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Thread ID: 72662	2006-09-21 10:05:00	What's the meaning of life?	Renmoo (66)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
486307	2006-11-02 19:08:00	I still go with Earth = alien dumping ground, So where did the aliens come from then? Can't have an endless chain of aliens dumping people around the universe, the first lot had to have originated somehow.	pctek (84)
486308	2006-11-02 20:56:00	So where did the aliens come from then? Can't have an endless chain of aliens dumping people around the universe, the first lot had to have originated somehow. From the planet Zircosta. It with it's inhabitants are said to have been destroyed by a big bang.	Cicero (40)
486309	2006-11-02 21:18:00	From the planet Zircosta. It with it's inhabitants are said to have been destroyed by a big bang. Funny, a lot of this planet's inhabitants started after a bang. :groan:	R2x1 (4628)
486310	2006-11-02 22:35:00	Funny, a lot of this planet's inhabitants started after a bang. :groan: Do you think this should be brought down to the personal?	Cicero (40)
486311	2006-11-02 22:39:00	Life is a bit personal, in most cases.	R2x1 (4628)
486312	2006-11-02 22:56:00	Life is a bit personal, in most cases. While that is true,we don't like to talk about banging starting life,we believe in the immaculate conception.	Cicero (40)
486313	2006-11-02 23:16:00	Wasn't the imac conceived by Job(s)? I will avoid the the ulate for a later time.	R2x1 (4628)
486314	2006-11-02 23:36:00	OH? Really? How is it that, at random, only the specifically required kinds of "life-generating" amino acids would be united in the primordial soup? Physicist J . D . Bernal acknowledges: “It must be admitted that the explanation . . . still remains one of the most difficult parts of the structural aspects of life to explain . ” He concluded: “We may never be able to explain it . You assume that early life came from the same chemicals that are 'used' today . There are not "specific life-generating amino acids" at all . There are amino acids that happen to be used by today's ribosomes (protein factories) to build molecules . How likely is it that the amino acids thought to have formed in the atmosphere would drift down and form an “organic soup” in the oceans? Not likely at all . The same energy that would split the simple compounds in the atmosphere would even more quickly decompose any complex amino acids that formed . Interestingly, in his experiment in a laboratory generated “atmosphere,” and his experiments with electric sparks and select amino acids in 1953, Stanley Miller saved the four amino acids he produced only because he removed them from the area of the spark . Had he left them there, the spark would have decomposed them . However, if it is assumed that amino acids somehow reached the oceans and were protected from the destructive ultraviolet radiation in the atmosphere, what then? In his answer to Miller's thesis, Dr . Hitching explained: “Beneath the surface of the water there would not be enough energy to activate further chemical reactions; water in any case inhibits the growth of more complex molecules . It (water) is the universal solvent . ” Nobody is suggesting that the amino acids joined together to spontaneously create large organic molecules just like today's . All we know is that there existed a type of self-replicating molecule (many alternatives have been proposed) . Amino acids may have been suitable building blocks either for the replicators themselves or as 'tools' . So once amino acids are in the water, they must get out of it if they are to form larger molecules and evolve toward becoming proteins useful for the formation of life . But once they get out of the water, they are in the destructive ultraviolet light again! “In other words,” Hitching says, “the theoretical chances of getting through even this first and relatively easy stage [getting to become amino acids] in the evolution of life are forbidding . ” Again, this train of thought is misguided . Proteins didn't form and evolve towards being useful to life . They may or may not have been the first replicators and they certainly didn't deliberately seek to become anything like the proteins we see today . Although it commonly is asserted that life spontaneously arose in the oceans, bodies of water simply are not conducive to the necessary chemistry . Chemist Richard Dickerson explains: “It is therefore hard to see how polymerization [linking together smaller molecules to form bigger ones] could have proceeded in the aqueous environment of the primitive ocean, since the presence of water favors depolymerization [breaking up big molecules into simpler ones] rather than polymerization . ” Biochemist George Wald agrees with this view, stating: “Spontaneous dissolution is much more probable, and hence proceeds much more rapidly, than spontaneous synthesis . ” This means there would be no accumulation of organic soup! Wald believes this to be “the most stubborn problem that confronts us [evolutionists] . ” There is, however, another stubborn problem that confronts evolutionary theory . Remember, there are over 100 amino acids, but only 20 are needed for life’s proteins . Moreover, they come in two shapes: Some of the molecules are “right-handed” and others are “left-handed . ” Should they be formed at random, as in a theoretical organic soup, it is most likely that half would be right-handed and half left-handed, and there is no known reason why either shape should be preferred in living things . Yet, of the 20 amino acids used in producing life’s proteins, all are left-handed! I'm a biology student, not a chemist so I can't answer this one . However, if there is any tendency for left handed amino acids to join together or for right handed amino acids to join together more than there is for joins to occur between them and if this joining can provide any protection against the dissolution mentioned above then we would expect that a slight majority in the abundance of one type would tend to increase the rate at which that type accumulated until one type remained . Indeed, if proteins were the first replicators then the harsh conditions above provide exactly the selection required to drive the development of more complex 'life' . The numbers alone don't crunch . The numbers are well outside the realm of human comprehension . You forget that when you talk about odds of things occurring we have a whole universe to play with . If we assume that life is so unlikely to spontaneously form that it has only occurred on a single one of the billions of billions of suitable planets available then by definition it is ours since we are standing here . We must always remember that there may be billions or billions of planets where the process failed . All it takes is one success which subsequently evolves to form sufficiently intelligent life forms and you have a bunch of creatures laughing at how unlikely it was that the process happened on their particular planet, wherever that may be . Statistics in hindsight are rather unintuitive . The origins of life unfortunately occurred so far back in the past that there is no way we can actually go back and see for ourselves . There are no solid records because small clusters of molecules don't leave fossils . Life cannot arise again on our planet simply because the existing forms of life are so much better at exploiting all available resources than a simple molecular replicator could ever be . We will probably never know the answer to how life actually originated . We can build various hypotheses to explain the origins of life from the reasonably plausible ones you'll see in journals to crazy ones such as hypothesising a giant space squid which dropped its seed into the oceans that squid might be created in its own image . We know that life formed on earth, the only question is how . Relative plausibility is everything .	TGoddard (7263)
486315	2006-11-02 23:54:00	The meaning of life: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their woman . " Conan . :lol:	rob_on_guitar (4196)
486316	2006-11-03 00:11:00	The meaning of life: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of their woman." Conan. :lol: I always ascribed that policy to Xtra/Telecom, except that to prevent accusations of gender bias they got the men lamenting too. "...we know the enemy, it is all that is not us." :waughh::rolleyes:	R2x1 (4628)
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