this spontaneously appearing of life happen continuously all around us, or at least in suitable places on Earth? And is the fact that this doesn't happen continuously, despite the fact that we seem to have many suitable places on this planet, a strong indicator that life as we know it may not have started on this planet but was indeed brought here on meteors or other heavenly bodies?
-- Cheers!
From TFA:
Yes, I know that Miller's reducing atmosphere is no longer considered to be an accurate representation of the ancient earth's atmosphere
This is true; in fact, had Miller used an accurate representation of ancient earth's atmosphere, the result would have been formaldehyde and cyanide - the very antithesis of life. It is interesting, though, (and I'm not trying to troll, or take sides on anything), but one thing the Miller experiment illustrated was that life could be intelligently planned and synthesized. Wouldn't that seem to support modern day ID more so than evolution?
Making amino acids like in the Miller experiment is interesting but still leaves a major problem: Nucleic acids require the enzyme AND the template. There was a theory about using lattices in clay as a template but too me that seems as probable as little green men.
Why would it be a blow to anyone especially the loony creationists? This experiment, looking at it a few years later, didn't prove anything but that scientist also can be caught in hypes. Even 60 years later after these 'ideal' environments were defined and many more experiments with it, nothing more but amino acids have been created in a lab. To go from an amino acid to a single living cell is a big jump. A lot of those amino acids have to line up perfectly into things called RNA and DNA and then they have to all come together and somehow be jolted to life and THEN you have a single cell. Then that single cell has to be strong enough and survive long enough in that environment (whether it be lightning or volcanoes which are both very violent and tend to destroy stuff) it was created in and then it has to somehow figure out how to reproduce and in all that time, these 'ideal' environments have to calm down to a certain level so multi-celled organisms can survive.
This hypothesis has very little credibility now in the 'real' scientific world. It might still be in high school and college textbooks and some of you armchair scientists might know of them but the probability of it actually happening that way is so very low that even hardcore (read: religionist) evolutionists just look at it and say 'meh, let's look at something else'.
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HIV is actually a very bad example. A majority of HIV researchers now agree that HIV is a Stochastic mutator - that is, it does genuinely random mutation, in this case between at least 4 subtypes (This theory isn't accepted universally among HIV researchers yet, but it seems to be surviving any challenges quite well, and the people who are becoming supporters are well established researchers, solid main-stream PhD Biologists and even the Nobel winners in the field.).
For a Stochastic Mutator, the chance for type A to 'evolve' into type B stays the same as the chance for type B to 'evolve' back into type A, and so on, so there is no net evolutionary direction to this process (hence the word stochastic). A stochastic mutator may also mutate in non-stochastic ways, indeed the Theory of Evolution says it must, just as every other species does. Figuring out HIV's actual evolutionary mutation rate, and what part of the total rate is subject to selection pressure, takes separating this stochastic part from the total data.
Your use of "20% from the original strain" is meaningless. 20% in how many years just might be a meaningful number, but what the hell does 20% standing by itself mean? Even better, talk about the mutation rates per individual offspring and per generation, instead of per fixed time. If you can't talk meaningfully about these, then you have nothing to contribute.
Let's see - you don't have the actual facts, just your made up ones, and you descended to calling lots of names. Yep, he's the religious fanatic and you're the rational individual. You've convinced me.
Who is John Cabal?
That people still believe in it or study it doesn't mean it's not on shaky grounds. There is still ample study being funded that tries to defy both standard and quantum physics (creation of energy out of nothing) or that tries to defy science (some states in the US try to tell the world was created in literally 7 days and the earth (and everything else) is only 8000 years old). Abiogenesis was believed in by Greeks but Pasteur eventually found out that nothing comes out of nothing.
The biggest problem with abiogenesis as is proposed by the Miller experiment is that they don't take into account that amino acids -> structured rna -> protocell would take much longer than the environment would have been around and even if it was, the environment would've killed off the cells as soon as they were created (the amount of oxygen needed alone would burn those things right up). Chemistry, geology and astronomy tells us that the amount of time such excellent conditions existed on earth would've been fairly short (the necessary elements in the atmosphere would've decayed or at least have reacted by then according to chemists, geologists tell us the environment itself would've changed a lot between then and astronomy tells us that it would've been all blown away by meteor strikes (which were common in those time periods).
I'm not saying it's a dead science or that it's all wrong, just that those type of environments in the big picture would've meant nothing.
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all of it--I had a professor in college note that the "stages of evolution" model showing the progression of a human fetus was complete bunk used to steer people away from creationism (no, she was not a creationist). They still use it in the texts where I teach today.
"Intolerant fundies are simply a very vocal minority."
Unfortunately you're not even on my level... it would take years of reading for you to catch up unfortunately, when I mean "uninformed" I mean lacking in insight into humanity and human nature and it's inherent defectiveness. It's not merely intolerant fundies, go look at the ravings of mr scot here: http://www.uncommondescent.com/
These people still believe and spread things that are not true and fuckup their kids lives with their rather primitive morality, not only that most people in your red state wouldn't even qualify as christian because that is how bad they are at thinking and reading the bible (if they do at all), when it comes to things that psychologically comfort them which they refuse to let go of. They're mostly secular people with a crazy religious bent who can't let go of the blanket of religion that keeps them warm at night.
It still doesn't absolve them of the fact that they are a bunch of liars who harm the world by their lies and inflict their primtivism on others and most importantly - their children. Tolerance is not a virtue here, it is a vice that has come out of the enlightenment view of reason and humanity, human beings are not nice creatures. They are primitive and feral to the bone. Millons of years and we still have war and poverty ffs. All men are primitive and I'll be glad once we start moving away from man 1.0, human beings (that is v1.0) are a failed race, of this I am certain. I don't buy the myth that people are good people, if they were good they would restrain their feral impulses and we wouldn't live in capitalist society where we have people eat $10,000 dinners and some man has to live on the street homeless, the fact that we have homeless people at all proves that mankind is not very nice or capable of controlling itself as a species. That fact alone speaks volumes of how not good we are because most people are a bunch of selfish hyper individualistic animals.
People are naturally prejudice as we know, but it signals a deeper more disturbing message about humans being the descendents of animals -- i.e. we are more wild animal then humane. Considering we allow people to have billions of dollars while some disabled man or woman may suicide over not being able to pay the bills. This shows us just how messed up human beings really are and how ignorant / apathetic they are in reality despite all the flashy words, inspiring messages and whatnot. And also how fearful they are of commiting to building relationships with others they perceive as "the other" even when they haven't done anything wrong.
People who believe illusions and lies are the problem in this world, people who will make dumb ass decisions that keep the world mired in confusion and the ethical backwardness it is in must be called on it. The reason teh world is so fucked up is because we allow the buck to pass, the war in iraq could have been shortened if all americans got up and caused the biggest shitstorm teh world has ever seen but most are apathetic plebes who couldn't give a rats ass for a bunch of what they might consider "brown people" in another country.
The truth is humans suck so lets not sugarcoat it ok? Millions of years, we're still at war with one another, some one or all human beings have something desperately wrong with them that needs to be fixed.