Abiogenesis and life on Earth - thoughts and pet theories?

[Santaman]

So maybe life here on Earth was caused by some alien schmuck who just landed here for a second to clear his ashtray.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

So maybe life here on Earth was caused by some alien schmuck who just landed here for a second to clear his ashtray.

Wouldn't that be a real hoot?

 

[Will The Serious]

This article just showed up on my Google front page:
The Math Says Life Shouldn’t Exist: New Study Challenges Origins Theories
https://scitechdaily.com/the-math-says-life-shouldnt-exist-new-study-challenges-origins-theories/

The findings indicate that chance alone, combined with natural chemical reactions, may not sufficiently account for the origin of life within the limited timeframe of early Earth.

I would think that if the barriers to the spontaneous formation of life was extremely high, chance might be the only reason it has formed so early. Roll a million sided die and you might hit your number on the first throw, as unlikely as that is, it is still possible.

Because systems generally move toward disorder rather than order, the formation of the highly structured arrangements required for life faces serious barriers.

Except, there are forces and structures that do move systems towards order. Gravity is one, velcro is another.

While maintaining scientific rigor, the paper acknowledges that directed panspermia, originally proposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, remains a speculative but logically open alternative.

This just adds another turtle to the tower. The question of the likelihood of life forming naturally doesn't change. In fact, that would only make chance a much more important player in the game.

If life on Earth was the result of alien seeding, doesn't that put the true origins of life much closer to the creation of the universe than if it formed naturally here on Earth? Life still had to have formed spontaneously somewhere, and to obscure the the question of its possibility and likelihood with an earlier intermediary, just means it would have had to form, develop, and evolve to intelligent life that then advanced technologically to interstellar travel hundreds of millions of years earlier. That really is our number coming up on the first roll in a million.

This hypothesis suggests that life might have been intentionally seeded on Earth by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, though the author notes this idea challenges Occam’s razor, the scientific principle favoring simpler explanations.

-Will

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Lead poisoning has been a feature of our evolution

A recent study found lead in teeth from 2 million-year-old hominin fossils.

This might explain a few things in humanities DNA.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The video linked below presents a convincing (to me, a non-expert) hypothesis for how phosphorus weathering during the breakup of the Rodinia supercontinent reshaped Earth’s biosphere by fueling oxygen production, replacing the largely sulfidic Canfield ocean with a purely oxic one, thereby enabling the creation of a eukaryotic food web. Eukaryotes first filter fed on eukaryotic algae as a source of sterols, rather than bacterial mats, and then some evolved the locomotory and sensory apparatus to actively predate each other, causing the evolution of hard parts needed for protection.

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What isn't mentioned is that the evolution of sex meant that an additional food source could have been all the spare sperm and eggs floating around available to be gobbled up like a caviar banquet. All sorts of weird cross-fertilisation could also have taken place. Most resulting embryos wouldn't have been viable but some might have gotten lucky with hybrid vigour. This might explain why so many eukaryotes undergo metamorphic phases between larval and adult forms, such as is seen in tunicates, echinoderms, arthropods, and to a lesser extent even in vertebrates such as ourselves (puberty).

 

[XCV330]

This might explain why so many eukaryotes undergo metamorphic phases between larval and adult forms, such as is seen in tunicates, echinoderms, arthropods, and to a lesser extent even in vertebrates such as ourselves (puberty).

Sounds a bit like the old discredited phylogenetic recapitulation theory, the one that had three members of Scott's final antarctic mission scouring around in antarctic winter trying to get penguin embryos to prove.

 

[Spider]

The more we study life up close, the more we learn about how difficult abiogenesis is. But yet, it had to have happened, either here on earth or somewhere else and transported here. The only other explanation is the supernatural BS, and I won't accept that. We just need to find the precursor life that happened to make RNA one day, and then we'll have it.

And whatever that was, we'll need to find out where it came from.

 

[Mudd]

"Aliens seeding Earth" is no different an explanation than "God created life."

