|
SciFri |
|
|
Last week's topic: Life Here's what some of you had to say...
This is a question our civilization has and will ask until its extinction. Perhaps life "is" and had no beginning and shall have no end to it. Just as the universe "is" and perhaps has no beginning or end to it. Because when we think in terms of time and beginnings at some point where we say something began we can always say, "Well, what about before that?" Time is something invented by man for the convienence of organizing civilization, and it works quite well. However it has nothing to do with life or the universe except to mark events, for the universe and "life," which is a part of it, are forever constantly changing.Life forms, and perhaps even civilizations, will come and go throught the universe where the right conditions are there for its existance. But "life" will always "be" somewhere. Cliff
Why is it always assumed that life began "after" the big bang? It would seem to make more sense that "life" is actually the underlying purpose of the universe (with evolution being the process by which you can trace it), and that the beginning of the universe was essentially the beginning of life. I know this suggests a predetermined course for the universe , but I challenge the scientific community to show me an argument that makes more sense. Craig Miller
How the heck should I know? Peter Wlodarski
There are multiple origins of life. Protoplasm developed with chlorophyll at the surface of oceans or possibly in freshwater near dryland, and with sulfur at the bottom of mid-ocean ridges. RNA and DNA evolved in a third location. Plant and animal cells are communities of simple cells as Lewis Thomas described in Lives of the Cell. Lew Bassin
God made us... Dear Friends, Life began in consciousness prior to its manifesting in matter. A universal "mind-ness" was still; like an infinite consciousness without any thoughts. Then, just as the Big Bang in matter, the universal consciousness moved, it thought, and life was conceived. At this early moment, all of life would have been in the "form" of an idea rather than a substance. It have been the idea of light, not the wave of ight. Most people sense that matter came out of an Infinite Essence of Life, or God. But this God would not have been or is an individual or a being, like us. It would be a universal, infinite consciousness that conceived life and is aware of it. This God would not meddle in the flow of Nature and the Universal Laws once they were set in motion. I intuitively sense that energy came before matter, and that that energy was like a mind, a consciousness. Not very scientific, but deep down it feels right. Perhaps someday we'll be able to test this hypothesis. Your fan, John
Before you delve into the origins of life, you must accept that all forms of life, both animate and inanimate stem from one original substance......as far as the "creation" of man: The original material from which man was "created" was minimally changed in the process, thus, homo sapiens bears certain semblances to it in both form and function"......
I have always had an interest in science. Although I have never had the gift of working out numbers and formulas and complex equations, I have always been facinated with chemical reactions and meteorology. Even so, I have to say that I believe the creation theory for the beginning of life. I think that the universe had a designer, and that the evidence for this is both rational and compelling. I also do not believe that this view is wholly incompatible with a scientific view. I think that if one really looks at the two side by side they complement each other in many ways. Although there are major differences between the two like the role of evolution, that does not mean that they stand completly and diametrically opposed to one another. However the processes worked out, whatever the role of amino acids and other molecular substances, I believe that they were created by God. Charmetra Chatmon
God created it, and evolution is His method. Ben Crouse
Life in our solar system may indeed have come first from another planet, but the interesting issue, to me, is what happened before that. In that regard, there is a possibility that scientists hate to admit. We may not even remotely posess the intellectual capacity to understand the Big Bang, and we may never understand, or even be close to understanding. Tom Jones
To Whom It May Concern: I did not have the pleasure of listening to your program on the origin of life, but I have read your summary posted at you website.I am writing to explain that there is a fourth option besides the ones you have mentioned. From the late Fifties a group of world-wide researchers led by Sidney W. Fox have been investigating a system based on amino acids and proteinaceous material. Details of their work can be found in _Molecular Biology and the Origin of Life_, Revised Edition, by Sidney W. Fox and Klaus Dose (Marcel Dekker Inc, New York, 1977) and at the following website:<www.siu.edu/~protocell/>. They have established by experiment that amino acids can be made from aqueous mixtures of formaldehyde and ammonia when heated. Formaldehyde is not only a common organic compound in the universe, it can also be made from gaseous or aqueous mixtures of carbon dioxide and water stimulated by UV or ionizing radiation, and even today ammonia is still being released from tectonic spreading zones and hydrothermal vents. They have also experimentally demonstrated that anhydrous mixtures of amino acids can when heated selectively polymerize into nonrandom polypeptides called proteinoids, which possess specific reproducible sequences and display some form of catalytic activity. They have also demonstrated experimentally that these proteinoids can form microspheres when rehydrated. These microspheres are further demonstrated to possess biological membranes and an integrated metabolic system, as well as demonstrating growth, reproduction, the ability to respond to external stimuli, the ability to replicate nonrandom functional polypeptides using information-laden templates (proteinoids), the ability to capture and store light energy, the ability to use that energy to form nonrandom polynucleotides using proteinoids as templates, the ability to use polynucleotides as templates to make nonrandom polypeptides, and even the ability to create an electrical potential across the membrane. While these microspheres do not resemble modern cells, they nonetheless possess all the properties that a hypothetical protocellular organism would have, and so would themselves qualify as a simulated protocellular organism. None of the other options have the same amount of experimental support that these protocells have, and none of them have the same degree of continuity from simple chemicals to living primitive organism. I would urge you and your colleagues to examine them carefully as possibly the best model for how life originated on earth. Kevin L. O'Brien
Autocatalytic rings in a primordial soup. Plus a LONG LONG LONG LONGLONG LONG LONG LONG LONG TIME.
| |
|
The Science Friday® Web site is a production of ScienCentral, Inc. Executive web producer: Ira Flatow Web producer: Charles Bergquist |