Double, Double, Life’s Little Bubbles

Discover ^ | February 02, 2005 | Sarah Webb

[Junior]

Ping.

[Junior]

Ping.

[general_re]

“What we showed was that you can get a Darwinian competition to emerge just from the basic physical properties of the system,” says Irene Chen, a graduate student in Szostak’s lab. “It doesn’t require biological machinery.”

Kind of blows away those ridiculous probability caclulations that assume you need to assemble a completely modern cell in one single shot for things to get moving. Not that this will keep us from having to endure them, though.

[general_re]

calculations.

[PatrickHenry]

EvolutionPing

A pro-evolution science list with over 230 names. See list's description at my homepage. FReepmail to be added/dropped.

[PatrickHenry]

Background info: Self- organization. It has a bonus link to "emergent properties."

[Junior]

I can almost guarrantee we won't see a lot of creationists posting on this thread.

[King Prout]

thanks for the ping.
forgive me if I don't hang around for the IDers to chime in.

[PatrickHenry]

I can almost guarrantee we won't see a lot of creationists posting on this thread.

[atlaw]

This thread is woefully lacking in creationist canards.

"It's being done in a lab, so it just proves intelligent design!"

There, that's better.

[contemplator]

Wow! Great work. Kudos to Jack Szostak and his colleagues.

[doc30]

You are probably right. Most don't even have the chemistry basics to understand this, let alone see how this very basic chemistry has strong biogenisis characteristics. If they do show up, they will likely spout some chemical nonsense that would get them fired if they were employed in a position using the chemical sciences, or at least re-assigned to the back office filing paperwork.

[doc30]

yup, that's ID - see scientist in the lab did it, therefore it was designed. They wouldn't even recognize that it's the chemicals by themselved doing their own organizing. No human hand made or designed them. Humans just put them in a flask and let them do what they do naturally.

[js1138]

I can almost guarantee we won't see a lot of creationists posting on this thread.

Bet you a nickel this will be spam city by this evening.

[general_re]

What, do we have a quota system now or something? ;)

[crail]

Maybe until then, one of us should play the creationist part. Any takers? No one has brought up the 2nd law of thermodynamics yet... doesn't chemistry violate the 2nd law?

[general_re]

How about "Genesis doesn't mention lipid chemistry, therefore this is totally invalid"?

[bvw]

"Darwinian Competition"

When the bubbles evolve into little sponge-bobs, wake me up.

I notice Miss Chen did not say "darwinian selection", not that that means too much. It's a interesting experiment. And I wonder if the card shark in the park of eternity is teasing the evos with a few good-looking cards "Look how easy it is to win!" --- the response on thread does so indicate.

[js1138]

Don't talk to me until you've self-organized a protein from scratch.