Check out the video in post #5. I might live to see a theory.
Indeed.
What I’m eager to see is a numerical breakdown once an abiogenesis pathway is found. More precisely, I want to see a function of the form:
P(X) = f(V,t,C0,W)
where
X := an event variable marking the rise of a self-replicating organic system
V := a volume of primordial fluid
t := a time duration
C0 := a set describing the initial (abiotic) composition of the primordial fluid
W := a function describing the influx of energy into the volume (for example, describing energy input by sunlight over a day/night cycle, or describing the intermittent massive energy in a lightning discharge, etc.)
Such a function, if derived from mathematical models and supported by experimental demonstration, would allow us to assert that abiogenesis is not only non-miraculous but is in fact inevitable. In other words, given a “laboratory” where V is the total volume of the early Earth’s oceans and t is the hundreds of millions of years between the formation of the oceans and the fossil record’s indications of the rise of organic life, such a function would show just how ridiculous it is to imagine that an organic self-replicator *wouldn’t* form.
And naturally, once formed, a self-replicator will tend to stick around, because, well, by definition that’s what a self-replicator does. Without competition for limited resources, the self-replicator would quickly propagate throughout the entire ocean until it ran out of primordial fluid to consume - at which point each self-replicating entity would have to consume other instances of the self-replicator, thus favoring variations that are more adept than others at doing so... And so the story goes. :)