What is your reason for being doubtful? Why is life more likely to have evolved from somewhere else?
-Will
-Will
Abiogenesis and life on Earth - thoughts and pet theories?
- Thread starter Asbo Zaprudder
- Start date
Earth is not a closed system as debris from space in the form of Asteroids and Comets have impacted the Earth countless times, plus, the Solar System has been in many different locations throughout the Sun's orbit around the Galaxy. It strikes me as even more unlikely to occur on its own.
It doesn't seem implausible to me. The Murchison meteorite is a couple of billion years older than the solar system. The universe is three times as old as the solar system and JWST has shown the presence of oxygen created in population III stars.
If we do find bacteria or archaea like organisms in the solar system, we might never be certain they didn't originate on Earth either - unless perhaps they exploit right-handed amino acids and left-handed sugars and/or completely different cellular machinery and/or metabolic cycles. Even then, would such evidence be definitive?
If we do find bacteria or archaea like organisms in the solar system, we might never be certain they didn't originate on Earth either - unless perhaps they exploit right-handed amino acids and left-handed sugars and/or completely different cellular machinery and/or metabolic cycles. Even then, would such evidence be definitive?
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If life did originate on Earth but out of reactions between organic molecules that were created before the Earth was formed, then wouldn't that be life originating not "on its own?"
Depends where you draw the line on what is life. It's more than simple chemistry or the presence of amino acids and nucleobases. My take is that you need the conditions that promote complex cycles of self-organizing organic chemical reactions, initially without the help of enzymatic catalysts, possibly relying on less efficient inorganic ones instead. In any case, the required elements besides hydrogen: carbon nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc. had to be produced in stars that died before the solar system existed.
Yes, the mere presence of organic molecules is insufficient, I agree.
My point was simply that, assuming molecules such as those observed in the Murchison meteorite are essential and involved in the critical reactions, and those actually employed originate extraterrestrially, then the "help" in having been provided the necessary raw materials would have been (likely) at least a time-saver, if not essential in its assistance. Even if we're not looking at panspermia per se, there could still be a process of the creation and spreading of lifeless components that are essential to the creation of life, that spans stellar generations. (In my OP, strike the word "between" and substitute either "including" or "involving" for a hypothetical casting a wider net.)
Yes, that is evidently the case, and, if we're being strict enough, for that reason alone, the presence of the nuclei needed to form necessary isotopes, life cannot occur entirely "on its own," on Earth.In any case, the required elements besides hydrogen: carbon nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, phosphorus, etc. had to be produced in stars that died before the solar system existed.
I was willing to overlook this aspect though and focus on the chemical reactions, under the assumptions that what life is can be reduced to some sort of chemistry, for the sake of the particular question I raised.
That aside, it's worth considering whether life can be reduced entirely to chemistry, or whether, e.g., certain effects of quantum physics that are not usually considered to fall under the umbrella of chemistry are essential.
We already know that quantum mechanics is involved in many life processes, such as photosynthesis. I suspect the many worlds (or similar) interpretation has to be correct for life to exist. I can't think how you'd go about testing such a hypothesis, however, so it's metaphysics,
Here are a couple of facts as we humans have so far discovered.
1. Life exists here on Earth. (The existence of life on Earth is prima facie evidence that conditions for life are right, here on Earth. In fact, the scientific community uses Earth as the model by which it has defined the conditions necessary for life).
2. From a cosmic scale, evidence of the earliest known life occurred almost immediately after Earth's surface became capable of supporting life (three and a half billion, that's billion, years ago. New research has suggested as early as 4.1 billion years ago).
3. Earth is believed to have formed 4.56 billion years ago (how long after Earth's formation do we suppose its climate was capable of supporting life? 1 Half billion years out of 9 half billion year segments, life appeared on Earth. I would assume, much of that first half billion years was spend too hot, to bombarded, too oxygen deprived, too water short, too poisonous, for life to catch hold, no matter where it was coming from).
Adding a little more information, let's put these three facts together...
