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NASA Proposes "Water World" Theory For Origin of Life
William Robinson (875390) writes "A new study from researchers at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has proposed the "water world" theory as the answer to our evolution, which describes how electrical energy naturally produced at the sea floor might have given rise to life. While the scientists had already proposed this hypothesis called 'submarine alkaline hydrothermal emergence of life' the new report assembles decades of field, laboratory and theoretical research into a grand, unified picture."
This is the theory of abiogenesis, not evolution. Evolution is how life changes, not how it got started.
And then what mind-boggling intelligence begat the mind-boggling intelligence that begat us? Turtles all the way down, mate.
inanimate matter
What does ‘inanimate’ mean? The problem is that people are always making this bizarre differentiation between ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’, when really there is just matter interacting with matter; some sets of interactions are more complex and organized (or, shall we say, repetitive and sustained) than other sets of interactions. Indeed, sometimes that complexity and organization is so great that we call it ‘life’ and even ‘intelligent life’, but it’s all one and the same:
Matter interacting with matter.
When you eat some metal such as calcium, that calcium may become incorporated in your bones. Is that calcium all of a sudden ‘animated’ and ‘living’? Is the water that you drink somehow ‘animated’ because it flows through your brain cells?
A child is a continuation of that complex interaction between matter that we call the parent.
Carl Sagan, in Cosmos:
If the general picture, however, of a Big Bang followed by an expanding universe is correct, what happened before that? Was the universe devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly, somehow created? How did that happen?
In many cultures, the customary answer is that a "god" or "gods" created the universe out of nothing. But, if we wish to pursue this question courageously, we must of course ask the next question: Where did God come from?
If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, then why not save a step, and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe always existed? There's no need for a creation—it was always here.
These are not easy questions; cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries, with the questions that were once treated only in religion and myth.
mind-boggling complexity of life that could never be duplicated but by a mind-boggling intelligence
Complexity can arise spontaneously out of simple interactions. We see this over and over and over again. Pretending it requires intelligence just reveals our collective cognitive bias towards personifying the world and ascribing agency to inanimate objects and processes.
This is our tax dollars being spent on a national religion.
No, it's merely a line of scientific questioning that threatens your worldview. A lot of things can threaten a worldview (science, humanities, foreign travel, self-reflection, getting older, etc.), but we should only call them a "religion" if they substantially function like a religion (e.g., providing things like community, life ceremonies, spirituality, moral codes, holy texts, etc.).
Duplicating all pagan religions. They start with water because Genesis starts with the Holy Spirit hovering over the water.
Civilization begins with agriculture, and agriculture begins with water. It was true in lower Mesopotamia (the world's first civilization) and on the banks of the Nile (Egypt, the second civilization). It seems appropriate, then, that many creation myths--including those much older than the Genesis 1:1 account--feature water as prominent (and often chaotic) element.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
"Random processes"? Any randomly assembled amino acid randomly disassembles as well; even Miller proved that.
The randomly assembled amino acid does randomly disassemble as well, but that is not what it must do. An amino acid may stay the same, disassemble, or it it may form a more complex molecule.
Here is a little demonstration of "randomly" assembling complexity in behavior. I have given each entity the ability to sense the left and rightness and ahead and behindness of 'energy' dots and their nearest peer. They also get a sense of their relative energy vs their peer. The inputs can affect two thrusters which operate like "tank treads". However, their minds are blank. They don't know what to do with the inputs or how they map to the outputs. The genetic program introduces random errors as copies runs of a genome from one parent then the other switching back and forth randomly. The selection pressure simply favors those with the most energy at the end of each generation by granting a higher chance to breed. Use the up/dn keys to change the sim speed, and click the entities to see a visualization of their simple neural network. The top left two neurons sense nearest food distance, the right two sense nearest entity, middle top is the relative energy difference of nearest peer. Note that randomness is constantly introduced, and yet their behaviors do not revert to randomness or inaction, they converge on a better solution for finding energy in their environment.
There is no pre-programed strategy for survival. Mutations occur randomly, and they are selected against, just as in nature. Given the same starting point In different runs / populations different behaviors for survival will emerge. Some may start spinning and steering incrementally towards the food, others may steer more efficiently after first just moving in a straighter path to cover the most ground (they have no visual or movement penalty for backwards, so backwards movement is 50% likely). As their n.net complexity grows their behaviors will change. Movement will tend towards more efficient methods. Some populations may become more careful instead of faster, some employ a hybrid approach by racing forwards then reversing and steering carefully after the energy/food is passed. Some entities will emerge avoidance of each other to conserve energy. Some populations will bump into each other to share energy among like minded (genetically similar) peers. Some will even switch between these strategies depending on their own energy level.
Where do all these complex behaviors come from? I didn't program them, I didn't even program in that more complex behaviors should be more favorable than less complex, and yet they emerged naturally as a product of the environment due to selection pressure upon it. Just because I can set the axon weights manually and program a behavior favorable for n.nets to solve the problem, doesn't mean randomness can't yield solutions as well. Today we can watch evolution happen right on a computer, or in the laboratory. All of this complexity came from a simple simulation of 32 neurons arranged in a simple single hidden layer neural net, with 5 simple scalar sensors and the minimal 2 movement outputs, with a simple single selection pressure. Each time you run the sim it produces different results, but all meeting the same ends, collect energy, reproduce. Just imagine what nature can do with its far more complex simulation and selection pressures... You don't have to imagine, you can look around and see for yourself.
In other more complex simulations I allow the structure of the n.nets and form of sensors to be randomly introduced and selection pressure applied. In larger simulations I allow the breeding and death of generations to occur continuously across wider areas and speciation will occur. Entities will develop specialized adaptations for a given problem space of the environment. I have created simulatio
"Well we don't understand this and probably never will, so we should ignore it."
Accepting that you don't understand something isn't the same as ignoring it. In fact making up myths about what might have happened is ignoring the reality that we don't know.
If it WAS created, then what? You are going to look pretty fucking stupid standing before the creator when you die, as smart as you think you are now.
This presupposes a long list of arbitrary ideas about the nature of a being that might have conciously created the universe:
There's absolutely no reason to believe any of these arbitrary assumptions to be the case, even if for some reason, apropos of no evidence whatsoever, you do decide to presume the universe is the consequence of a concious act.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons