Posted on 06/09/2015 8:54:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
How did life on Earth begin? It's been one of modern biology's greatest mysteries: How did the chemical soup that existed on the early Earth lead to the complex molecules needed to create living, breathing organisms? Now, researchers say they've found the missing link.
Between 4.6 billion and 4.0 billion years ago, there was probably no life on Earth. The planet's surface was at first molten and even as it cooled, it was getting pulverized by asteroids and comets. All that existed were simple chemicals. But about 3.8 billion years ago, the bombardment stopped, and life arose. Most scientists think the "last universal common ancestor" — the creature from which everything on the planet descends — appeared about 3.6 billion years ago.
But exactly how that creature arose has long puzzled scientists. For instance, how did the chemistry of simple carbon-based molecules lead to the information storage of ribonucleic acid, or RNA? The RNA molecule must store information to code for proteins. (Proteins in biology do more than build muscle — they also regulate a host of processes in the body.)
The new research — which involves two studies, one led by Charles Carter and one led by Richard Wolfenden, both of the University of North Carolina — suggests a way for RNA to control the production of proteins by working with simple amino acids that does not require the more complex enzymes that exist today.
This link would bridge this gap in knowledge between the primordial chemical soup and the complex molecules needed to build life.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Here’s how the article concludes:
By showing that it’s possible for tRNA to discriminate between molecules, and that the links can work without “help,” Carter thinks he’s found a way for the information storage of chemical structures like tRNA to have arisen — a crucial piece of passing on genetic traits. Combined with the work on amino acids and temperature, it offers insight into how early life might have evolved.
This work still doesn’t answer the ultimate question of how life began, but it does show a mechanism for the appearance of the genetic codes that pass on inherited traits, which got evolution rolling.
Good for NBC news. Now I must go and read the Bible!
That alone would have sterilized any trace of life.
Or maybe not.
Thank you ... that summarizes very well ....... for me.
It’s Fred Gwinn.
Up from the grave he arose;
with a mighty triumph o’er his foes;
But it says they possibly solved it! What other proof do you need?!
"Oh no, no, no..." interrupts God, "Get your own dirt."
. . . because RNA is a simple chemical.
I’m tellin’ ya.
My single word rebuttal of this garbage is this:
Entropy.
It’s all you have to say to these guys and they immediately get defensive.
One big issue with these probes we send to Saturn and Jupiter’s satellites are that entropy holds - things are getting more chaotic, not less. Entropy holds on Mars too - it had an atmosphere, and water, and now it doesn’t.
If entropy ISN’T always increasing, several of their models fall apart pretty violently.
On Earth, however, entropy does not hold. Species adapt.
They hate hearing this. Earth has moved from chaos to order, while all the other evidence they find out there in space suggests entropy always increases.
I hate to get Biblical here, but it is interesting to note that the Christian ‘Creation Myth’ is nothing more than the story of God declaring the law of entropy suspended on Earth. A one sentence synopsis of Gen 1 is this:
In the beginning there was the Word, and from it Order, and it was good.
The suspension of the law of Entropy may be the first evidence of Intelligent Design.
Evolution ping!
A bunch of rocks were sitting around, just basking in the sun like they had done for the past billion years, and suddenly one rock said “you know, I identify as a living thing and not as rock”. It took a while for the other rocks to accept this rock’s concept, but eventually they could no longer deny the rock’s inner feelings. And poof... life evolved.
So, an experiment DESIGNED by humans is supposed to show the RANDOM generation of life.
It proves nothing.
"The only religious opinion that I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is *not* just a bunch of amino acids bumping together." - Robert A. Heinlein (from Stranger In A Strange Land
Very good!
I always get a chuckle when human directed and contrived experiments claim to prove that the building blocks of life arose without intelligent direction. Does that mean the scientists are brain-dead idiots?
No, "they" don't, because what you're saying is nonsense that was demolished decades ago. There is no law of thermodynamics that requires entropy to increase on a local scale. The Second Law only applies to the universe, or to completely isolated thermodynamic systems. The Earth is neither of those things.
Fail.
In the beginning, God....
With the greatest mystery being how liberals came to think the way they do.
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