Another quote:
Conclusion:
Earth didn't just sit around waiting billions of years for some astronomically unlikely event to give it life. Out of all that space with so few life sustaining options, some other planet is more likely to have developed life? Then, within the first five hundred million years, inside a window of time possibly as large as another three million years, that earlier planet with its bad luck, suffered some cataclysm that just happened to send its extremely rare creation on a journey that probably would have taken years, hundreds of years, thousands even, to scatter its incredible seeds in a broadcast that was still dense enough to have found our planet, but not also other nearby bodies such as Mars or the moon or even the moons of Jupiter?
I say, "astronomically unlikely event" because, if the formation of life was common, Earth would be a prime candidate for its formation without, and before the panspermia event described above. I say, "but not also other nearby bodies such as Mars or the moon or even the moons of Jupiter" because if the same scattering of life that seeded Earth had seeded any of those other bodies, certainly at least one other of those planets and satellites would have either retained the evidence of that space cloud of early life and we would have found it on the moon or on Mars by now, or it would have had an atmosphere that was nurturing enough that the thinly scattered seeds of early life would have hung on long enough that their presence would have grown to an observable size and density that, again, even though we haven't physically been to these other places, we would notice some stronger evidence of their past existence.
I find it far far far more likely that life forms easily and quickly (on an astrological scale) and Earth's life formed on Earth. It happened, of course, on a planet with all the elements to support life, it happened within a short time, nearly immediately after becoming a life sustainable planet, and there are no neighbors that could possibly have better chances as either early life's nurturer, or as a supplier to Earth.
All that said, I don't find the concept of panspermia impossible, just improbable.
Let me make one more point.
I visited the Galapagos Islands once. On those islands are the Galapagos Tortoises. Our guide informed us that before Darwin, no man had ever left any evidence of discovering the Galapagos Islands, much less had settled there. Now you have to understand, the Galapagos Tortoise is a generic mutation of the giant Tortoises from Chile and Peru. So, I asked, how did the population of Tortoises that would become the Galapagos Tortoise get the the islands. Boli, our naturalist guide answered that it was speculated that a storm had blown a population of them over from the Andies over 600 miles away.
I had to ask, "Had anyone ever found an Andean giant tortoise just floating out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after a huge storm?" After all that distance, certainly more than one population of giant tortoises had been picked up from their homes on the sides of the Andes and deposited somewhere in the ocean, even if they are statistically unlikely to have been blown over 600 miles to a tiny cluster of islands. To have made it to the Galapagos that one incredible time must have meant lots of other storm carried populations hadn't made it that far, but must have made some portion of that journey.
"No," Boli answered, "No one had ever found a giant Tortoise that had been blown off their mountain slopes, much less out to sea." How curious, yet here we find an errant population of giant tortoises living and supposedly evolving on some of the most remote islands in the world.
Now, of course I also don't believe the giant Galapagos tortoise evolved on its own upon these islands, that seems just as unlikely. The Galapagos Tortoise was brought to those islands as a food source for some nomadic seafaring pacific ocean tribe, just as the Galapagos marine iguana was and the Galapagos flightless cormorants were. The cormorants were bred flightless because they fished for the seafaring tribe, just as cormorants do for other people around the Pacific.
Now, that opens up the subject of alien seeding of Earth. Those aliens would have had to have an enormous head start on evolution themselves, to have become advanced enough to not only find Earth, but to get here and throw their life creations onto Earth over three and a half billion years ago, less than one billion years after its formation. I mean, WOW, now that's some advanced evolution.
-Will
1. Life exists here on Earth. (The existence of life on Earth is prima facie evidence that conditions for life are right, here on Earth. In fact, the scientific community uses Earth as the model by which it has defined the conditions necessary for life).
2. From a cosmic scale, evidence of the earliest known life occurred almost immediately after Earth's surface became capable of supporting life (three and a half billion, that's billion, years ago. New research has suggested as early as 4.1 billion years ago).
3. Earth is believed to have formed 4.56 billion years ago (how long after Earth's formation do we suppose its climate was capable of supporting life? 1 Half billion years out of 9 half billion year segments, life appeared on Earth. I would assume, much of that first half billion years was spend too hot, to bombarded, too oxygen deprived, too water short, too poisonous, for life to catch hold, no matter where it was coming from).
Adding a little more information, let's put these three facts together...
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/how-did-earth-go-from-molten-hellscape-to-habitable-planet#:~:text=By Evan Gough March 9,did all the carbon go?
