Transition Metal Catalysts Could Be Key To Origin of Life

An anonymous reader writes "One of the big, unsolved problems in explaining how life arose on Earth is a chicken-and-egg paradox: How could the basic biochemicals — such as amino acids and nucleotides — have arisen before the biological catalysts (proteins or ribozymes) existed to carry out their formation? In a paper appearing in the current issue of The Biological Bulletin, scientists propose that a third type of catalyst could have jumpstarted metabolism and life itself, deep in hydrothermal ocean vents."

Comments

Re:Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

No, wack-job. It science. You make educated guesses. Then you formulate theories around them and test them. He not just going to write his ideas down in a book and start a cult.

Re:ok but how does this explain

[clarkkent09]

When a country moves too far to the left, demand arises for a populist right wing figure to satisfy all the simple people who rightly feel that there is something wrong but lack the understanding of what exactly, and therefore need it explained in simple language with drawings on a chalk board, just like in school. That's where Glenn Beck comes in.

Re:The electro-dynamic field came first, of course

[Black Parrot]

If anyone was hoping for a less hot-headed response to the GP, it might have gone something like this:

a) Popper et al. don't speak for me.

b) Letting evidence guide your beliefs isn't a philosophy; it's the foundation of sanity.

c) Whenever "philosophy" and "materialism" are brought up in an on-line discussion, it's almost always by a creationist or some other flavor of reality-denying kook who wants to paint a veneer of erudition on their rejection of well-established facts.[*]

d) Those same people don't have any problem with the evidence-guided life when it doesn't impinge on their kookery or superstitions. When they come home and find the carpet wet they don't pause for a minute to consider supernatural explanations. And when it turns out to be the toilet tank overflowing, they don't invoke "philosophy" and "materialism" as excuses to deny that all the water running out of the tank is the cause of the wet carpet.

e) I don't speak for atheists. And as far as I know, no one is an atheist because I said they should be, so there's no reason to suppose they're counting on me to defend their lack of belief in your invisible sky man.

[*] I don't consider every creationist a kook; some are merely ignorant, others are misled by con artists. But when someone starts arguing "materialism" and "philosophy" to defend their superstitions, it's a sure sign that they already know they've lost the argument if they try to deal in facts. And to invoke rhetorical dogcrap to defend a position that you know you've lost is the sign - evidence - of kookery.