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

"Aliens seeding Earth" is no different an explanation than "God created life."

Well at least removes the magical aspect of a magical sky being just wishing life into existence

 

[Will The Serious]

Well at least removes the magical aspect of a magical sky being just wishing life into existence

Makes the "mysterious" aspect just as mystical.

Everything exists because nothing is impossible.

-Will

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Sounds a bit like the old discredited phylogenetic recapitulation theory, the one that had three members of Scott's final antarctic mission scouring around in antarctic winter trying to get penguin embryos to prove.

Except I'm not referring to embryonic development. I'm referring to the later transition where a much different body plan is expressed, almost as if a completely different set of control genes (from a different ancestor) takes over the Hox genes and starts again. In vertebrates this seems much more muted.

Perhaps, 550 Ma ago, motile larvae with notochords of adult creatures similar to a sessile tunicate neotenically mutated to become sexually active and became the ancestors of all chordates.

Having lost the genes to enter fully the adult stage, only the ones enabling sexual maturity survived and we inherited these. I, for one, am glad. Being a immotile sea-squirt whose main role is to produce gametes sounds very boring, although I guess without a brain, one wouldn't notice.

Even now, perhaps some people subconsciously strive to enter the lost, true adult stage - sounds very messy. /joking

ETA: The following video discusses Hox genes.

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[publiusr]

"Aliens seeding Earth" is no different an explanation than "God created life."

It’s kicking the can down the road—since the aliens would have had to evolve—-unless an “All you zombies” scenario puts a nice bow on things.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Worth a view to dispel incorrect notions about the current view of evolution by natural selection that some might hold due to operant conditioning, Faux News etc.:

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Of course, the video discusses the gene as the basic unit of information, but I wonder how similar or dissimilar are the processes that control the survival and propagation of memes in the infosphere, especially that LLMs, stable diffusion and so on have come to the forefront. Whether such technology is an inevitable part of the Great Filter that can eliminate sapient entities before they spread beyond their homeworld has yet to be seen.

 

[publiusr]

One concept that may need looking at is the idea of partial panspermia…by this I mean one early bit of living slime spalled off one world—then developing further on whatever world it lands upon. On a low gravity asteroid it can widen, then bounced off.

Rinse-repeat.

That would be a hell of a filter.

I am always looking for oddball approaches.

The soda lake deal I would not have guessed.

 

[Will The Serious]

partial panspermia

Partial panspermia has a compelling logic.
Origins of Tardigrades

Molecular clocks suggest that tardigrades diverged from other panarthropods before the Cambrian, but their fossil record is extremely sparse.

Tardigrades are popularly known for the cryptobiotic ability of some species that allow them to survive extreme conditions, such as space vacuum, ionizing radiation, and low subzero temperatures

A sparce fossil record, a unique taxonomy, the ability to survive the vacuum, temperature, and radiation of space, what other creature on Earth looks like a water bear? Eight legs, but not an arachnid.

https://magazine.college.unc.edu/college-news-notes/tardigrades/

UNC researchers have sequenced the genome of the nearly indestructible tardigrade, the only animal known to survive the extreme environment of outer space, and found something they never expected: that they get a huge chunk of their genome — nearly one-sixth — from foreign DNA.

This creature may be confirmation of extraterrestrial life, when we find tardigrades has beat us to some other planet or moon.

-Will

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

This creature may be the very confirmation of extraterrestrial life, when we find tardigrades had beat us to some other planet or moon.

-Will

Or what if the Tardigrades that have lived on Earth have themselves come from another world.

Wouldn't that make them actual aliens if it could be proven?

 

[Will The Serious]

That

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I think you might like this @Will The Serious

It's basically the creation of anti-life. Very cool and very scary

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[Will The Serious]

An except from Joseph Conrad's Typhoon
TYPHOON

The ship, after a pause of comparative steadiness, started upon a series of rolls, one worse than the other, and for a time Jukes, preserving his equilibrium, was too busy to open his mouth. As soon as the violent swinging had quieted down somewhat, he said: “This is a bit too much of a good thing. Whether anything is coming or not I think she ought to be put head on to that swell. The old man is just gone in to lie down. Hang me if I don't speak to him.”

