Undersea vents are about as likely to program DNA code into functioning life forms as they are to being able to program your PC to calculate a Lunar Landing trajectory.
Posted on 07/24/2003 12:01:57 PM PDT by bedolido
July 24 — In a new study, researchers speculate that a towering undersea hot-water chimney laden with microbes is just the sort of place that might have spawned life on Earth or even other planets.
THE HYDROTHERMAL VENT SYSTEM discovered two years ago has now been found to have endured for 30,000 years. Researchers said similar setups — on Earth and possibly on other worlds — might last millions of years and could have been incubators for the first life. The Lost City, as it has been named, is a craggy column of minerals and microbes sitting 2,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. It is 180 feet (55 meters) tall, higher than any other known underwater vent system and more than twice as tall as most.
UNIQUE SYSTEM Underneath the structure, seawater seeps down into the fractured crust of Earth. There, the decay of one mineral forms another, called serpentine, and releases heat in the process. This process of serpentinization lifts warm water laden with minerals back into the ocean, building the structure.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
I'm sure that the cave microbes are being picked apart. I suppose the same will happen to the vent microbes. It will remain a monumental task.
Undersea vents are about as likely to program DNA code into functioning life forms as they are to being able to program your PC to calculate a Lunar Landing trajectory.
Or maybe the Hindus figured it out.
Or maybe the ancient Sikhs figured it out.
Or maybe the ancient Janns figured it out.
Or maybe the ancient Buddhists figured it out.
Or maybe...none of them did.
This means that microbes are probably inside every rocky planet in the universe, whether they have stars associated with them or not. Odds are about 1.00000.
Sure it does. Carefully examine the sand grains on a beach. You are likely to find that the average size of the grains on the surface of the beach grows smaller as you move up the beach from the shoreline. The reason is obvious on reflection: the waves lose energy as they lap up the beach so that larger particles of sand fall out of suspension first.
Despite the extreme simplicity of this example, there is information here, i.e. a coding in the sand grain size differential indicating (roughly) how far up the beach one is, and which direction is toward the shore and which away from the shore.
Do you honestly believe the incredbily complex amount of specified complex information need to create a human being, from blood clotting to abstract thinking could be put in the same category as unspecified complex information in a grain of sand.
Complexity in a grain of sand is a function of chemistry; specified complexity in human DNA is a function of design. p> More on this later.
Or maybe the creation of Man on Earth was for the purpose of supplying a pantry to the Immortal Cthulhu...
I may choose . . . item #2, pragmatically evolved, if the price is right and there are no more than 100 new terms of uncertain definition to learn. #1, inspired, and #3, revealed, are more popular and in demand, and like California housing are priced out of the market for my modest means. Otherwise, #4, social tradition, will continue to jockey for position with #5, mindless ritual, during my periodic propitiatory moments.
Sure, what's the problem aside from choosing a usable abstraction?
Yes indeed. The Discovery Channel had a special on the existence of other planets. None have been observed but they already have the size and color and location of these imaginary orbs. [Kind of like building a whole civilization out of a pig's tooth?]
Finally they speculated (they actually said they WOULD find them) that there are probably forms of life on these hostile "gas giant" planets. That raises three questions:
There was anticipated possible life on Mars before the probes. If life isn't on Mars, what makes these geniuses think there will be life on some burning methane ball?
What makes these sciencefictionists certain that microbes in hostile environments didn't adapt from life that evolved (their a priori assumption) under less hostile conditions?
Exactly my thought. The trick to disregarding the origin of the massive amount of information in DNA is to redefine "information." To compare hydrologic sorting to genetic information is to compare a pebble with a city.
Where do the instructions come from? How does the first cell "know" to split into two cells? If the cell somehow splits, how does it "know" to share the information between the two cells? Where do the instructions for ever more complex life forms come from? It can't "do what it doesn't know?" You see, inadvertently, you have stumbled on the most basic problem of evolution - increasing specified complexity requires massive amounts of information-input to happen. The unanswerable question for scientists is "where do the instructions come from?" "Instructions" require "information." "Information" requires "intelligence." Citing crystals of sand as an example to the contrary is not sufficient. There is far too much specified complexity in the universe to attribute it to chance mutations. Thus the name "Darwin's Black Box."
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