Researcher Builds Life-Like Cells Made of Metal

Sven-Erik writes "Could living things that evolved from metals be clunking about somewhere in the universe? In a lab in Glasgow, UK, one man is intent on proving that metal-based life is possible. He has managed to build cell-like bubbles from giant metal-containing molecules and has given them some life-like properties. He now hopes to induce them to evolve into fully inorganic self-replicating entities. 'I am 100 per cent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology,' says Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow. His building blocks are large 'polyoxometalates' made of a range of metal atoms — most recently tungsten — linked to oxygen and phosphorus. By simply mixing them in solution, he can get them to self-assemble into cell-like spheres."

Comments

I for one

[Aighearach]

welcome our new polyoxometalate overlords.

Re:I for one

[Rei]

Did I say overlords? I meant protectors...

Re:I for one

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I for one welcome our mad scientists. This dude is awesome. We need more of this dude.

Re:I for one

[TheDarkMaster]

And I agree

Re:I for one

[Kamiza Ikioi]

+1 for Coulton reference. ;)

Re:I for one

[Lisandro]

Sure, sure. Encourage him. See how you feel after 150 years of brutal metal-based-organisms rule.

Re:I for one

[pinkushun]

There truly is a God of Metal!

Re:I for one

[PachmanP]

welcome our new polyoxometalate overlords.

Thank you. This is all I came for.

Re:I for one

[Phoghat]

Terminator: The 12-gauge auto-loader.

Clerk: That's Italian. You can go pump or auto.

Terminator: The .45 long slide, with laser sighting.

Clerk: These are brand new - we just got them in. That's a good gun. Just touch the trigger, the beam comes on and you put the red dot where you want the bullet to go. You can't miss. Anything else?

Terminator: Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.

Clerk: Hey, just what you see pal.

Terminator: The Uzi nine millimeter.

Clerk: You know your weapons, buddy. Any one of these is ideal for home defense. So uh, which will it be?

Terminator: All.

Clerk: I may close early today. There's a 15 day wait on the hand guns but the rifles you can take right now, and you have to fill these out too.

[Terminator is loading slugs into the shotgun]

Clerk: You can't do that.

I'm just sayin'

Dear researchers:

[mdenham]

Please make sure that these are vulnerable to projectile weaponry. The last time we had to deal with life forms of this sort, it was a real pain.

Signed,
Col. Jack O'Neill

Re:Dear researchers:

[umbrellasd]

There's more about these metal-based life forms than meets the eye.

Re:Dear researchers:

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Hah. They'll be subject to evolution, so that'll only last for a while.

Signed,
Megatron

Re:Dear researchers:

[oodaloop]

And let's hope they don't fly. I don't want robots in da skys.

Re:Dear researchers:

[oPless]

T-1000. Silly Terminator-Franchise-Wanna-Be-Geek.

Maybe you're getting confused with the T200 SunFire box you're lusting after on ebay?

Re:Dear researchers:

[gilleain]

T-1000. Silly Terminator-Franchise-Wanna-Be-Geek.

Maybe you're getting confused with the T200 SunFire box you're lusting after on ebay?

On the contrary, the poster has exposed itself as a terminator with its inside knowledge of the latest models! Quick - to the bunker! (oh, wait : wrong forum).

Re:Dear researchers:

[Lumpy]

too late. look at a diagram of the satellites orbiting. there are tens of thousands of robots in the sky, all looking down on us.

Re:Dear researchers:

[GameboyRMH]

Or a T-ONE MILLION! That's gonna POKE YOUR EYES OUT!

Re:Dear researchers:

[kungfugleek]

Good idea. I'll keep them distracted.

Re:Dear researchers:

[peragrin]

Which is why Americans have become fat. Other countries dont want to look at us from the sky providing a natural camoflage.

Re:Dear researchers:

[smooth wombat]

there are tens of thousands of robots in the sky, all looking down on us.

Up here in space,
I'm looking down on you.
My lasers trace,
Everything you do.


You think you've private lives,
Think nothing of the kind.
There is no true escape,
I'm watching all the time.


I'm made of metal,
My circuits gleam.
I am perpetual,
I keep the country clean.


Yes, we know. Thx Rob

Re:Dear researchers:

[AshtangiMan]

I'm still laughing ....

Re:Dear researchers:

[TheCRAIGGERS]

This deserves a +10 Funny. You are a true modern marvel, sir or madam.

Re:Dear researchers:

[Darinbob]

Travel across the universe, meet all sorts of alien races, view a wide variety of advanced technology, and when it's all said and done your best weapons are still P90 assault guns.

Re:Dear researchers:

[type40]

Its a good thing I always light flares throw chaff when I toss off.

Replicators

[gstrickler]

They're coming. Run for you lives.

Re:Replicators

[Liambp]

Whenever I see an article like this about yet another scientist trying to create artificial life I wonder whether they have watched and read too much science fiction or whether they just haven't seen enough science fiction.

Re:Replicators

[mcgrew]

Some scientists write science fiction when they're not researching. Isaac Asimov, for example, held a PhD in biochemistry and did cancer research at Boston University.

Re:Replicators

[tixxit]

Another example, Peter Watts is a marine biologist.

Re:Replicators

[geekoid]

Just so you know, holding a PhD doesn't make you a scientist, or even imply you do science.

His title as full professor of biochemistry was honorary.

In short, he did nothing with his degree, so to call him a scientist is laughable.

Re:Replicators

[mcgrew]

From wikipedia:

After completing his doctorate, Asimov joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Medicine, with which he remained associated thereafter.[20] From 1958, this was in a non-teaching capacity, as he turned to writing full-time (his writing income had already exceeded his academic salary). Being tenured meant that he retained the title of associate professor, and in 1979 the university honored his writing by promoting him to full professor of biochemistry. Asimov's personal papers from 1965 onward are archived at the university's Mugar Memorial Library, to which he donated them at the request of curator Howard Gottlieb. The collection fills 464 boxes, or seventy-one meters of shelf space.

The dust covers of several of his books say he did indeed do cancer research at Boston University, although Wikipedia omits this. I'd say regardless of professorship, doing research in one's scientific field does make one a scientist, although I agree that someone with a degree in physics that only teaches isn't a scientist. I've worked with folks holding PhDs in the social sciences who weren't doing research, and I wouldn't consider them scientists, either (and neither would they).

Shameful hype

[Linzer]

This has to be the most overhyped, buzzword-ridden science story I've read in months. As a researcher, I hate to see whatever credibility we have spent on things like this.

In a TED talk on this, he said 2 years

[gilleain]

When asked in a talk on this, he claimed that they would have fully replicating matter (IE : 'living' inorganic matter) in 2 years. The host who asked the question sounded startled when he said "That would be, er, something amazing, yes" - in other words "Yeah, right!".

On the other hand, the lab's publication list is quite impressive, and full of cool looking polygonal structures : http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/publications.php

Re:In a TED talk on this, he said 2 years

[phantomfive]

It would be impressive enough if we could take organic molecules and make it live.

Re:In a TED talk on this, he said 2 years

[Grizzley9]

I guess it will depend on his definition of "life". Putting a bunch of "life like" cells together gets you...a bunch of "life like" cells together. Where is the forcing, where is the underlying, inbuilt "data" that will make these capable of doing anything beyond the initial chemical reaction?

As others have said, first we ought to try and make the "simple" organic cells from scratch that "live".

They don't do self-replication

[satuon]

Without self-replication I wouldn't call them life, evolution can't work without self-replication of some sort.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[backslashdot]

You don't have to have the ability to replicate in order to be alive. For example worker bees can't reproduce, yet they may be considered alive. Also women past menopause and kids are alive yet they can't replicate. Or even some people who many not be fertile for whatever reason.

Also you can't make "ability" to evolve as part of the definition of life.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[Anonymous Coward]

Viruses can evolve. They can't self-replicate, but use the host's machinery.

