A Question on Abiogenesis

[RecoveringYuppy]

The universe has no problem with pi. Anything digital does. Ergo, the universe is not a digital thing.

Hmmm. Not sure I'm convinced by that reasoning. Where does pi actually manifest in any direct way? Don't spherical areas containing mass actually differ from our idealized formulas? Have we ever measured any real life circle accuately enough to completely rule out the possibility that their radius and circumference aren't quanitized on some scale?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I think eukaryotes arose far too late in the day to tell us much about life's origins.

Panspermia is about life continuing to arrive, not just a single event having occurred.

If you take the hypothesis life arrived once, then again, what is the evidence life had a better chance of getting started in some extra-terrestrial condition as opposed to beginning here?

If there was some reason to investigate conditions off the planet, then people should pursue that line of investigation. It seems to me we haven't exhausted the line of investigation using the conditions present on Earth 3.5 billion years ago. I would like to know what the advantage might have been elsewhere. Do we have any evidence just which conditions are more likely favorable for biogenesis? And if so, were they conditions present on Earth in the past or not?

 

[Rodney]

You know, your question about what preceded the Big Bang, Rodney, indicates that you have a misconception about it. Cosmologists say, "the observable universe was the size of a pea," and people tend to forget that the universe is infinite, or at least that as far as we can tell there's none of the indications we'd expect to see if it wasn't. And no matter how much you compress the matter, it remains so. It's just the universe as far as we can see- as far as light has had a chance to move since things started- that's finite. So that's not the whole universe squeezed down to the size of a pea- it's infinite, it's always been infinite (at least since the beginning of the Big Bang), and nothing can change that. You've got a picture of a universe the size of a pea, and that just never happened- it was very hot, very dense, and under enormous pressure, but it was still infinite even then.

How do you suppose random forces brought about an infinite universe?

 

[Z]

I haven't read the whole thread, so my apologies if this has been dealt with already. But what is the contemporary view of the life that forms around deep sea volcanic events? Is that life dormant and waiting for the heat and sulfer to appear? Or does it spontaneously form from the raw elements around these vents?

If it does spontaneously form, wouldn't that consist of sufficient evidence of a mechanism for abiogenesis?

Pardon my ignorance; I am ill-read on the subject.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

No one knows of any that spontaneously form there.

Why do you ask about them being dormant?

 

[Z]

No one knows of any that spontaneously form there.

Why do you ask about them being dormant?

Because I don't know...

At these deep points, the pressure and lack of heat/light seem, to me, to be rather a setback to anything being alive at all; but at these geothermal vents, they find all sorts of isolated life that cannot leave the neighborhood of the vents. So either the life was lying dormant somehow, or the life spontaneously formed from raw elements... That would be my guess, the latter.

But like I said, I haven't read much, and what I've found tonight doesn't give me much in the way of clues either.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

Well, Giant tube worms, for example, are an advanced life form related to other tubeworms that live on the sea floor but not near vents. They don't arise from raw elements. They reproduce like other life.

 

[Z]

Well, Giant tube worms, for example, are an advanced life form related to other tubeworms that live on the sea floor but not near vents. They don't arise from raw elements. They reproduce like other life.

What about life that lives in the heavy sulphur-laden water around the vents, that IIRC cannot live away from them?

...keeping in mind this could also be a case of piss-poor memory at work...

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

I'm not aware of any that can't be related to other species or whose life cycle can't be identified (as in they just pop up out of nowhere). Have a particular example in mind?

There are a lot of species that are adapted to unique environments. These happen to be adapted to one that's also extreme, in addition to being unique.

 

[Schneibster]

How do you suppose random forces brought about an infinite universe?

Read my last five posts. Google anything you don't understand. Then you will know.

Do you have some reason for keeping on asking the same questions over and over when they've already been answered? I thought you said you had an open mind. It doesn't really much look that way when you keep pretending you haven't gotten an answer that everyone else thinks you got.

 

[Dancing David]

I haven't read the whole thread, so my apologies if this has been dealt with already. But what is the contemporary view of the life that forms around deep sea volcanic events? Is that life dormant and waiting for the heat and sulfer to appear? Or does it spontaneously form from the raw elements around these vents?

If it does spontaneously form, wouldn't that consist of sufficient evidence of a mechanism for abiogenesis?

Pardon my ignorance; I am ill-read on the subject.

The life around vents usualy starts as pelagiac plankton, it floats around until it find a suitable eniviroment. I think.

 

[Dancing David]

How do you suppose random forces brought about an infinite universe?

We don't know, and randomness has an implication of constraint. The electron is random in it's shell but it needs energy to change it's shell.

But we can't know, isn't that grand?

 

[CapelDodger]

What about life that lives in the heavy sulphur-laden water around the vents, that IIRC cannot live away from them?