But when he opened the door of the chart-room he saw his captain reading a book. Captain MacWhirr was not lying down: he was standing up with one hand grasping the edge of the bookshelf and the other holding open before his face a thick volume. The lamp wriggled in the gimbals, the loosened books toppled from side to side on the shelf, the long barometer swung in jerky circles, the table altered its slant every moment. In the midst of all this stir and movement Captain MacWhirr, holding on, showed his eyes above the upper edge, and asked, “What's the matter?”

“Swell getting worse, sir.”

“Noticed that in here,” muttered Captain MacWhirr. “Anything wrong?”

Jukes, inwardly disconcerted by the seriousness of the eyes looking at him over the top of the book, produced an embarrassed grin.

“Rolling like old boots,” he said, sheepishly.

“Aye! Very heavy—very heavy. What do you want?”

At this Jukes lost his footing and began to flounder. “I was thinking of our passengers,” he said, in the manner of a man clutching at a straw.

“Passengers?” wondered the Captain, gravely. “What passengers?”

“Why, the Chinamen, sir,” explained Jukes, very sick of this conversation.

“The Chinamen! Why don't you speak plainly? Couldn't tell what you meant. Never heard a lot of coolies spoken of as passengers before. Passengers, indeed! What's come to you?”

Captain MacWhirr, closing the book on his forefinger, lowered his arm and looked completely mystified. “Why are you thinking of the Chinamen, Mr. Jukes?” he inquired.

Jukes took a plunge, like a man driven to it. “She's rolling her decks full of water, sir. Thought you might put her head on perhaps—for a while. Till this goes down a bit—very soon, I dare say. Head to the eastward. I never knew a ship roll like this.”

He held on in the doorway, and Captain MacWhirr, feeling his grip on the shelf inadequate, made up his mind to let go in a hurry, and fell heavily on the couch.

“Head to the eastward?” he said, struggling to sit up. “That's more than four points off her course.”

“Yes, sir. Fifty degrees. . . . Would just bring her head far enough round to meet this. . . .”

Captain MacWhirr was now sitting up. He had not dropped the book, and he had not lost his place.

“To the eastward?” he repeated, with dawning astonishment. “To the . . . Where do you think we are bound to? You want me to haul a full-powered steamship four points off her course to make the Chinamen comfortable! Now, I've heard more than enough of mad things done in the world—but this. . . . If I didn't know you, Jukes, I would think you were in liquor. Steer four points off. . . . And what afterwards? Steer four points over the other way, I suppose, to make the course good. What put it into your head that I would start to tack a steamer as if she were a sailing-ship?”

“Jolly good thing she isn't,” threw in Jukes, with bitter readiness. “She would have rolled every blessed stick out of her this afternoon.”

“Aye! And you just would have had to stand and see them go,” said Captain MacWhirr, showing a certain animation. “It's a dead calm, isn't it?”

“It is, sir. But there's something out of the common coming, for sure.”

“Maybe. I suppose you have a notion I should be getting out of the way of that dirt,” said Captain MacWhirr, speaking with the utmost simplicity of manner and tone, and fixing the oilcloth on the floor with a heavy stare. Thus he noticed neither Jukes' discomfiture nor the mixture of vexation and astonished respect on his face.

“Now, here's this book,” he continued with deliberation, slapping his thigh with the closed volume. “I've been reading the chapter on the storms there.”

This was true. He had been reading the chapter on the storms. When he had entered the chart-room, it was with no intention of taking the book down. Some influence in the air—the same influence, probably, that caused the steward to bring without orders the Captain's sea-boots and oilskin coat up to the chart-room—had as it were guided his hand to the shelf; and without taking the time to sit down he had waded with a conscious effort into the terminology of the subject. He lost himself amongst advancing semi-circles, left- and right-hand quadrants, the curves of the tracks, the probable bearing of the centre, the shifts of wind and the readings of barometer. He tried to bring all these things into a definite relation to himself, and ended by becoming contemptuously angry with such a lot of words, and with so much advice, all head-work and supposition, without a glimmer of certitude.

