Fullerene Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 I would suggest that given enough time and the right conditions, that life can start anywhere. If that were true, then it probably didn't start on Earth in just one place and spread to the rest of the planet. Instead it started in various places around the globe. It might even have been wiped out many times but returned when the conditions were right again. Given that there more than a hundred thousand millions stars in this galaxy and maybe some with suitable planets, I would suspect the right conditions would exist on some other planets too. Not sure how I could prove any of this. I will have to give it some thought. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GordonS Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 5 hours ago, MixuFruit said: You can theorise though. We don't know exactly how life started but experiments in the 50s showed you could make amino acids and cell-like structures by blasting mixtures of organic molecules with electricity. So if we start with it being caused by something along those lines, and knowing that organic molecules and electricity are everywhere, it's reasonable enough to assume it's not a particularly rare phenomenon. I want to read this book which says life is a thermodynamic inevitability, interesting concept. https://www.amazon.com/Every-Life-Fire-Thermodynamics-Explains/dp/1541699017 We can't say it's not rare when we've only ever found it once in nature. 3 hours ago, Johnstoun said: Life on earth might have begun and been snuffed out hundreds, thousands of times before the planet stabilised enough for it to stick. I’m inclined to believe that as long as the conditions for life are there, life will happen. Whether it lasts is another matter. True. But this has been a very life-y planet for a long time and we only know of it happening once. 2 hours ago, coprolite said: Not sure you can be certain that life only started once. Sure, that's why I said "as far as we know". This whole thing is a thought experiment. The universe is a big place and there will be lots of Earth-like places. But I go with evidence, and the evidence we have so far is that life began on Earth only once. We don't have the faintest idea how likely it is that there are other planets with life. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coprolite Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 14 minutes ago, GordonS said: We can't say it's not rare when we've only ever found it once in nature. True. But this has been a very life-y planet for a long time and we only know of it happening once. Sure, that's why I said "as far as we know". This whole thing is a thought experiment. The universe is a big place and there will be lots of Earth-like places. But I go with evidence, and the evidence we have so far is that life began on Earth only once. We don't have the faintest idea how likely it is that there are other planets with life. We haven't firmly established yet that life began on earth. It seems most probable though. There is evidence of life elsewhere (in Venus' clouds). It is just very far from conclusive at this stage. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclizine Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 There's nothing that says life has to be based on DNA/RNA like here. That's just what we see in earth due to the conditions here. It's feasible that other forms of life could be based on entirely different chemistry in entirely different conditions. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fullerene Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 2 hours ago, MixuFruit said: The one that always blows my mind a bit is that proteins have chirality, they're twisty and they can be twisty left or twisty right. All life on earth uses only the left-chirality versions. Why? IIRC you asked this once before on the Quick Questions thread but didn't get any answers. Better luck this time. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fullerene Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 Just now, MixuFruit said: I did a search for chirality and apparently said this in the pub etiquette thread. Me neither. I was also going to ask: Is this left chirality some sort of conspiracy? If so, can you explain further. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ICTChris Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 So much for the chilarit left 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclizine Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 3 hours ago, MixuFruit said: The one that always blows my mind a bit is that proteins have chirality, they're twisty and they can be twisty left or twisty right. All life on earth uses only the left-chirality versions. Why? I think it's probably because for RNA or DNA to "work" the sugar part of nucleotides has to be of uniform chirality, otherwise the spatial configuration won't be correct. This naturally selects out one isomer. Similar for the amino acids that make up peptides and proteins: any change in structure stops the protein doing what it's supposed to do, classically an enzyme can generally only deal with one isomer. I don't think there's any reason one structure has been favoured over the other, just chance. But I'm not a biochemist... 50 minutes ago, Fullerene said: I was also going to ask: Is this left chirality some sort of conspiracy? If so, can you explain further. Dredging up my undergraduate biochemistry from aeons ago, sugars are right-handed and amino acids left-handed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