That said, the old "are viruses alive?" debate still goes on...

Re:They don't do self-replication

[interactive_civilian]

You don't have to have the ability to replicate in order to be alive. For example worker bees can't reproduce, yet they may be considered alive. Also women past menopause and kids are alive yet they can't replicate. Or even some people who many not be fertile for whatever reason.

Also you can't make "ability" to evolve as part of the definition of life.

This is a very narrow, organism-focused view point. Every cell in bees and other "dead-ends" such as all of your somatic cells, are full of replicators, evolved in such a way to enhance the further replication of the germ-line into future generations. Without genetic replication, life as we know it cannot exist. So, yes, replication is a defining aspect of life.

As for the "ability to evolve"... it's not a definer, but more of an emergent property of any and all systems with error prone replication.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[hjrnunes]

. For example worker bees can't reproduce, yet they may be considered alive. Also women past menopause and kids are alive yet they can't replicate

No. But their genes can (they do in queen bees, and adult humans), and that's what matters.

Also you can't make "ability" to evolve as part of the definition of life.

Indeed. Evolving is not so much an ability as it is a consequence of inexact replication.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[Your.Master]

Evolution requires replication, not necessarily self-replication. An earlier poster mentioned viruses, which are an example of a thing, living or not (I'd say not), that evolves without replicating itself.

Broadly speaking, "human men" and "human women" are each not self-replicating, but the system of "human men and human women" is self replicating. Still, you can speak of features that evolved in women distinctly from men, such as prominent breasts, even though human women in isolation do not self-replicate. So as a gedankenexperiment, imagine you have an imperfect cloning machine and a world of only men (the clones pop out full-grown). This single-sex could use it to replicate indefinitely and evolve. And if those men maintain, repair, and build new cloning machines, then you have a species which doesn't self-replicate by itself, but the species-cloning-machine system is self-replicating, much as the man-woman system is self-replicating. Now you can imagine that no new cloning machines are ever made but the one was built to last a hundred million years. Now there is *no* system that's self-replicating but the men still replicate, with the help of the cloning machine, and therefore still evolve.

I don't see why evolution would be a requirement of life anyway. Evolution is merely an inescapable consequence of anything which replicates iteratively and imperfectly, whether or not it is life.

I do know some traditional definitions of life require self-replication, at the species level.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[Rogerborg]

For example worker bees can't reproduce

They can and do. Bees are less specialised than ants and termites. Sorry for interrupting, please continue with your home-spun folksy gut-feeling science-talk.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[undecim]

Hence the use of the word "life-like" instead of "living".

Re:They don't do self-replication

[Dunbal]

Worker bees can reproduce, except that this ability is suppressed by pheromones produced by an active, mature queen. But where do you think new queens come from?

Re:They don't do self-replication

[MightyMartian]

Not even researchers into organic abiogenesis think life started with DNA. In fact, I'd say from my understanding of current theories, DNA came along relatively late in the game in the evolution towards life, and that earlier proto-organisms may have had a much simpler heredity system. Even the "RNA world" hypothesis doesn't start with RNA.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[Anonymous Coward]

Even better example are prions - proteins that are misfolded.

They are not "living" in usual sense (they are single molecules!) but they can replicate themselves and even evolve resistance to drugs: http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/12/evolution_without_genes_-_prions_can_evolve_and_adapt_too.php

Re:They don't do self-replication

[ceoyoyo]

It's pretty tough to get natural life without evolution. It has to spring forth fully formed. And evolution (as in Darwinian) is not an inescapable consequence. You need to have reasonable levels of mutation, some means of crossing strains and reasonable robustness to both processes.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[geekoid]

Magic. cause, you can't, like, explain things, man.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[tehcyder]

Not if you are immortal.

You make it sound like that's something obvious he overlooked.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[Fned]

Bees and old ladies are made of cells, that are alive. Those cells are the fundamental unit of "life", they can reproduce themselves.

Generally, when a bee's or old lady's cells stop being able to replicate, the bee or old lady dies fairly quickly.

Re:They don't do self-replication

[MightyMartian]

Ignoring for the moment horizontal gene transfer, what do you call prokaryote reproduction, if not self-replication?

All hype aside (lit. ref.)

[Lundse]

Sound like Erewhon. Purge the machines that think!

Cells, riight

[qbast]

So he made some 'bubbles' that don't dissolve and can mimic some simplest properties of a cell like porous membrane. Without self-replication it is not cell or anything resembling life and without some way to change and pass those changes onto next generation there can be no evolution. In related news: I took a cardboard box and painted 'screen' and 'keyboard' on it. It totally proves that laptop can be made from cardboard. Of course it does not work, but this is just a little detail that can be worked out later.

Re:Cells, riight

[Sockatume]

Given that reproducing the properties of the membrane is one of the biggest outstanding problems in the creation of artificial cells, it seems pretty obvious that this is a step forward.

Re:Cells, riight

[silentcoder]

> Without self-replication it is not cell or anything resembling life

Nobody ever said self replication has to work the same way it does for us. The article does say he found ways for the cells to use other cells as templates for modification and indeed replication.
It's an interesting approach to replication - as it changes one existing cell into a replica of another, but it's quite feasible. More-over we have no actual idea what the earliest organic structures looked like, or even how they came to exist. There are dozens of viable theories on abiogenesis and none of them are currently provable - for all we know, that is exactly how the earliest replicating life began ! What were we BEFORE we were cells ? Surely we were simpler, more primitive cells with less of the features of current ones, and before that ? Well the mitochondria we have INSIDE our cells were once a seperate organism... now what used to be something alive in it's own right, is just a component of our cells. How many other components of our cells began as seperate, simpler, life form but didn't leave us fossils to conveniently prove it with ?

This research is in fact incredibly exciting because it shows a way of experimenting with ways early life may have begun. It's using different materials - but that's actually a GOOD thing, as it stops us from trying to just recreate what we have when we don't know what, what we have, used to be. It forces us to think from scratch, as life would have started... and that IS exciting.
More-over, if it works, if it gets far enough... it opens up entire new avenues of consideration in terms of how life may have evolved on other worlds.

Re:Cells, riight

[gilleain]

This research is in fact incredibly exciting because it shows a way of experimenting with ways early life may have begun. It's using different materials - but that's actually a GOOD thing, as it stops us from trying to just recreate what we have when we don't know what, what we have, used to be. It forces us to think from scratch, as life would have started... and that IS exciting.

Well, you make a better case for his research than he does :)

Indeed, it is a good idea to have model systems that show the same features, but are not necessarily 'what happened'. They can show the principles are general enough to occur spontaneously with a reasonable probability. Another thing about inorganic cells is they are one of the possibilities for part of the systems in early life. In other words; something had to concentrate the chemicals and simple macromolecules that were starting to form so that they could react efficiently. The synthesis reactions also had to be driven in one direction, which can be done by sorting across a barrier (eg : a cell membrane)

Re:Cells, riight

[justsayin]

Have you seen the new Dell laptops? I think they have proven that laptops can damn well be made of cardboard.

Re:Cells, riight

[MightyMartian]

I've read of some theories that suggests that the earliest kinds of life, before RNA or DNA, may not have self-replicated as we understand it, but may have used external forces, like wave action or turbidity to physically cause cell division. You really have to stretch your mind here and get past a lot of the assumptions we've built up because we live in a world with fully-evolved life forms.

Re:Cells, riight

[geekoid]

NO, it's not a perfect working example of the stated premise, therefor it is wrong. Clearly these Slashdotters who are outside this expertise have proven this to be flawed and none of the work is worth while~

Gah.

Complexity underestimated

[Obble]

I am 100% confidant that he believes he can make cells from metal. But reality is different. In organic cells, the simplest cell is very very complex. Take for example the ATP synthase - the world's tiniest motor, which is a engine which is compulsory for all life. Every cell has 1000s of these as they convert protons into a transportable energy molecule called ATP. For any cell to be manufacture, he must make many many dependant systems to work together before anything can get off the ground with natural selection or "evolution".

