Before I start, i know this is a HUGE topic, and i am just here looking for some opinions.
I was talking to some people about evolution, and this question popped up.
I remember years back, they found that rock at the South Pole that came from the planet Mars. While it was being studying in a lab, some wack scientist did this chemical reaction thing and thought he found the proof of life on Mars.
Althoug it was later dismissed, my question is that the first sign of “life” seemingly is defined as that chemical reaction. the most basic form of life is just a reaction?? and does that mean that life probably started just by pure accident?
Okay, stay with me on this one. If “life” was just an accident reaction, and if evolution is just continuing reactions, then aren’t humans just a resulf of a mere chemical reaction? If so, then all we are saying here, and disscusing on this forum is just chemical reactions in my brain that is sparking these questions that are meaningless. Because all was just an accident?
So the beginning of life, is there really life, or are we all still this product of a 4.5billion year chain reaction?
I’ve allways wanted to believe that despite the fact that her actions would suggest otherwise, my sister was (amazingly) actually “intended”; not accidental.
Matter expanded from the singularity, matter clumped together due to gravity; stars, soalr systems and galaxies formed. Energy continued to change upon a specific lump of matter (and throughout the universe, but for our purposes, just this lump will do), life, life with brains, humans.
To some extent chemical, but not entirely.
We are just the reult of energy changing state. This leads to a rather deterministic view of life, however, this is what science gives us.
The chain reaction is a good bit older, though it is certainly life. If you mean the chain reaction of the evolution of life on this planet, you have the general idea in terms of time.
I am not sure what you are tying to get at.
What have we not been able to create?
Life? We have cloning and if you mean for humans specifically, then we have not done so though we have the theories to do so, we just have not tried them. Not to say that they would work, though the possibility is there.
Or do you mean to imply that we have not proven this change of energy that resulted in our existence? If so, i must disagree.
Perhaps, and more likly, I have missed your point. Maybe you could explain what you mean in more definate terms.
life is in fact just a very complicated chemical reaction going on in a multi layer multi membraned cathalitic vat that is your body. arguably its quantically relevant, but we have no real proof of it.
which is to mean that any molecularly identical vat would be an identical you (not in any subjective way, just in the sense we couldnt tell the two of you apart)
nobody knows how to take the heavy elements spewed from stars, put them in a vat on early earth and make bacterium from scratch. nobody has any clue what zapped the spark in there.
the thing that was created, and what i want to know about, is an attraction between a pile of dna and food particles. i guess it would just be like some kind of froth buildin gup at the top of some volcano vent. the froth particles got more and more efficient in their chemical reactions, and used the dna chain to reproduce their new efficient shapes.
whatever, its easy to speculate that, but science has no clue how to recreate it. unlike pretty much everything else we have ever seen.
There are various theories about the origins of life, all of which have holes in them. The jury is still out and a verdict isn’t expected anytime soon.
Organic matter can, under certain circumstances, be formed from inorganic matter. Almost half a century ago, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey proved this in their classic experiment.
Since then, organic molecules have also been found in space. The question seems to be how a collection of organic molecules became “alive”. The question is being tackled from many sides, and important fields are biochemistry (of course), complexity theory, thermodynamics and exobiology.
A key ingredient seems to be that the first lifeforms must have been capable to synthesize their own food, since there were no other lifeforms for them to eat. Photosynthesis would probably be too advanced, so a lot of scientists believe that chemosynthesis did the trick (for instance, near oceanic hot vents). So we’re supposedly talking about a lifeform capable of utilizing an external, inorganic energy source in order to synthesize complex organic molecules from less complex ones and inorganic ones.
As for which came first, DNA did not. RNA has been proven to possess self-catalytic activity (the discovery of which earned Sidney Altman and Thomas Cech the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). This doesn’t prove that RNA preceded proteins, but merely that RNA seems to have been the first nucleic acid to enter the scene. “Naked” RNA is very vulnerable, however, so there probably was a co-evolution (if you can call it that) of RNA and proteins.
This is a perfect example of emergent properties. After a certain degree of organization, new properties (ie life) “emerges” seemingly out of now where. So in essence, we are chemical reactions, but we are also atoms and subatomic particles. To break down life into its parts is the essence of science and biology, but it also encounters several difficulties.
In the end, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The biological chemical reactions are merely controlled processes which bring order from disorder. Life is anti-physics. While the universe is moving towards disorder, the small minority on Earth attempts to create order. What a paradox
as towander stated in some other thread, the local order surge is in fact just a more efficient way to convey energy, ie increase the total disorder. forcing a bit, to use your own terms, life is the fastest way to go from order to disorder, and the more complex the faster.