Another quote:
Conclusion:
Earth didn't just sit around waiting billions of years for some astronomically unlikely event to give it life. Out of all that space with so few life sustaining options, some other planet is more likely to have developed life? Then, within the first five hundred million years, inside a window of time possibly as large as another three million years, that earlier planet with its bad luck, suffered some cataclysm that just happened to send its extremely rare creation on a journey that probably would have taken years, hundreds of years, thousands even, to scatter its incredible seeds in a broadcast that was still dense enough to have found our planet, but not also other nearby bodies such as Mars or the moon or even the moons of Jupiter?
I say, "astronomically unlikely event" because, if the formation of life was common, Earth would be a prime candidate for its formation without, and before the panspermia event described above. I say, "but not also other nearby bodies such as Mars or the moon or even the moons of Jupiter" because if the same scattering of life that seeded Earth had seeded any of those other bodies, certainly at least one other of those planets and satellites would have either retained the evidence of that space cloud of early life and we would have found it on the moon or on Mars by now, or it would have had an atmosphere that was nurturing enough that the thinly scattered seeds of early life would have hung on long enough that their presence would have grown to an observable size and density that, again, even though we haven't physically been to these other places, we would notice some stronger evidence of their past existence.
I find it far far far more likely that life forms easily and quickly (on an astrological scale) and Earth's life formed on Earth. It happened, of course, on a planet with all the elements to support life, it happened within a short time, nearly immediately after becoming a life sustainable planet, and there are no neighbors that could possibly have better chances as either early life's nurturer, or as a supplier to Earth.
All that said, I don't find the concept of panspermia impossible, just improbable.
Let me make one more point.
I visited the Galapagos Islands once. On those islands are the Galapagos Tortoises. Our guide informed us that before Darwin, no man had ever left any evidence of discovering the Galapagos Islands, much less had settled there. Now you have to understand, the Galapagos Tortoise is a generic mutation of the giant Tortoises from Chile and Peru. So, I asked, how did the population of Tortoises that would become the Galapagos Tortoise get the the islands. Boli, our naturalist guide answered that it was speculated that a storm had blown a population of them over from the Andies over 600 miles away.
I had to ask, "Had anyone ever found an Andean giant tortoise just floating out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after a huge storm?" After all that distance, certainly more than one population of giant tortoises had been picked up from their homes on the sides of the Andes and deposited somewhere in the ocean, even if they are statistically unlikely to have been blown over 600 miles to a tiny cluster of islands. To have made it to the Galapagos that one incredible time must have meant lots of other storm carried populations hadn't made it that far, but must have made some portion of that journey.
"No," Boli answered, "No one had ever found a giant Tortoise that had been blown off their mountain slopes, much less out to sea." How curious, yet here we find an errant population of giant tortoises living and supposedly evolving on some of the most remote islands in the world.
Now, of course I also don't believe the giant Galapagos tortoise evolved on its own upon these islands, that seems just as unlikely. The Galapagos Tortoise was brought to those islands as a food source for some nomadic seafaring pacific ocean tribe, just as the Galapagos marine iguana was and the Galapagos flightless cormorants were. The cormorants were bred flightless because they fished for the seafaring tribe, just as cormorants do for other people around the Pacific.
Now, that opens up the subject of alien seeding of Earth. Those aliens would have had to have an enormous head start on evolution themselves, to have become advanced enough to not only find Earth, but to get here and throw their life creations onto Earth over three and a half billion years ago, less than one billion years after its formation. I mean, WOW, now that's some advanced evolution.
-Will
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From the Wikipedia article on quantum biology:
Currently, there exist four major life processes that have been identified as influenced by quantum effects: enzyme catalysis, sensory processes, energy transference, and information encoding.
[...]
Quantum biology is an emerging field, in the sense that most current research is theoretical and subject to questions that require further experimentation.
In broad strokes, according to the subsection on photosynthesis, conclusions regarding quantum effects are currently only preliminary, and there are competing hypotheses concerning specific mechanisms.
In any case, I'd agree that the occurrence of quantum biology in existing organisms makes it more than plausible that quantum effects played a role in the creation of life in our case specifically and that they are essential to life itself. On the other hand, I also have to observe that, in the absence of more specific data, exploiting quantum effects could conceivably be an adaptation; whether this alternative is plausible would depend in part on how successful classical physics alone could account for the creation of life.