I would be very interested in seeing how far and how complex he can make these systems. IMHO: he faces 2 problems,
  1 is he doesn't have the technology to produce replicators, and all the systems needed,
  2 if he very smarter than every other human on earth in orders of magnitudes then people will say:
          2.1 - He hasn't shown evolution because he built complex nano-bot systems, they didn't evol, they were built.
                        or
            2.2 He proves evolution, look at the new life forms, (and they ignore all the nano tech in it, like batteries, circuits, engines, resource transport trucks, error correcting nano nano robots, etc...) Atheist already ignore all the tech in organic cells so it's seems like this event will be more probable.

Also I dont count crystal structures in either rock / salt / poly -metal - oxide - whatever, to be "living".

Note: I am a creation believing christain. I dont believe in evolution. (I do believe in natural selection)

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

The sole fact of things in space, somehow cohering there is hardly explicable by materialism alone. That we distinguish them and are able to follow them in time (sameness) suggests that there's something else - abstract, unchanging - that causes those things' coherence and our distinguishing theme the one from the other. This is one argument for idolatry's being a grave error: one worships a living something not uncreated.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[maxwell demon]

His goal is not to prove, disprove or otherwise challenge evolution. If he manages to build such life forms (what he did yet definitely isn't one), it will certainly be his creation and would say exactly nothing about evolution, nor is it intended to do. What he wants to prove is that metal based life is possible at all.

I'm also sceptical that he will manage to do it (independent from the question if metallic life forms would be possible in principle). But the point is, no matter if he does, it won't tell anything about evolution either way, nor is it intended to.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[gilleain]

Interesting post. I think that you are right, but for the wrong reasons.

As you point out, a major part of the story of life is the growth in complexity. Just having a bounding membrane - Cronin's current claim - is only the first step on a long road. A key next step is - like ATP synthase - to set up an energy source. It is thought by some that the first membranes played an important role in energy capture by allowing primitive cells to set up an ion gradient across them

The problem that I see is a lack of potential in non-carbon structures. The number of possible forms of proteins is very large; the number for polyoxometallates is larger then most inorganic forms but still smaller than organic. So he may get some steps down the road of complexity, but run out of steam (to mix metaphors!) half way there.

Finally, crystal structures only show one feature of life : growth. If he can demonstrate self-replicating, self-repairing, self-bounding, inorganic structures then it will be life.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[silentcoder]

>Note: I am a creation believing christain. I dont believe in evolution. (I do believe in natural selection)

Congratulations, so was Darwin. Now you only have 150 years of biology left to catch up on...

Actually what I think you MEANT to say is that you don't believe in abiogenesis. Evolution is the concept of organisms changing, natural selection is one of the effects that can drive the direction of evolution and almost certainly the most important one but there are others which have been identified (mostly because they cause occasional anomalies like rapid speciation). So evolution is not quite a synonym for natural selection, we moved away from Darwin's terminology since it describes only ONE of the things that control evolution and we now know it's not the ONLY thing that does (though it's by far the most powerful force involved).
But indeed, Darwin believed that God was needed to start the process of life - many scientists today believe this was not required and there are several alternative viable theories. So far none of them are proven... but what would it do to your faith if one was ?

Well, if you're faith is worth having at all... NOTHING. So you figure out another of the tools in God's toolbox, if that means you can't believe in God your faith was worthless in the first place. For those of us who don't believe now, it will be just further proof that there's nothing we can't adequately explain WITHOUT a creator.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MysteriousPreacher]

Atheist already ignore all the tech in organic cells so it's seems like this event will be more probable.

Evolutionary biology neither a cause nor a requirement of atheism. Raelians are creation believing atheists. St. Augustine famously commented that it was foolish to cling blindly to scriptural untruths in the face of overwhelming evidence. Of course discarding Genesis would be extreme, but certainly taking it to be metaphorical is more tenable than combatting sound science with stories of talking snakes tempting a simple-minded rib woman in to eating magical fruit. There is no dogma in atheism - only (with variations in strength) the shared lack of belief in god(s).

 

Note: I am a creation believing christain. I dont believe in evolution. (I do believe in natural selection)

Is your belief in God based on the same thought process as your unbelief in evolution? If not then I think you're cheapening either science or religious belief. No rational person "believes" in evolution the same way the devout would believe in God. Sure some people say that they "believe" in evolution or gravity, without really understanding why, but we shouldn't be considering the layman here. Evolution is simply a well evidenced scientific theory. Sure it requires faith that scientists worldwide aren't all colluding to deceive, or wrong to a level that would suggest we should discard all of biology as being completely baseless, but this doesn't compare to the faith required to believe in God - let alone the faith (or chutzpah) to believe you have somehow managed to in any way understand what this god wants? It's interesting that creationism alone is quite varied in the Christian world, and when we go to other religious we see even more incredible variations. The only way creation can be unified is perhaps at the very basic level of "an entity was at some point in the past involved in our creation". Beyond that things begin to diverge.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

0. As for evolution, consider this: http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/0328212/Acquired-Characteristics-May-Be-Inheritable

1. `many scientists today believe this was not required and there are several alternative viable theories': are they really `viable', are todays scientist all that non-error-prone?

2.`For those of us who don't believe now, it will be just further proof that there's nothing we can't adequately explain WITHOUT a creator.': so for you there are things which confirm that last sentence of yours. Are these not, in a weak sense, `co-creators' (causers) of that same sentence's truth? Moreover, your struggling to make evident that `no Creator is needed' could not be seen as one of its counterexamples? I mean, that you show that one needs to create (construct or prove rather) its truth, itself not being evident, thus at least `no Creator is needed' needs a `creator'.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[silentcoder]

>0. As for evolution, consider this: http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/02/16/0328212/Acquired-Characteristics-May-Be-Inheritable

That is the ancient Lamarckian theorem, just because we've got reason to think that it may have some truth, it says NOTHING about evolution. If anything it strengthens it.

>1. `many scientists today believe this was not required and there are several alternative viable theories': are they really `viable', are todays scientist all that non-error-prone?

You're confusing meanings of "viable". Viable in this context means "could work" not "will work". They are viable in that they make sense, do not violate the known laws of nature and may be true. That is not a claim that they are correct, or that it is what actually happened - we don't have the means (at least not yet) to determine what actually happened, which is the only way to prove any such theory. Even if we used one to create new life tomorrow it wouldn't prove the theory true- it would still remain "viable" only, we'll have given it a LOT more evidence (by showing that it CAN happen that way with absolute certainty) but we would not have proven that it DID happen that way. Science is not non-error-prone, science however has incredibly high standards of testing that it uses to REMOVE errors. Where testing is impossible (or at least very difficult) theories hold less weight. That we can't know for sure if it was crystaline or clay or any of the other theories of abiogenesis doesn't weaken science, it's proof of science's resilience in that it refuses to call a theory "Fact" without being able to check.

2> ...
Your whole paragraph is entirely non-sensicle. Showing that the universe and life can come to exist in it's present state without a conscious creation process reduces the need to invoke a creator to explain it. All religion, including your own, came from our ancestors inabillity to explain things. Now we can explain (almost) all of them, and their explanation (some big all-powerful guy did it) holds a LOT less water.
The simple truth is - if you believe in God, that's your right, but don't mix theology and science because they have NOTHING in common (except origins - a long, long time ago - both tried to explain the world to people). Science questions itself, religion does not - this makes them fundamentally incompatible. You can believe in God and accept science as valuable, but you cannot pretend that the one can enligthen you about the other. To reject a scientific idea on the grounds that it conflicts with religion is hypocrisy unless you are equally willing to reject a religious idea on the grounds that it conflicts with science.
Either way you're playing a very difficult mental balancing game between a way of thinking built on rationality and demand of proof and consistent, critical self-questioning versus one built on "do and think as you are told".

