Posted on 12/04/2002 12:23:13 PM PST by forsnax5
A totally new and highly controversial theory on the origin of life on earth, is set to cause a storm in the science world and has implications for the existence of life on other planets.
Research* by Professor William Martin of the University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael Russell of the Scottish Environmental Research Centre in Glasgow, claims that living systems originated from inorganic incubators - small compartments in iron sulphide rocks. The new theory radically departs from existing perceptions of how life developed and it will be published in Philosophical Transactions B, a learned journal produced by the Royal Society.
Since the 1930s the accepted theories for the origins of cells and therefore the origin of life, claim that chemical reactions in the earth's most ancient atmosphere produced the building blocks of life - in essence - life first, cells second and the atmosphere playing a role.
Professor Martin and Dr Russell have long had problems with the existing hypotheses of cell evolution and their theory turns traditional views upside down. They claim that cells came first. The first cells were not living cells but inorganic ones made of iron sulphide and were formed not at the earth's surface but in total darkness at the bottom of the oceans. Life, they say, is a chemical consequence of convection currents through the earth's crust and in principle, this could happen on any wet, rocky planet.
Dr Russell says: "As hydrothermal fluid - rich in compounds such as hydrogen, cyanide, sulphides and carbon monoxide - emerged from the earth's crust at the ocean floor, it reacted inside the tiny metal sulphide cavities. They provided the right microenvironment for chemical reactions to take place. That kept the building blocks of life concentrated at the site where they were formed rather than diffusing away into the ocean. The iron sulphide cells, we argue, is where life began."
One of the implications of Martin and Russell's theory is that life on our planet, even on other planets or some large moons in our own solar system, might be much more likely than previously assumed.
The research by Professor Martin and Dr Russell is backed up by another paper The redox protein construction kit: pre-last universal common+ ancestor evolution of energy-conserving enzymes by F. Baymann, E. Lebrun, M. Brugna, B. Schoepp-Cothenet, M.-T. Giudici-Orticoni & W. Nitschke which will be published in the same edition.
*On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells by Professor William Martin, Institut fuer Botanik III, University of Dusseldorf and Dr Michael Russell, Scottish Environmental Research Centre, Glasgow.
I thought it was just a misreading. By the way, did you hear a snort in the background?
And others elevate the result into an obsession.
It means I made my point.
Cntxt is yr frnd.
Life escaped the rocks when it evolved a cell wall, say Martin and Russell. Controversially, they argue that the two main kingdoms of primitive life, the bacteria and the archaebacteria, have such different cell walls that they must have arisen twice.Others disagree. "It's quite impossible that it could be right," says evolutionary biologist Thomas Cavalier-Smith of the University of Oxford, UK. Bacteria and archaebacteria have got hundreds of genes in common, he says. They share other features, such as the way that they insert proteins into their membranes.
Sounds to me like he disagrees with the idea that bacteria and archaebacteria arose independently, rather than saying that the whole thing is "impossible". No?
I'm not a biochemist, but that sounds pretty good to me. However, I'm not sure what you mean by "present in common," although I took it to mean "sufficiently present." Also, you say "amino acids build structures," and I take that to mean that they combine, according to the laws of chemistry, and thus more complex structures result. Eventually you can end up with a self-replicator, which creates copies of itself using materials present in the environment. I suppose I'm just editing your statement. In general, if I've understood you correctly, you've stated the concept fairly well. At least to my satisfaction.
If the design process cannot be distinguished from the natural process, then I don't know what to think of it.
I don't know about how complexity must necessitate an intervention beyond original design, because the way DNA duplicates, many erroneous pairs are generated as the process repeats over a long time period. Perhaps, the replication process has randomly devised useful pairings that were not vital in the original strand. Even this random generation doesn't preclude design in the original creation, though. If one assumes the Creator would have long vision (time as a panorama, rather than a closed door opened one door, one moment of present at a time), to see how the original design would work itself out might have have directed selection at the beginning, as if choosing an originating pathway being able to 'see' what would eventually occur.
Six hundred thousand pages? Single spaced at 6LPI (take an inch off for the perf), 56 lines per page, that's thirty-three million, six hundred thousand lines. Do you have a source for this?
Therefore, the odds of a design of this magnitude to just happen by accident are totally out of the realm of chance. It cannot happen.
The odds against your own existence are in similar territory. So what?
Besides, where are all the unfit specimens that should have evolved and survived because they had unique circumstances?
Say that again?
Why do we have two eyes?
Because binocular vision has more survival value than one eye in a large animal.
Why do we have two ears?
"All the better to hear you with," said the big bad wolf. And to pinpoint the source of a sound, to avoid predators.
Why do we have a sense of smell?
So we don't eat things that smell bad.
Why do we have a sense of touch?
So we can move away from things that will damage us (fire, thorns, teeth, etc.).
Why do we have hands?
To grab food, climb, hold weapons, throw dice, count to ten, etc.
Why do we have feet?
To walk, run, dance, and wear stylish shoes.
Why do we have organs that work interdependently with each other?
Because they developed as a system, like the interdependent programs you write.
Why are these organs placed logically within the body?
They're not. Form follows function, not logic.
Why do we have hair primarily on our heads?
Insulation -- you lose a very large volume of heat through the top of your head.
Why did sex evolve?
To give your wife a means of getting you to do her "honey-do" list instead of watching television on saturday.
How did life pro-create before sex evolved?
Painfully. Ever watch an amoeba split in two? Sex is more fun.
Why do our joints have cartilage cushions?
So they stay joints. Take the cartilage out and they fuse.
Why are bird's bones hollow and light weight compared to non-flying life forms?
You really don't know?
Why do we have emotions?
To cry at weddings.
How did an accident create our brains so complex and so small that we have been unable to duplicate its' power?
Give us time, we're working on it. The Intel Pentium 1000 will blow you away.
I could ask billions of questions because there are billions of variations in life form designs.
That's what that amazing brain is for.
However, I'm really just wasting time, because people believe what they want to believe regardless of evidence to the contrary and the statistical odds against their belief.
I believe Simon and Garfunkel said it best: "...all lies and jest, because a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
Two final thoughts...
What a long, strange journey it's been.
I'm certain Darwin has met his creator and has it all sorted out now and realizes how stupid his ideas were.
I'm certain that Darwin is dead. The rest is speculation.
And, just because a person does NOT believe God exists does not make Him non-existent.
I absolutely agree.
So my wife consists of 33.6 million lines of code. Although MS keeps its cards close to its vest on such things, the best estimates I've seen put the source code for Windows XP at around 40 million lines. Clearly we can infer that nature is a much more efficient programmer than Microsoft, since my wife is much more entertaining and interesting than Windows XP ;)
Yes, but we are speaking of one hypothesis. I believe it comes as a package, Fool's gold and bugs.
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