Hmm. Than I presume you think the best temperature environment for evolution to take place in is absolute zero. Every sustained mean temperature regime the earth passes through is going to face life, or life-like entities, with distinctly different opportunities for structuring toward optimum survival.
It's not so mind boggling as you seem to want to make it--if the "life" I am proposing is pre-cellular, than why should it give a rat's ass if cells dissolve "too easily"? Maybe that's a feature, not a problem, for pre-cellular co-operating communities of RNA. The fact that mRNA, with it's curious short lifetimes became the lynchpin of DNA reproduction might have to do with utilizing evanescent cells as temporary factory floors for building temporary RNA machinery.
No, I don't think there is any best temperature for that to happen. But I'll let someone else say the same thing.
From Primordial Soup to the Prebiotic Beach
| What about submarine vents as a source of prebiotic compounds? I have a very simple response to that . Submarine vents don't make organic compounds, they decompose them. Indeed, these vents are one of the limiting factors on what organic compounds you are going to have in the primitive oceans. At the present time, the entire ocean goes through those vents in 10 million years. So all of the organic compounds get zapped every ten million years. That places a constraint on how much organic material you can get. Furthermore, it gives you a time scale for the origin of life. If all the polymers and other goodies that you make get destroyed, it means life has to start early and rapidly. If you look at the process in detail, it seems that long periods of time are detrimental, rather than helpful.
A number of people tried prebiotic experiments. But they used CO2F, nitrogen and water. When you use those chemicals, nothing happens. It's only when you use a reducing atmosphere that things start to happen.
Temperature seems to be a talking point regarding prebiotic hypotheses. We know we can't have a very high temperature, because the organic materials would simply decompose. For example, ribose degrades in 73 minutes at high temperatures, so it doesn't seem likely. Then people talk about temperature gradients in the submarine vent. I don't know what these gradients are supposed to do. My thinking is that a temperature between 0 and 10 degrees C would be feasible. The minute you get above 25 degrees C there are problems of stability. |