Re:Complexity underestimated

[gilleain]

If he can demonstrate self-replicating, self-repairing, self-bounding, inorganic structures then it will be life.

Out of curiosity; why do thinkt that those things are required for life? Why does life have to be self-repairing and to what extent? what about self-bounding, do you mena that things that aren't self-bounding aren't alive? What if I'm not self-replicating, does this mean that I aren't alive?

Hmmm. Well, as others have pointed out in the comments on this story, you can come up with definitions for life (like "reproduces") and then find counterexamples ("eunuchs"). Since we only have one example of life - on this planet - its a bit difficult to generalise

I must have read the properties I listed (self -replicating, -repairing, -bounding) in a book. I agree that you can think up situations where they don't hold, but it's a fairly good list. Note of course, that I'm really talking about cells; which are the basic unit of life. We are alive because we are made of living cells.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

`We are alive because we are made of living cells.': and why are cells living?

Re:Complexity underestimated

[silentcoder]

>Did you know that carbon 14 dating is pretty erratic, and to such an extent that one can interpret the given as he wishes?

Did you know that only an idiot doesn't know that ? Scientists don't rely on ONE test. We combine carbon dating with geological evidence and literally THOUSANDS of other pieces of evidence to date things. The "deep time" theory started in geology and goes back Hutton in the 18th century. That is to say - we knew the earth was billions of years old nearly 150 years before we knew enough about nuclear physics to develop carbon dating.

>is it not because in your eyes they appears as negated (or unnecessary, and thus Occam's) by today's science, that you don't accept certain existences?

I didn't say they were negated, I merely said they were not required. I did however say that they cannot be scientifically tested therefore they cannot be allowed to influence scientific thinking or theories. Since the very things that first made humans propose these existences as explanations have now been BETTER explained by things with PROOF - THAT is a negation. It's not an absolute negation (it could just be a limitation on their activity) but it does cast doubt on the very idea (a LOT of doubt) since we never would have considered the possibility of their existence in the first place if our ancestors could have known about evolution and the big-bang theory.

> is that computer you use not `created'?
No, it's produced. There is a core and CRUCIAL difference. Scientific laws say that matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can merely be converted into other matter, same for energy. That was Newtonian physics, Einsteinian adds only one thing to this: matter and energy can be converted between each other as well - but still not created. All the matter/energy total in the universe was there at the moment of the big-bang. No new matter can be, or has been, created. Ever.

More-over, when human convert a bunch of matter between forms and do a bunch of designing and create a computer, that only proves that humans can construct computers out of pre-existing material. It doesn't prove that humans were created. It doesn't even prove that anything not constructed by humans (or other life-forms - say coral reefs and ant-hills) have been constructed ever.

My computer does not prove creation, it does not even SUGGEST creationism.

>Also, removing the need for a Creator of Reality makes that Reality uncreated:

That's not true. It only makes it uncreated by a creator. You assume that creation requires a creator. The atheist position is that creation can be spontaneous.

>what occurs in it can be seen as produced by it; is this not Atheists' god?

There is nothing god-like about it. It has strict rules which we can determine, study and formulate into mathematical principles - and then predict with absolute acuracy and even control. If anything, it's the absolute opposite of a god. It has no whims and no desires. It has no demands and no opinions or thoughts or will. It certainly has no expectation from humans. Quite the contrary, it is simply a universe in which things do what the rules force them to do, and we can influence and control what they do if we know those rules by changing the circumstances so the rules force them to act differently.
The universe and reality is not the god of atheism, it is the SERVANT of atheism (and in fact, of all science) if you are to anthropomorphise it at all. A much more clear view is that it simply IS. It isn't someone and it has no relationship with us except "we are part of it". It just is, by understanding it, we can live better.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[silentcoder]

>Evolution is taught as a concept things changing but it makes the grand claim of things improving upon themselves to do it, by gaining complexity and self forming into "higher" life forms.

No, it does not. Evolution simply favors that which survives the best. Sometimes it does so by REDUCING complexity. A good example: frog genomes are nearly 500 times more complex than human genomes (that is - they have about 500 times as many genes as we do). Yet frogs have been around a lot longer than we are and are way more primitive. But frog DNA has to deal with all sorts of things - a tadpole in an egg needs to develop at a certain rate, that implies chemical reactions and chemical reactions are temperature sensitive. So if it gets warmer the enzymes need to have things added that slow down the reactions, if it gets colder other things are added to speed them up. Frog DNA are filled with countless little variations of "if temperature is between X and Y add enzyme Z" for every proteine in their bodies.
Humans (in fact all mammals) get to grow in a climate controlled environment so we have long since discarded all that extra DNA which egg-layers have. We've evolved to survive better by getting SIMPLER - not more complex.

Most of the rest of your post is common and well debunked arguments. They are based on truth but the conclusions are false since they are massively oversimplified.

Here's a little example of such an oversimplification. Humans (and most other mammals) contain a protein called HSP-90. HSP-90 is one of those special proteines which fold other proteins into shape. It is very rigid, and will fold them into the "orthodox" shape EVEN IF the DNA has mutated, suppressing mutations from being realized into grown cells. Call it a checker for copying errors in DNA.
But HSP means "Heat Shock Proteine", HSP proteins are a family of proteins that the body uses in cases of sudden temperature change to help regulate our warm-blooded body temperatures. So if during early gestation there is a sudden temperature change- HSP gets diverted from folding proteins into it's "adult" job of regulating body temperature. Now the folding gets done by other folders - which lack it's rigidy and will simply do whatever the DNA says.

Look what's happening here - usually the body will suppress mutations, they could lie dormant for thousands of years without a single person born in which they have actually been realized, there's a sudden climate change - now the body stops suppressing, mutations galore get allowed to be realized into offspring. Evolution reached the point of doing it on-demand. When there is sudden climate change, it allows every mutation it has available to occur. This is beautiful. When things are stable - stick to what's working, when things change - the species tries everything. It uses every weird mutation it has to try and produce a version that may be suited to surviving in the new conditions.
One form of rapid speciation is triggered by HSP-90's effects. Of course MOST of those mutations die out, but if one is better suited to the sudden ice-age (or whatever) then it survives and breeds better- and once it goes to a second generation that DNA is now treated AS the orthodox, so it's not suppressed anymore. Voila - species change in a single generation. Using saved up mutations over thousands or even millions of years, that never ever showed up as organisms until the time when the world changed and sticking to "what always worked" is no longer a good idea.

>Charles became an atheist. I think it happened when one of his children died, but I could be wrong on that.

He died a troubled agnostic, but at the time when he was writing his grand works he was definitely a believer and in fact Origin of Species and Descent of Man both directly credit God for starting the process (multiple times). He actually held back on publishing Origin for nearly a decade because he feared that people could interpret it in ways that could harm his beloved church.

Everything you said about i

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

`That's not true. It only makes it uncreated by a creator. You assume that creation requires a creator. The atheist position is that creation can be spontaneous.': :-)

`It has no whims and no desires. It has no demands and no opinions or thoughts or will': interesting, can one not use an extension to the eminently un-bodily of empirical induction (in view of our being thus), to give some vraisemblance to His existence; or, could it be not frighteningly probable that a Being of which we are but restrictions, actually exists?

`It certainly has no expectation from humans': that's of course very convenient.

`Quite the contrary, it is simply a universe in which things do what the rules force them to do, and we can influence and control what they do if we know those rules by changing the circumstances so the rules force them to act differently.': We are heading to an infinite regress here (as in nihilism), whence these forces?