Can you elaborate on why you think that the correctness of the many worlds interpretation is necessary for life to exist?
Many worlds allows very improbable things to occur if their occurrence leads to observers.
There are those who dispute the importance of quantum effects in biology, and it does look like the jury is still out on photosynthesis. The Wikipedia looks slightly stilted towards the camp of whomever edited it, but as it's only a passing interest of mine, I can't offer any deep insight into any academic rivalry that might be involved,
Unless one is deeply engaged in such research, it's probably best to leave it to the usual scientific process to weed out what ideas don't pass muster. I can speculate, but my notions are quite likely to be wildly wrong. I don't feel constrained to remain silent, however.
There are those who dispute the importance of quantum effects in biology, and it does look like the jury is still out on photosynthesis. The Wikipedia looks slightly stilted towards the camp of whomever edited it, but as it's only a passing interest of mine, I can't offer any deep insight into any academic rivalry that might be involved,
Unless one is deeply engaged in such research, it's probably best to leave it to the usual scientific process to weed out what ideas don't pass muster. I can speculate, but my notions are quite likely to be wildly wrong. I don't feel constrained to remain silent, however.
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My understanding of Everett's work is that it is mathematically equivalent to the standard theory under which the wave equation is reduced, and that the problem of testing the many worlds interpretation is due to that equivalence.
If many worlds is needed, because it allows certain things to occur, in contrast to the standard theory where they cannot occur (except improbably?), then I would have to wonder whether you are proposing a way to test many worlds by what would therefore be a distinction it possesses from the standard theory.
I wasn't proposing to test anything, but I doubt many who prefer to believe that they are somehow special and unique and even possess a soul would accept that as a valid test. My "reasoning" (I hesitate to dignify it as such) might also apply to the observed elementary particle masses and constants of nature. Ultimately, some things are perhaps unknowable because we are too embedded in the substrate. While it is possible to determine the intrinsic curvature of spacetime by making measurements within it, that might not be true of other properties of our reality.
Ever since observing diffraction of light for the first time as a child, merely feeling in my bones that anything that is possible must happen somewhere, possibly an uncountable number of times, just doesn't cut the mustard.
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Any substantive test of a theory like the Many Worlds Theory would have to include a sound and supportable theory about why any one of those many worlds is fundamentally different from a single world that was not part of many. What is different, statistically, mathematically, mechanically, between a single member of many and a single stand-alone world?
What this means is that, if it requires many worlds for an improbable event to happen, one must determine that that same event is impossible without many worlds. Improbable is not impossible so, unless there was some reason to believe a stand-alone world was different from an individual member of many, there wouldn't be a way to demonstrate proof that many were required where one will not be possible.
However, there are some examples of phenomena that are virtually impossible for one where two or more almost guaranty the event happens. Human reproduction comes to mind, but that may be unreasonably isolating a specific example of the more general group called life. Not all life requires more than one to reproduce.
-Will
What this means is that, if it requires many worlds for an improbable event to happen, one must determine that that same event is impossible without many worlds. Improbable is not impossible so, unless there was some reason to believe a stand-alone world was different from an individual member of many, there wouldn't be a way to demonstrate proof that many were required where one will not be possible.
However, there are some examples of phenomena that are virtually impossible for one where two or more almost guaranty the event happens. Human reproduction comes to mind, but that may be unreasonably isolating a specific example of the more general group called life. Not all life requires more than one to reproduce.
-Will
Claims that quantum computing proves many worlds or similar relative state hypotheses are just hype. What might give such interpretations more credence would be demonstrations of irreconcilable histories. Reality might be inherently Rashomon to some fundamental degree.
Yup! Isn't that what Relativity is basically about? Is the particle of light traveling at C, or is it the rest of the Universe, which must look like only a collection of particles of light to that one particle.
