Study Suggests Life On Earth Sprang From Borax Minerals

Science Daily ^ | 09 January 2004 | Staff

[adam_az]

" It takes very specific minerologies and geologies that are stable for tens of millions of years to create these types of bootstrap factories in nature. Crude oil is also rapidly manufactured in some of these systems."

AND if I recall correctly, there's lots of evidence that hydrothermal vents were far more common in past eras than they are now.

[adam_az]

Oh, absolutely - LIFE comes from a dead object ! Thanks, I needed a laugh to start the day.

Perhaps then it is our understanding of "life" that is incomplete? There are all kinds of interesting substances that are on the cusp of life and non-life. Prions, for example.

[GladesGuru]

And some are rather more alien than others- witness the HillaBeast.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[GladesGuru]

Of course it is the cradle of civilization - that's why the ever so civilized La Raza crowd claims that place.

[GladesGuru]

Any sources on the crude creation hypotheses? Thanks.

[GladesGuru]

Any sources on the crude creation hypotheses? Thanks.

[GreenHornet]

This shoots down my theory that life on Earth sprang from a can of Comet Cleanser.

[Cicero]

Ah, well. No use arguing with Darwinists. I have no religious objections to Darwinism, just scientific and philosophical.

The scientific method requires that a hypothesis be refutable, not circular. "Survival of the fittest" is circular, because essentially "fittest" is defined by its own survival.

On the other hand, at least it can be confirmed or refuted whether particular catalysts can aid in the formation of biological materials, although it's still a big leap of faith to the larger hypothesis.

[PatrickHenry]

This pic is a bit too big to post in-thread:
Postcard entitled, "Mule Team Hauling Borax in Death Valley".

[GladesGuru]

"Well, it looks like there's one less La Raza member in Mojave"

Oh No! Did another California panther eat it? Or did the panther that killed one mountain biker,and attacked another, decide to flee to Mexico and a snack enroute?

This is series! Surely PETA will sue for animal cruelty, and EPA will sue over a "point source of pollution".

[TalBlack]

..."The only thing more far fetched than the belief that life arose spontaneously from some primeval soup is the belief that some omnipotent being revealed himself and his seven days of labor to a bunch of Jews in a desolate hot-as-Hell desert...."


Not really. The idea is that the "Omnipotent being" exists at a mataphysical level and that the earth is a system to support FINITE life. ("Life" also has at least two general levels: The Amoeba and The Human Being.) That there is another level of existence and, for lack of better terms, science or understanding or perception, would make a buildable system not at all a difficulty.

I don't understand the relevance of the temprature of the Desert or its degree of desolation to the question.

..."Too many con-artists who have claimed to have spoken to God have been proven to be frauds or maniacs. The rest are confused, delusional, or self-righteous manipulators."...

I'd like to see what ever data you have w/respect to any of the figures believed by Religion to have been spoken to by God. Joan of Arc interests me, I have missed the "proof" that she was "confused" or just one of many "self-righteous manipulators."...""

[tortoise]

Any sources on the crude creation hypotheses? Thanks.

There isn't much that is layman oriented. You can find quite a number of geology papers on crude oil finds in Nevada on Google. In Nevada, gold and oil are often intertwined, as they are both associated with the hydrothermal systems there. In fact, many abandoned gold mines will slowly backfill with crude seeping out of the shaft walls. Most people aren't even aware that Nevada has oil, though its most productive oil well has produced over 20 million barrels so far. What is special about Nevada crude, is that it is found in extremely young geological formations, too young to even have crude by conventional theory.

The specific association of crude oil formation and stable hydrothermal systems was largely discovered in the 1990s. The short story: With the discovery of the massive Carlin trend gold deposit in Nevada by a couple research geologists, an old extinct hydrothermal structure, some significant changes in theory took place as to where and how gold deposits formed. A causal factor that had been missed was long and strong hydrothermal activity in the local geology, if not currently, at one time in the past. In Nevada, you can't take a leak without hitting a hydrothermal system or volcanic gas vent -- it is a major part of the geology -- but nobody ever takes core samples from active hydrothermal beds because it eats coring rigs alive and is therefore extremely expensive. Many of the active hydrothermal systems in Nevada are very old, plenty long for gold deposits to form. Consequently, in the 1990s many of the gold prospecting companies started coring active hydrothermal beds looking for gold deposits; by their new models there should be dozens of rich new deposits in the active hydrothermal beds that had never been discovered because it had always been either too dangerous or too expensive to look in those places without good reason to do so. Most of the classic ultra-rich gold fields of Nevada are on the peripheries of major active hydrothermal systems.

As these companies started coring the actual hydrothermal beds and hot springs in the old gold fields, they discovered something else. They pulled up crude oil as often as they pulled up gold. That bits of crude were scattered all over Nevada was well-known, but they did not expect to find it in the hydrothermal beds, and certainly not in the fashion in which they were finding it. The major hot spring near my ranch in Nevada is one of the many places where they pulled up gobs of crude when coring for gold.

The current theory is that the unusual catalytic mineralogy of these regions, combined with the very hot and active hydrothermal systems providing energy and transport, is actively manufacturing crude oil and all manner of complex organic carbon compounds. It isn't a commercially viable source for crude, but it gives a fair amount of insight into the speed and nature of crude formation. On the other hand, there are a bunch of new commercial gold deposits pending in Nevada (already one of the world's major gold exporting regions) as a result of studying hydrothermal systems.

[VadeRetro]

Miller's tests were absolute failures. There are so many problems wiith his experiments that there is no way they could even be consider as pointing to a solution to the origin of life.

Is this essay of Ichneumon's among your INTREPs?

[donh]

It's taken about 50 years to find a barely possible way in which Miller's suggestion about how life arose spontaneously from the protoplasmic soup could possibly have worked.

Huh. And it took about 250 years for the Church to accept that the Earth goes around the sun, and stop murdering those who said so.

And after 150 years they're still trying to find a single instance that would confirm Darwin's theory of general evolution.

An instance that would pursuade a dyed-in-the-wool creationist, I assume you mean.

[PatrickHenry]

An instance that would pursuade a dyed-in-the-wool creationist, I assume you mean.

He specifically mentioned "Darwin's theory of general evolution." Presumably, he has no problem with special evolution.

[DannyTN]

"We are not claiming that this is how life started," Benner stressed. "We are saying that we have demonstrated a recipe to make a key part of life without any biochemical machinery."

And if an explosion occurred next to this rock that has a flat edge projecting from it, then it could have caused the rock to turn resulting in a screw being driven into my automobile.

I am not claiming that this is how autombiles started," DannyTN stressed. "I am saying that I have demonstrated a recipe to make a key part of my autombile without any biochemical machinery.

[CobaltBlue]

"Survival of the fittest" isn't circular.

"Survival of the survivors" is circular.

"Survival of the fittest" argues that there is something about the survivors that is different that those which don't survive. That difference is called "fitness" - which doesn't mean that the survivors are physically fit from working out in the gym, but that they "fit" the environment better than those which don't survive.

If the environment is a round hole, and they are square pegs, they are rounder than the ones that don't survive.

[DannyTN]

"Guess that's why I'm so bright and my skin is soft and white."

All that formaldehyde might explain why people lived so long in Biblical ages, before evolutionary processes gave us the advantage of shortened lives.