“It's the damnedest thing, Jukes,” he said. “If a fellow was to believe all that's in there, he would be running most of his time all over the sea trying to get behind the weather.”

Again he slapped his leg with the book; and Jukes opened his mouth, but said nothing.

“Running to get behind the weather! Do you understand that, Mr. Jukes? It's the maddest thing!” ejaculated Captain MacWhirr, with pauses, gazing at the floor profoundly. “You would think an old woman had been writing this. It passes me. If that thing means anything useful, then it means that I should at once alter the course away, away to the devil somewhere, and come booming down on Fu-chau from the northward at the tail of this dirty weather that's supposed to be knocking about in our way. From the north! Do you understand, Mr. Jukes? Three hundred extra miles to the distance, and a pretty coal bill to show. I couldn't bring myself to do that if every word in there was gospel truth, Mr. Jukes. Don't you expect me. . . .”

And Jukes, silent, marvelled at this display of feeling and loquacity.

“But the truth is that you don't know if the fellow is right, anyhow. How can you tell what a gale is made of till you get it? He isn't aboard here, is he? Very well. Here he says that the centre of them things bears eight points off the wind; but we haven't got any wind, for all the barometer falling. Where's his centre now?”

“We will get the wind presently,” mumbled Jukes.

“Let it come, then,” said Captain MacWhirr, with dignified indignation. “It's only to let you see, Mr. Jukes, that you don't find everything in books. All these rules for dodging breezes and circumventing the winds of heaven, Mr. Jukes, seem to me the maddest thing, when you come to look at it sensibly.”

He raised his eyes, saw Jukes gazing at him dubiously, and tried to illustrate his meaning.

“About as queer as your extraordinary notion of dodging the ship head to sea, for I don't know how long, to make the Chinamen comfortable; whereas all we've got to do is to take them to Fu-chau, being timed to get there before noon on Friday. If the weather delays me—very well. There's your log-book to talk straight about the weather. But suppose I went swinging off my course and came in two days late, and they asked me: 'Where have you been all that time, Captain?' What could I say to that? 'Went around to dodge the bad weather,' I would say. 'It must've been dam' bad,' they would say. 'Don't know,' I would have to say; 'I've dodged clear of it.' See that, Jukes? I have been thinking it all out this afternoon.”

He looked up again in his unseeing, unimaginative way. No one had ever heard him say so much at one time. Jukes, with his arms open in the doorway, was like a man invited to behold a miracle. Unbounded wonder was the intellectual meaning of his eye, while incredulity was seated in his whole countenance.

“A gale is a gale, Mr. Jukes,” resumed the Captain, “and a full-powered steam-ship has got to face it. There's just so much dirty weather knocking about the world, and the proper thing is to go through it with none of what old Captain Wilson of the Melita calls 'storm strategy.' The other day ashore I heard him hold forth about it to a lot of shipmasters who came in and sat at a table next to mine. It seemed to me the greatest nonsense. He was telling them how he outmanoeuvred, I think he said, a terrific gale, so that it never came nearer than fifty miles to him. A neat piece of head-work he called it. How he knew there was a terrific gale fifty miles off beats me altogether. It was like listening to a crazy man. I would have thought Captain Wilson was old enough to know better.”

There are enough Captain MacWhirrs in this world, that we will probably sail directly through that storm anyhow.

More than that...

But suppose I went swinging off my course and came in two days late, and they asked me: 'Where have you been all that time, Captain?'

there are more than enough theys who are paying the "coal bill", and collecting the profits, that have no care about "imaginary" storms or the roll of the ship, etc. and will simply want efficient return on investment.

-Will

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Would love your thoughts on the video I posted