`he universe and reality is not the god of atheism, it is the SERVANT of atheism': `For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.' (Luke 22.27) & `And he is before all things, and by (through) him all things consist.' (Colossians 1.17)

Re:Complexity underestimated

[silentcoder]

>`It has no whims and no desires. It has no demands and no opinions or thoughts or will': interesting, can one not use an extension to the eminently un-bodily of empirical induction (in view of our being thus), to give some vraisemblance to His existence; or, could it be not frighteningly probable that a Being of which we are but restrictions, actually exists?

That suggestion would only be worthy of consideration if the universe behaved inconsistently. A being with a mind would not be at all times perfectly predictable, and if he was then his presence would change absolutely nothing about the outcome of anything and could therefore be safely ignored.

> that's of course very convenient.
Indeed, we never have to worry that the universe will make the rain stop if we don't do enough human sacrifices. Atheism is not devoid of morality, it merely personalizes it. Instead of doing good because a God told us to, we do good because we believe in doing good.
The counterpoint is we also don't get to blame God for anything. When people are hungry, or poor, or their homes get flooded. We can't conveniently declare it "God's will" or "lazy people" or best of all "both" and just ignore the problem. We have to say "It's MY responsibility to help". So atheism among kind-hearted people promotes MORE charity. We never think the misfortunes of others are caused by God punishing bad behavior, wanting to test and strengthen them or any of the other religious excuses. We blame them as faillures of society to truly provide for all it's members -and as part of that society, it places the blame on ourselves. If we don't help, we are the CAUSE of their suffering. Religious folks get off easy.

> We are heading to an infinite regress here (as in nihilism), whence these forces?
Nowhere, "Forces" is a simple metaphor that our minds can understand. There isn't really such a thing, we use the metaphor even if we know that because it's very useful. Some scientists focus on whats REALLY there, and as their work gets better understood we can improve the metaphors we use for other work based on it.

Your last paragraph utterly missed the point of mine. Jesus's humility is not the same as being ordered about at the whim of people. But we can effectively order the universe about by understanding it. By understanding how it works we can change our world. Nothing is more improbably than a few hundred tones of steel and metal suddenly flying off the earth and landing on the moon with some people inside, but we could MAKE it happen. By understanding our universe, we could manipulate it's history.
I did also say VERY clearly that "servant" was a METAPHOR, not a description of reality. The universe doesn't do what we want because it's kind, or chooses to or humble. When it does what we want it's because WE understand it well enough to manipulate it so that what we want becomes inevitable.

Frankly, I don't think your IQ is high enough for this discussion or, for that matter, for this site if I have to explain these things - and if you genuinely believe the arguments you make.
I have debated usefully with some believers who are intelligent, rational people who raise interesting questions and thoughts... so far, you're boring me.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

First of all, your last sentence is bizarre.

Second of all, no one thinks primitive cells were at all like the cells we see today, or for the last 3.5 to 3.8 billion years. This is like insisting that a Model T isn't an automobile because it doesn't have fuel injection, or ENIAC wasn't a computer because it didn't have USB ports and a hard drive.

Third, evolution happened. As much as anything in science is a fact, evolution is a fact.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

The problem is that life doesn't have a nice clean definition. In a way, the life concept is like the species concept, you can create definitions that apply to most situations and admit that there are always outliers that don't fit to the definitions you've produced, or create definitions so broad that you end up with little enough descriptive power.

Would we have called the first proto-cells that were say, simply a lipid shell, life? Probably not. They couldn't self-replicate, their heredity system was probably just the gross physical properties of the cells themselves, and yet, indirectly, they could replicate, they could, in some very primitive way, metabolize. Not life as we know it, but closer to it than crystals.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

What the f--- does C14 dating have to do with anything? It's like your vomiting up every crappy Creationist bit of handwaving you've ever read.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest you've never actually read anything on evolution by an actual biologist. You're just posting AIG and ICR nonsense.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

`What the f--- does C14 dating have to do with anything?': it has to do with humanity's age, C14 contradicts its being at most 6000 years old. as for exemplars of vomiture, cf. your preceding opus.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[vadim_t]

`Evolution is simply a well evidenced scientific theory': and how is this `well evidenced', did you witness the process?

Why yes, for instance we can see how we keep getting colds year after year. There's plenty left over evidence in the form of fossils too.

In any case, Lamarckism is much more natural than Darwinism:

The superficial naturalness of things has no bearing on what actually happens. Not so long ago the most logical explanation was that flies spontaneously appeared out of rotting meat, and disease was inflicted by the devil, yet go figure, reality turned out to be more complicated.

are not mutations miracles?

No, why would they be? They've been studied in detail, we know how and why DNA replicates imperfectly. There's nothing magic about it.

As for Augustine, it is better to believe those that are recorded as having spoken to and heard Jesus in person, as e.g, John, and unlike Augustine (their writings are meaningful: these are not for us mere material heaps, as are fossils).

Mere material heaps are much better. People make mistakes and lie or omit crucial information. Somehow for instance there's nothing written about Jesus during the time of his supposed life, and all the writings were made considerably later, and don't agree with each other. John also can't be trusted much on this matter, a third party account would be much more valuable.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[rubycodez]

oh, viruses aren't alive? for that matter, the DNA or RNA in our cells aren't alive?

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

Yes, C14 contradicts it, as does every other form of radioisotope dating, not to mention every other single bit of data relating to humanity's time on the planet. C14 is only good for, as I recall, up to somewhere around 30,000 years ago.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

Evolution is taught as a concept things changing but it makes the grand claim of things improving upon themselves to do it, by gaining complexity and self forming into "higher" life forms

Maybe your problem is you had a bad biology teacher, because what you just wrote there would be rejected by every single biologist over the last 80 or 90 years. No one in the better part of a century has thought that evolution has a direction. Evolution, simply put, is the change in the genetic makeup of a population over time. It can lead to more complexity, the same level of complexity or less complexity. Features can evolve, can change, can even be lost and evolve again.

I'm standing by my other comments. You've shown sufficient ignorance of biology and evolution that I have to state quite openly that you have never ever ever ever ever ever read a book by biologists on evolution. Even reading one of the layman books like Dawkins' would have corrected you of the above error, probably in the first chapter of the The Blind Watchmaker.

With that in mind, I have to ask you, what makes you think you have any business lecturing anybody on a theory that you know absolutely nothing about? What made you so arrogant?

Re:Complexity underestimated

[holmstar]

If you're willing to ignore the plethora of genetic evidence, how about something more direct? Evolution has actually been recorded in the lab: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

Seriously, what sort of evidence would be enough for you?

Re:Complexity underestimated

[geekoid]

Note: You're an idiot.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

We have no first hand accounts of people who talked to Jesus. The Gospels were written decades after his death, and since they largely seemed to have cribbed off of one another, they're highly questionable as accurate accounts. The only actual contemporary account of Jesus from an outside source is Josephus, and once you rip out the later additions, Josephus doesn't say much more than that there was a holy man with a group of followers named Jesus who was put to death by the Romans.

On the other hand, fossils and molecular data paint very clear pictures of previous epochs, of how life evolved from prokaryotic organisms through to the vast assemblage of life that exists today. We can tell fairly accurate how closely or distantly related two organisms are, we can, with a reasonable amount of accuracy, even date when the common ancestor of two populations may have lived.

Simply put, the evidence for evolution and common descent dwarfs the evidence for Jesus. Biblical scholars should be so lucky as to have a hundredth of the the amount of data points that exist for evolution.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[geekoid]

That's because humanity is older then 6000 years. And no, you can't manipulate it to get any answer you want.

Also, see radiometric dating.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[geekoid]

" did you witness the process? "
yes. In fact, evolution even make predictions.

Ignoring the fact that there is no actual proof Jesus existed, and Joe and Mary's trip is, to be kindly 'Highly unlikely'. Quote letter written from people who may have heard about someone who talked to the un-provable character is useless. Not just letters, but picking and choosing which letter the prefer to quote that meat a predefined view. In short: The Bible is crap.

Their writing are meaningless.