welshbairn Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 1 minute ago, Cyclizine said: Dredging up my undergraduate biochemistry from aeons ago, sugars are right-handed and amino acids left-handed. Big teams revealed. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclizine Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 1 minute ago, MixuFruit said: How mundane. It used to be on the list of unsolved biology problems but seems to be gone now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_biology Going down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homochirality 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fullerene Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 42 minutes ago, MixuFruit said: No we've just got sidetracked. Oh good. I was concerned that there might be left chirality deniers in America who believe it was all part of a devious plot to turn America into a socialist state. I can stop looking at pictures of those rioters in Washington to see if any were carrying a sign saying "Stop Left Chirality now." 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MuckleMoo Posted January 11, 2021 Share Posted January 11, 2021 New Covid relif bill in the US has some small print including thishttps://www.cnn.com/2021/01/10/us/ufo-report-emergency-relief-bill-trnd/index.html 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BFTD Posted January 12, 2021 Share Posted January 12, 2021 14 hours ago, Fullerene said: Oh good. I was concerned that there might be left chirality deniers in America who believe it was all part of a devious plot to turn America into a socialist state. I can stop looking at pictures of those rioters in Washington to see if any were carrying a sign saying "Stop Left Chirality now." If you're willing to put the work in online, I reckon you could make it happen by inauguration day. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detournement Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 People just really liked giving Epstein hundreds of millions of dollars for no real reason..... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shandon Par Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 10 minutes ago, Detournement said: People just really liked giving Epstein hundreds of millions of dollars for no real reason..... Why do you think Barry Hearn was in Epstein’s little black book? Shared hobbies? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detournement Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 8 minutes ago, Shandön Par said: Why do you think Barry Hearn was in Epstein’s little black book? Shared hobbies? I doubt it. Barry Hearn probably moved in similar circles looking for rich idiots to grift. I don't see Epstein being very interested in the Arras, O's or Boxing. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Detournement Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 A good rant about the latest developments. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RandomGuy. Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 On 07/01/2021 at 23:45, welshbairn said: We've seen a fair bit of it but only as it was billions of years ago, and in no great detail. This always interests me about space, tbh. Read that Life began on earth 3.5 billion years ago, with "human intelligence" as we know it apparently first appearing 50,000 years ago. The universe is, at a google search, 13.8 billion years old. Presumably, down to mathy numbers, its almost impossible for us to actually see any intelligent life anywhere else in the Universe because we'll be looking too far back in time for it to have developed to the stage we're at? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fullerene Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 58 minutes ago, RandomGuy. said: This always interests me about space, tbh. Read that Life began on earth 3.5 billion years ago, with "human intelligence" as we know it apparently first appearing 50,000 years ago. The universe is, at a google search, 13.8 billion years old. Presumably, down to mathy numbers, its almost impossible for us to actually see any intelligent life anywhere else in the Universe because we'll be looking too far back in time for it to have developed to the stage we're at? I don't understand your logic. Some of the nearest stars to us might have planets similar to Earth that started at a similar time and life might have started on those planets as well. That life might be just as intelligent as us or even more so. The big problem is that "nearest" star is still an unimaginable distance away. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RandomGuy. Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 10 minutes ago, Fullerene said: I don't understand your logic. Some of the nearest stars to us might have planets similar to Earth that started at a similar time and life might have started on those planets as well. That life might be just as intelligent as us or even more so. The big problem is that "nearest" star is still an unimaginable distance away. Always felt like an Earth like planet with life is out there, but chances are so low that we'll find a planet not only with life, but with "intelligent" life, it'll be so far away that we're never likely to know because we're looking into the past. Maybe got this all wrong, but when we look at the nearest galaxy (Andromeda), are we not seeing it as it was 2.5 million years ago? They could be looking at our planet right now saying its in a "habitable" zone, but the planet is covered in ice due to an Ice Age so they just move on to the next planet while "keeping an eye on that one". 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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