-Will
Apologies, I'm unable to follow you here. The main point of my previous post was that, if the many worlds interpretation has to be correct for life to exist, then there has to be a way to distinguish it from the standard interpretation (collapse of the wave equation under observation). For, one of the major features of Everett's relative state theory is no such distinction exists, so in that case the proposition that many worlds is correct is mathematically equivalent to the proposition that the standard theory is correct, by which I mean precisely that, assuming one or the other is true, any discrepancy between the two has probability zero of being observed. You also said, "or similar." Either way, this would seem to suggest that you're implying that something essential to the creation of life could be missing from even standard quantum theory. I was just trying to get a handle on what that was.
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Yes, you're misinterpreting what I wrote, but that's very likely my fault. I know there is no testable distinction. That's why it's metaphysics. There are other variant interpretations and none offer falsification to choose between them as far as I'm aware. However, experimental verification of inconsistent histories could suggest that divergence and convergence of timelines can happen. I believe some physicists are pursuing this line of enquiry currently.
I'm not suggesting that something essential to the creation of life could be missing from even standard quantum theory. I'm just suggesting that the fact that there are observers might be an artefact of one or more timelines containing them - a trivial, anthropic observation in itself. Plenty, perhaps most, timelines don't, but they are lost potentialities. Whether consciousness itself is a quantum field, perhaps the primary one, I offer no opinion. If such a hypothesis does not offer falsifiable predictions, it might as well be religion.
If any of this rambling nonsense would help me win the national lottery today in the timeline that this version of me is experiencing, that would be very handy.
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Thank you. That makes perfect sense.
I hope so. I don't expect anyone to take my mental noodling seriously. These subjects are on the edge of what is known and quantum theory is kind of nuts anyway.
From a purely rational standpoint, the probability that life will occur at some point according to the standard model is not subject to experimental test, at least if the probability according to the standard model is greater than zero. What is subject to experimental test is the conditional probability that life will exist at a certain point at a certain time, given that it already exists here and now. Said another way, the pertinent question is, "Are we alone?"
Even if the probability that life will occur at some point according to the standard model ends up being zero, so long as the set of life-creating events is not actually empty, it should, even with such an infinitesimally low probability, still be compatible with observation, at least as far as the specific question alone of whether the standard model is compatible with the existence of life, and testable otherwise.
But those are rational considerations. Even with a finite, but low, probability, I think it's fair to say that many people wouldn't consider the theory to be satisfactory, on an intuitive level. Under classical mechanics, for each possible initial condition to the system of differential equations, the situation was binary, and there would be (in theory) only two possibilities: if life did not emerge under the initial condition, then it could be rejected outright, whereas if life did emerge under it, it would have to be evaluated according to additional criteria, whatever they might be. (At least, it was assumed that, in principle, this would be possible, even though no classical theory ever was so far-reaching.) With the apparent loss of strong determinism, the situation now is, well, fuzzier. But I still perceive there to be, for lack of better words, a holdover from that classical view (for some people whose opinions, for whatever reason, matter), in the expectation that scientific theories should be able to answer basic questions, such as whether physics can account for the existence of life, with some degree of definitiveness, beyond saying that, yeah, it could conceivably happen somewhere, if only exactly the right but improbable conditions occur.
My turn to ramble!
Even if the probability that life will occur at some point according to the standard model ends up being zero, so long as the set of life-creating events is not actually empty, it should, even with such an infinitesimally low probability, still be compatible with observation, at least as far as the specific question alone of whether the standard model is compatible with the existence of life, and testable otherwise.
But those are rational considerations. Even with a finite, but low, probability, I think it's fair to say that many people wouldn't consider the theory to be satisfactory, on an intuitive level. Under classical mechanics, for each possible initial condition to the system of differential equations, the situation was binary, and there would be (in theory) only two possibilities: if life did not emerge under the initial condition, then it could be rejected outright, whereas if life did emerge under it, it would have to be evaluated according to additional criteria, whatever they might be. (At least, it was assumed that, in principle, this would be possible, even though no classical theory ever was so far-reaching.) With the apparent loss of strong determinism, the situation now is, well, fuzzier. But I still perceive there to be, for lack of better words, a holdover from that classical view (for some people whose opinions, for whatever reason, matter), in the expectation that scientific theories should be able to answer basic questions, such as whether physics can account for the existence of life, with some degree of definitiveness, beyond saying that, yeah, it could conceivably happen somewhere, if only exactly the right but improbable conditions occur.
My turn to ramble!
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