"Science adjusts it’s beliefs based on what’s observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."

Here, have some beat poetry"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

"Science adjusts it's beliefs based on what's observed Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.": the believer also believes that he shall be directed in such a way as to pose the right questions and observe the `sufficient and abstract for the question at hand', thus giving him data to construct consistent (with no need for a consistency proof) formal systems or axiomatic theories (which may well not be formal systems): this is most clear in mathematics where the data is a limiting case of objects (pure extensions, sets), but philosophy as an exact science also furnishes such an example (except for its data being more conceptual, meaningual). Also, as time passes one gets more and more confidence in `For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.' (Luke 8.17) (that saying applies to itself: it is made clearer and clearer by its instances): did you not find strange these?: `But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;' (Matthew 5.44) or `Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division:' (Luke 12.51). One explication could be this: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/10/1008636108.full.pdf

Indeed, if you say X and i say not X then at least one of us would be right, so truth is among us (even if your X were `it is not the case that for all X, either X or not X is the case'). So, according to your quotation faith is like science in this regard, in view of its latter half you have to agree that the said quotation is false (for surely, you would not say that science is the denial of observation). Seeing how you agree (cf. the link to the paper above), can I suggest you to question that state of affairs? Who knows, perhaps you are wrong.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[Fned]

A key next step is - like ATP synthase - to set up an energy source.

Done and done.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

`And no, you can't manipulate it to get any answer you want.': you literally can; did you know that observation alters the observed (and not only)?

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

Years ago when I was hanging around talk.origins, I remember the famous observation that if radioactive decay happened at the levels YECs claimed, the Earth would be molten due to the sheer amount energy being released.

Decay rates are well understood, and providing a researcher understands what external factors can influence isotope decay rates (which physicists who measure decay rates for chronological purposes certainly can), it is a powerful tool for dating.

But as others observed, the first evidence that the Earth and life on it were much older than 6,000 years came in the 18th century, though back then they thought it was merely millions of years old, and it took the better part of a century to finally figure out that the Earth was billions of years old. Still, the fact remains that for well over two hundred years, scientists have known that the Earth is much much older than 6,000 years. Radiometric dating allowed us to accurately determine the ages of various geological features (including fossils), but it wasn't necessary for the initial determination that a literal reading of Genesis was pure crap.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

Huh? Mutations are errors in transcription. You get that in any replication system. In digital replication systems, of course, you have CRC checks and the like which basically tell a protocol "resend last block". DNA and RNA transcription do not have that luxury, because the encoding simply works on what fits. While there is some capacity for error correction, it is nowhere near as reliable as, say, Kermit, zmodem or TCP/IP, and even with these I've still seen corruption in data streams. It's a fact of life (pun partially intended) in a universe governed by entropy.

What's more, transcription errors are only one form of mutation. There's neutral drift, which may in fact be as much a force in molecular evolution as out-and-out screw ups. Not to mention my favorite evidence for evolution, endogenous retroviral insertions, which allow for horizontal gene transfer in more complex eukaryotic organisms.

At any rate, nothing miraculous at all about mutations. The miracle would be finding a perfect replication system. Living organisms certainly have not.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

And humanity has been around a lot longer than 6,000 years. Depending on how you define human, can be a few million, or about 900k years for genus Homo or somewhere around 150k for morphologically modern humans or somewhere between 90k and 60k years for humans that appear to behaviorially identical to us. 6k years no longer even reasonably measures the beginning of civilization, which has been pushed back to somewhere between 8k and 9k years ago, relatively soon after the end of the last ice age.

Sorry pal, every single drop of research done over the last two hundred years has absolute and completely obliterated any notion of humans only being around for 6,000 years. It's bullcrap based solely on Bibliolatric readings of Genesis. A literal reading of Genesis is a faerie tale that not even most of the major churches will back up.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

As I say elsewhere, no humanity's age is much more than 6,000 years. Even just limiting it to modern H. sapiens, we're somewhere around 150k to 200k years old now.

I gotta ask, how is it that you can, in the face of the overwhelming body of evidence, insist that humans have only been around 6000 years? Is your faith that weak that it could be ruined if you admitted to yourself that Genesis is not a science text and cannot rationally be read literally?

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

The "living fossil" claim is a rather dangerous one, and a sloppy use of language to my mind. We have organisms who certainly look like their distant ancestors tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, but it is highly unlikely that they are truly unchanged at a molecular level.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

Entropy causes degradation, errors. No miracles? then almost all of us are wrong.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

Entropy: order to disorder... so yes, the nature of any duplication system is going to be towards errors, which can be mitigated by throwing more energy at it (which is rather how packet resends work in digital systems works), with the unfortunate side-effect that using more energy ultimately increases entropy.

But are you now disabused of the notion that there is such a thing as a perfect replicator and understand that transcription errors are pretty much inevitable?

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

It is miraculous that, in spite of entropy, the space-time world more or less maintains itself. Also the cosmological constant should not be made light of; that such constants occur in the accepted theories about space-time, entropy notwithstanding, is miraculous (or, pretty unexpected). Now of course there's that view of Einstein that it was a blunder, it seems no longer to be regarded as such: put that on account of entropy.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[silentcoder]

>A defect/feature? in the design of HSP, (Mutation maybe?) which will lead to other mutations.

HSP90 is an evolved feature. It's good for organisms to mutate, it's even better to only mutate when the environment changes, so those organisms that used a proteine like HSP90 for proteiene folding quite accidentally ended up with a way of doing it that had an advantage- once there though, it was a major advantage and thus survived.

>I agree, falsifying the latest beliefs in evolution wont stop it. You should not ever question evolution because that is unscientific. ;-)
That's not what I said. I said if you falsify evolution, you would have too use science to do so, and we would get a NEW theory that is also science. It may not be evolution (though reality is it will almost CERTAINLY be a variant of evolution - the evidence for it is just too damn strong, just like relativity isn't a REPLACEMENT for Newtonian physics but a REFINEMENT). One thing I can say with absolute certainty. This theory will NOT be creationism.
ID tries to be scientific but it fails because of bad assumptions. The whole watch (in a field not on a beach btw) argument has been thoroughly debunked and proven false. Even when it was first proposed by Palley 350 years ago it was already out of date with the science that was current THEN.

Before you try to defend ID to me - I suggest you read this, I have already summed up my biggest argument against it in a blog post, I don't feel like redoing it here: http://silentcoder.co.za/2010/11/how-intelligent-is-the-designer/

The entire rest of your post is basically stuff that is so thoroughly proven false and just plain wrong that it's not worth trying to explain further. Yes, all modern biology not only benefits from but DEPENDS on evolution. Our entire understanding of all life is built on that theory.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

`Is your faith that weak that it could be ruined if you admitted to yourself that Genesis is not a science text and cannot rationally be read literally?': the vast majority dismisses the Tanakh and the Gospels as un-solid, whether frankly or with deceit: that's a reason no to follow that opinion, because in this world, people, by their interactions, aggregate not around truth. For me these books, as `words', contain the most abstract concepts, which when made clear, should be of great benefit for mathematics (is Goldbach's problem solved? and that of the Continuum?). Consider what Perelman said about his trying to explain how could Jesus could walk on the waters (he suggests that he succeeded in his endeavors). Also, the greatest professed mathematicians were believers, monotheists (and tended to the same One). Among them one finds Pythagoras, Plato (yes he was acquainted with mathematics), Leibniz, Newton, Cantor, Goedel (note that Turing did not make a fundamental discovery, he just gave an adequate definition to the already known concept of `computable function of the integers' through is computors).

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

I can't be sure at this point if your just being sarcastic, or your just plain ignorant. You seem to be well in accord with most Creationists I've encountered, easy to belittle what you don't understand, either out of pride or just sheer terror.

