Posted on 02/18/2002 4:59:53 AM PST by cracker
But when various museum-stored specimens were examined, the biologiclike compounds (including amino acids) found were dismissed as contaminants. This picture changed on September 28, 1969, when a meteorite seen falling to earth near Murchison, Australia, in the state of Victoria, was found to be a carbonaceous chondrite. Numerous pieces of the Murchison were picked up immediately and by high-powered techniques (gas chromatography-mass spectrometry) shown to contain seven amino acids, including five found in Miller's earlier studies. [That's the famous aminos-in-a-glass-from-simple-gas experiment of the 1950s. --- VR] Further work identified eighteen amino acids in the meteorite and showed that these same amino acids, in almost identical relative amounts, are made in Miller-type experiments. This striking correspondence suggests that the early-Earth conditions simulated by Miller's experiments were present on the meteorite's asteroidal parent (a small, planet-like body between Mars and Jupiter) and gave rise to the same suite of biologiclike monomers.Fat-fingered in from My Copy of Schopf's Cradle of Life.
He goes on to describe that lots more inorganic "organics" have been detected in a variety of space environments.
There's another question nobody here is asking: does the "enrichment" from space amount to organic material coming in from dead space outside of our system or is it leftover stuff floating around from past catastrophes which might have destroyed living worlds (such as Mars) and blasted fragments of them throughout our system? There wouldn't seem to be any easy way to know on this one, nonetheless the fact that they go on finding martian meteorites on Earth is astonishing at first blush since only a tiny fraction of those actually here would figure to ever be found.
This mixing is also a plus. Pockets of concentrated biomolecules, exposed to fresh sources of new abiotic molecules...
I'm out of my depth. I see lots of very interesting possibilities but don't know enough about this area.
Once life has been established the scenario changes immensely. The thing about space is that the reactions will occur at low temperature(think low entropy). The dilution problem is still there, but I think the low temperature would greatly offset that problem. Anyway stars produce lots of protons, and photons for reaction paths.
If those prebiotic molecules are concentrated in areas where thermal currents pass new chemicals by at high rates, where temperatures are conducive to reactions, and where mineral surfaces provide substrates for biopolymers, I would think the dilution problem is smaller than you imagine.
You got post number 1234.
Easy enough to test. The chemistry involved is happening at this very moment unlike the Miller-Urey experiment. The prebiotics may be eaten by the living but they should be produced at exactly the same rates and types as the hypothetical abiotic ocean. The minerals available should not be very different now as the vents are fresh crustal material.
Iota gets to share the cabin on the Cruise from Hell with Medved, f.Christian, g3K, and a few others. At the expense of "Answers in Genesis."
Using software testing standards, ALL theories of origin of species seem to not be ready for even preliminary testing. The truth is, none of us know the origin of species. All of us are speculators.
Which of you has the courage to admit "I don't know"?
Hmm. This reference shows no biotic type chemistry occurring.
However, if the earth's atmosphere contained as much CO2 as Venus or Mars, the sea should contain substantially more dissolved CO2. This would change the chemistry, but I doubt would produce much in the form of biologic type organics. Methane is also outgassed, but again the chemistry is not clear at 400 degrees C.
That is what testing is all about. And the assumptions, to me are no more serious than the assumptions which produced the mesonychus/whale problem.
"The prebiotics may be eaten by the living but they should be produced at exactly the same rates and types as the hypothetical abiotic ocean.".
You make a wild assumption about precursor concentrations. Why aren't they eaten? Why are conditions the same now as they were in the prebiotic world?
Using your standard, virtually no software would ever leave the lab.
You of all people, as a "software tester," ought to know that only the most simplistic pieces of software can be fully tested using all possible data values through all possible combinations of execution paths. That being the case, software testing is typically limited to a tiny subset of all possible test cases, and thus the s/w is never "proved" to be correct.
The same is true of ALL scientific theories, including but not limited to Evolution. Just as it is impossible to test every data value and every combination of execution paths in complex software, it is analogously impossible to conduct every possible experiment or observation that could falsify a scientific theory. Thus, scientific theories are accepted based upon their consonance with existing data and their repeated resistance to falsification. They are no more "proven" than software.
What then makes the vents candidates for anything? Volcanoes are a source of energy and much of the same gases.
Hah! I see "Evolved seawater." Your own posts are proof against your own position. You're so easy to beat in a debate it's pathetic.
</G3K_mode>
OK, you had to have been there when he was lawyering on the "duck" in "duckbilled platypus."
[Plato the Platypus says: "I was there."]
Interesting. But I think that claim was already tried with the polywater theory. The explanations were very good, but very wrong.
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