The world works as it works, and your interpretation of Genesis matters not one little bit. Life evolved, it continues to evolve, it will continue to evolve until one of several different circumstances snuffs it out.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[MightyMartian]

I gotcha. You're just a kook.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[seraph1m]

Wow, fail troll really is fail. Pardon the previous meme usage. But seriously: head-ass-pull.

Re:Complexity underestimated

[aleckais]

Quantum theory: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm. But this is much more general.

Afraid

[Zandali]

Self replicating nanobots scare me...but only on this planet. Anywhere else and it's a friggin' miracle.

This is no news.

[aleckais]

Actually this is likely: Isaac Newton, I am under that impression, studied such things (as metallic vegetations). Moreover Kurt Goedel is recorded as having said `... but an electron or a piece of rock also has experiences.' (cf. Hao Wang's `A logical journey, From Goedel to Philosophy', p. 292 - an excellent book, in my opinion). So, we should not all that fast dismiss this as false or irrelevant. Also, Goedel: `Matter will be spiritualized when the true theory of physics is found.' (p. 292)

Re:This is no news.

[Linzer]

Which goes to say that Goedel was neither a physicist nor a biologist.

Re:This is no news.

[Dunbal]

And since the "true theory of physics" will never be found because it only exists in Goedel's mind, matter will never be spiritualized.

Re:This is no news.

[aleckais]

Much of what happened in Goedel's mind mirrored reality (spatio-temporal, conceptual and not only his own's thoughts): he was a conceptual and mathematical realist.

Re:This is no news.

[geekoid]

Philosophers should be discarded when talking about actual science.

Oh dear...

[osu-neko]

Wasn't something like this the cause of the fall of Ringworld civilization?

Re:Oh dear...

[sparkchaser]

Nah, it was an engineered bioweapon that ate superconductors.

Re:Oh dear...

[mdenham]

If memory serves, it wasn't intended as a bioweapon so much as a "hey, with this we can turn them into customers" device.

Which I suppose proves that the Pierson's Puppeteers and AT&T have a lot in common.

Re:Oh dear...

[MightyMartian]

Nah, the cause of Ringworld's fall was Larry Niven's senility.

Goedel was also a physicist.

[aleckais]

Cf. his work on `rotating universes'.

Re:Goedel was also a physicist.

[Linzer]

The homeless guy at the corner of my street also has a theory about rotating universes.

All right, sorry about that. This is really at the intersection of maths and physics, though, but I get your point.

Re:Goedel was also a physicist.

[geekoid]

Is that his great physics work or biology work? oh, neither. It's a mathematics model... one that doesn't even account for hubble expansion, btw.

So, his experience and works are not relevant here.

He did not create anything.

[aleckais]

He just put together the right conditions and then left the Laws of Nature - which we cannot change, nor are material - do the rest. Again, this is no news: cf. Isaac Newton's `metallic vegetations'.

Re:He did not create anything.

[gilleain]

He just put together the right conditions and then left the Laws of Nature - which we cannot change, nor are material - do the rest. Again, this is no news: cf. Isaac Newton's `metallic vegetations'.

You really do like Newton's metallic vegetations, don't you? Oh, go on then, I'll google it...

Re:He did not create anything.

[gilleain]

He just put together the right conditions and then left the Laws of Nature - which we cannot change, nor are material - do the rest. Again, this is no news: cf. Isaac Newton's `metallic vegetations'.

You really do like Newton's metallic vegetations, don't you? Oh, go on then, I'll google it...

Hmm. Ok, I would recommend for you the trilogy of books by Phillip Ball called "Nature's Patterns : A Tapestry in Three Parts" (assuming you haven't already read it)

http://www.philipball.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=20:natures-patterns-a-tapestry-in-three-parts&catid=3:books&Itemid=4

It deals very well with the ideas of pattern formation in nature, and why phenomena like Newton's metallic vegetation appear so much like 'Natural' forms.

Re:He did not create anything.

[aleckais]

Thanks for the suggestion (didn't read that). In any case, bearing in mind that Newton seems not to believe in demons, what one finds here: http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/mss/norm/ALCH00081 can perhaps be acceptable even to such an un-spiritual generation as ours.

Re:He did not create anything.

[silentcoder]

>He just put together the right conditions and then left the Laws of Nature - which we cannot change, nor are material - do the rest.

There is a name for what you just described. It's "experimentation".

That is pretty much exactly what every science experiment did, ever.

Re:He did not create anything.

[rubycodez]

by that logic, Intel doesn't create microprocessors, Toyota doesn't create cars, and you don't post on Slashdot.

Re:He did not create anything.

[geekoid]

You do know that metallic 'vegetation' is consider complete crap by modern science, right? It's alchemy.

The 'evidence' of those conclusion where steeped in ignorance.

He also wrote about turning base metal into gold.

Do you even understand his alchemy work at all?

Also, it has nothing to do with this topic, at all.

Carbon is far more flexible

[Viol8]

Perhaps *in theory* you could create some system using metals, but in practice in the real world if there was any carbon around in the system than whatever kicks off "life" would be more likely to end up using that simply because of the flexibility it allows and metal based organisms would soon be outcompeted and go extinct. Also its curious to note that his system still requires water.

Wasn't silicon the carbon alternative a few decades back? Whatever happened to the ideas of alternative life based on that (no, not electronics)?

Re:Carbon is far more flexible

[holmstar]

Silicon is more common than carbon in the earths crust, though there is a lot of both: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crust_(geology)#Composition_of_the_continental_crust

Re:Carbon is far more flexible

[holmstar]

I hadn't looked that closely at the Wikipedia graph... there is actually something like 630 times more silicon in the crust than carbon.

Re:Carbon is far more flexible

[holmstar]

Also contains info about why silicon-based life isn't seen that much.

How about not at all?

Re:Carbon is far more flexible

[the biologist]

There's a very few organisms which require silicon for their health and function... I suspect this is what was being referred to.

Transformers

[jprupp]

Are they going to be able to shapeshift into cars, trucks, and cool jets?

Re:Transformers

[Dark Lord of Ohio]

yup.

Re:Just keep it away

[s0litaire]

So now there's 2 things "Made in Scotland from Girders..." ^_~

Re:Just keep it away

[utsuprainfra]

Just keep it away from my Irn Bru

that's funny, but i can't mark it up.

We can't even synthesize carbon-based cells yet

[Hentes]

What he did was inventing a metal-based soap. Wich is impressive, but very far from life.

Re:We can't even synthesize carbon-based cells yet

[DinDaddy]

I thought cleanliness was right next to godliness?

Re:We can't even synthesize carbon-based cells yet

[tmosley]

You are behind the times: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10132762

Re:We can't even synthesize carbon-based cells yet

[rubycodez]

getting there, we can synthesize an entire genome, and replace a natural cell's genome with the artificial one, and the cell lives.

Re:We can't even synthesize carbon-based cells yet

[geekoid]

"We can't even synthesize carbon-based cells yet"

So? you don't have to do that first. In fact, it's irrelevant.

Complexity canard.

[TapeCutter]

Two points.
1. The first living cells were nowhere near as complex as modern cells.
2. ATP is an evolutionary adaptation it was not a feature of the first cells.

And a suggestion; You can believe any one of the thousands of different creation myths and nobody will give a rat's arse, but please stop trying to use science to support your anti-science, it makes you look foolish and it annoys the hell out of people who have even the foggiest idea what they are talking about..

Re:Complexity canard.

[maxwell demon]

Both videos are not available in Germany.

Re:Complexity canard.

[gilleain]

1. They were less complex, but much more so than these inorganic ones. It's not clear if the inner complexity of even the simplest cell will 'just happen' if you throw enough polyoxometallates (POMs? POXes?) into the mix. The transfer of information between cells is interesting (perhaps I should have read the article), but there may be other components necessary to drive the complexity up.

2. That video describes a plausible evolutionary pathway to the flagellum from ATP synthase. Possibly there is a similar pathway from a simple pore-forming protein up to ATP synthase, but that's not addressed there :). The point that functional complex systems evolve from other less-complex systems with (possibly) different functions is important though, of course.

Transformers

[Dark Lord of Ohio]

Transformers, more than meets the eye... taddaddadaddaaaaa!

Re:Hello, Dr Frankenoppenheimer.

[Thiez]

> What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing, really. All replicating things need energy and building materials. Biological lifeforms don't contain significant amounts of tungsten, so these cells have exactly nothing to gain by targeting us. In fact most of our environment does not contain significant amounts of tungsten, so outside the lab, these cells will have no chance of spreading. Even if they make it to a giant tungsten supply, they still need phosphorus and oxygen, and the former is probably not kept in close contact with heaps of tungsten.

And even when our metal overlords have access to all these materials, they will still need energy to actually assemble them.

These cells (assuming they even succeed in getting them to live) will be very harmless indeed.

Cannot be patented though

[gtirloni]

There is prior art: Transformers.

Re:Cannot be patented though

[Marc Madness]

Also, I suspect Apple might have something to say about iCHELLs.

Re:Asimov

[Noughmad]

Asimov himself proved that the three laws are pointless.

Then rename them to laws 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3

More than meets the eye.

[LordSkout]

Of COURSE he can get them to self-assemble! But this isn't anything new, is it? ;)

Turns out we were guarding the wrong gate

[paiute]

The threat is not Skynet. The threat is Beakernet.

The Grey Goo Apocalypse

[d3ac0n]

This is how it begins...

Re:The Grey Goo Apocalypse

[gtvr]

This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.

Re:The Grey Goo Apocalypse

[black soap]

And no chance of it evolving to make use of available materials, what with it being intended to evolve and all....

Re:The Grey Goo Apocalypse

[Coren22]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Stargate)

This concerns me greatly...

Re:The Grey Goo Apocalypse

[mcswell]

They're going to live off all those old incandescent light bulbs.

Re:The Grey Goo Apocalypse

[Kvasio]

I've still got my Palm T3, but yes, they are not common enough to become a threat.

Re:Asimov

[justsayin]

However, they do make for interesting plot lines in the books and movies.

Re:Hello, Dr Frankenoppenheimer.

[gtvr]

They will get their energy from people.

There are fields...endless fields, where human beings are no longer born. We are grown. For longest time, I wouldn't belive it...and then I saw the fields with my own eyes.

Futurama

[trum4n]

This guy too the evolution episode a little serious. Dr. Banjo would NOT approve.

One mistake: No evolution in cloning

[Kamiza Ikioi]

I was about to say the same thing in response to GP. The "self" in self replication does apply, imo, to life, but not to evolution. The meme and the virus are two forms with arguably no "self" replication, just replication.

However, you did make one general error:

...imagine you have an imperfect cloning machine and a world of only men (the clones pop out full-grown). This single-sex could use it to replicate indefinitely and evolve.

Actually, there is no substantial evolution in cloning. The reason is this. Evolution mainly affects embriology, a step your hypothetical cloning process is bypassing. Also, you are missing the massive gene randomization during creation of the sperm and egg (1/2 of parents genes chosen at random) as well as the shuffling during conception when each 1/2 comes together. Without this step, a clone only mutates by random mutations after this point. Normally, this doesn't get passed on. And in cloning, it doesn't get passed on either.

With the trillions of cells that "could" mutate (and very few actually do that isn't repaired), you'd have to pick cells that mutated for cloning. What you are talking about is a probability of a mutation (low) and a probability that such a mutation was one of the cells picked to clone (very very low). You would have to introduce artificial low rates of forced mutation to have any chance of evolution with clones. Otherwise, they could go tens of thousands of generations with no change at all, especially if you don't choose new cells each generation, and just work from a batch of original stem cells, which is much more likely. Otherwise, you risk other complications.

It would simply be impossible for any real evolution to take place. Dawkins covers this in "The Greatest Show on Earth" on why evolution is about changing a recipe, and not a clone or "blueprint".

Correction...

[Kamiza Ikioi]

You did say "imperfect cloning machine". so actually, you probably already realized that artificial mutation would need to be introduced post-cell gathering.

Fine but

[sl4shd0rk]

Do they know what Tastey Wheat tastes like?

Nanobots take over the world

[Toolman21]

Reading this story I can't help but be reminded of this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0dYPnui3rM

Re:Just keep it away

[Remus Shepherd]

If this stuff ate all the Irn Bru in the world, it would be doing us a favor.

Re:Asimov

[MightyMartian]

Unless, of course, that movie is I, Robot. I can dig Will Smith in most action nonsense films, and sometimes he even shows some chops (Ali comes to mind), but I, Robot was a horrible movie. They would have been better off sticking to the book.

Complexity overestimated

[neoshroom]

You are looking at evolution wrongly. Yes, cells are very very complex and full of complex machinery. Things that are very complex however can begin with things that are very simple.

Once you have anything, even a very simple thing, that copies itself (with errors) all kinds of diversity will arise and natural selection will act on that diversity.

Plus, believing in Supreme Being(s) doesn't satisfactorily answer the question either; it just moves the question into Xenobiology.

Re:Just keep it away

[Chrisq]

You realise that the vast majority of Slashdotters won't have any idea what we are going on about!

Re:spontaneously with a reasonable probability

[taiwanjohn]

The only thing that worries me is if the "Intelligent Design" folks latch onto this. It seems like this guy is going to continue tweaking the experiment in hope of generating some self-replicating strain of his bubbles. (Heck, I would too.) But the ID crowd might see this as "proof" that life could only begin with "guidance" from above.

I've been living a metal-based life since the 80's

[elrous0]

Since I first heard Metallica's Kill 'Em All.

Re:spontaneously with a reasonable probability

[Chris Burke]

The only thing that worries me is if the "Intelligent Design" folks latch onto this. It seems like this guy is going to continue tweaking the experiment in hope of generating some self-replicating strain of his bubbles. (Heck, I would too.) But the ID crowd might see this as "proof" that life could only begin with "guidance" from above.

So what? They do that to anything whether it makes any sense or not. Digital cameras are as much "proof" that eyes can only be created by a "designer".

So what's the worry? That IDers will say "Ah ha!" and continue to think and say silly things? Oh noes! Science will as always press on without them.

Re:I can make bubbles! I've created life! Idiots..

[tmosley]

Uh-huh. How about self-replicating "bubbles"? The membrane is just a tiny part of the puzzle. The rest has already been solved: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10132762

Or are you ignorant as to what the definition of "life" is?

Re:spontaneously with a reasonable probability

[complete loony]

No they wont, they don't have to. They'll focus on how different these metal membranes are from actual life.

Re:Metal Lives

[rubycodez]

this is why we're phasing out incandescent lightbulbs, let's see those bastard get any nutrition going nom nom nom on a CFL!

How big are these bubbles?

[Paracelcus]

And what is their "resting/neutral" electrical state?
Do they tend to form a molecular lattice?

Life maybe, Nano tech oh yeah

[freedomseven]

I don't know if this qualifies as life but it is could possibly have interesting applications for nano tech. If the structures can be made to self assemble then they can perhaps be made to assemble other things. or create something as a by product of its process.

Maybe they are hyping the story a bit but it is very interesting research.

I love grey goo!

[asdbffg]

In his spare time he works on ice-nine and various other potentially apocalyptic substances.

Predators?

[glassKarma]

I hope we develop some predators for these guys, or once one gets out they'll take over the world...

Re:Asimov

[evil_aaronm]

I liked "I Am Legend," and "7 Pounds."

Pot, Kettle, black...

[tehdaemon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laying_worker_bee

(yes, that study was a poor example...)

T

Re:Hello, Dr Frankenoppenheimer.

[Kvasio]

"you, human, give me some tungsten or I will hurt your family and yourself"