That's really no different from organisms that can't live away from oxygen or light. They're adapted to exploit a particular environment. In their most basic features - DNA/RNA, ribosomes, the usual amino acids, lipuid membranes and so on - there's nothing special about them.

As it happens, I think it's very likely that the undersea vent environment, the Black Smokers, played an important role in abiogenesis. Such primitive life will have been lunch to the sophisticated life that's evolved since in a much larger environment. Sophisticated life snaps up nutrients before they get much of a chance to interact randomly.

 

[Soapy Sam]

One point rarely mentioned is this:- If
1. Life is a process.
and
2. That process either started once, or started and failed several times before sustaining itself,
Then that process, life , has been continuously running ever since, leaping from vehicle to vehicle, expanding in number and complexity.

There may be something about the process itself which is qualitatively different from other chemical reactions. It is also conceivable that the process itself is subject to an evolutionary process. It has, for example, spun off mentation and consciousness. It may have other tricks in potentia.

 

[steenkh]

One point rarely mentioned is this:- If
1. Life is a process.
and
2. That process either started once, or started and failed several times before sustaining itself,
Then that process, life , has been continuously running ever since, leaping from vehicle to vehicle, expanding in number and complexity.

This has hardly gone on unnoticed. After all, that is why we talk about "evolution".

There may be something about the process itself which is qualitatively different from other chemical reactions.

An "emergent" quality. It could be called that.

It is also conceivable that the process itself is subject to an evolutionary process. It has, for example, spun off mentation and consciousness. It may have other tricks in potentia.

Mentation and consciousness like life itself may have appeared many times before but could have been destroyed by predators or natural disasters before these processes were so developed or numerous that they could cope effectively with such hazards.

If we are talking about abiogenesis, I do not think that new kinds of abiogenesis will happen any more, because the already existing life forms will simply eat up any new nutrient/building blocks before they have time to assemble themselves to something that can survive.

 

[VonNeumann]

You're confusing the map with the territory. The map is digital; the territory is analog.
...
No, it's because we can't measure with infinite precision.
...
The evidence is contrary to your view. I have to go with the evidence.

I was saying you were confusing the tools with reality - you say I'm confusing the map with the territory. Okay - it's a standoff: we each accuse the other of the same sin. Interesting.

It is also interesting that you say we can't measure infinite precision - and of course that is correct, but then you claim evidence is contrary to my view. You just said you can't measure it - that means you cannot have evidence one way or the other. You don't recognize that as a non-sequiter?

 

[VonNeumann]

And hopefully those great minds agree that GR implies analog, QM implies not-analog.

I understand why you say that, but it was relativity, particularly the twin paradox, where I first thought that digital philosophy could be used to explain it.

 

[VonNeumann]

We do that because it gives us the right results, when compared with what the universe actually does. The Earth's weather is in principle not computable digitally, and yet the universe gets it right every moment. Flawlessly. Never varying from the actual outcome by an iota. And that's just one thing the universe does, quite minor in comparison to the churnings of the Sun. That's where Relativity, with its smooth variance of time and space dimensions, has a significant contribution to make. Which is not to say that the universe doesn't make a very accurate job of incorporating Relativity's insignificant effect on Earth's weather.

The universe has no problem with pi. Anything digital does. Ergo, the universe is not a digital thing.

Certainly continuous mathematics gives good approximations. Let's look at an example such as the fourier analysis of periodic functions. If the periodic function is discontinuous or has discontinuities in any order of derivative, it requires an infinite amount of terms (harmonics) or an infinite amount of computation if simulated. Nature doesn't make such functions though, and neither can we produce them (but we can imagine them).

I don't know how to respond to "the universe has no problem with pi. Anything digital does." But I'll mention that a circle fit inside an assumed universe of 50B light-years radius, with precision down to a planck length would require about 62 significant digits. ...Not an infinite amount of precision but 60 something digits of precision. And we don't know that the universe has to ever make a 'perfect circle' that big, or some equivalent requirement for that much precision. But even with that much precision, does the granularity ever show up? I'll suggest an answer later.

You said "...smooth variance of time and space dimensions" with respect to relativity - that's an assumption. ...Albeit a common assumption and probably an assumption that is what makes the joining of GR theory with QM theory intractable. That is a conclusion, the fact that we need to get away from the smooth space-time assumption, I'm reading from some theorists (like from Lee Smolin for instance).

If you subscribe to Gregory Chaitin's view, real numbers have no reality except as ideal concepts. Since an analog universe relies upon the 'reality' of 'real numbers', then if real numbers cannot manifest as a property of any physical thing, the whole idea of space-time continuum is false. Funny that Zeno suggested that more than 2000 years ago. How could he have known?

Back to my question - even with very fine granularity vs continuum, would granularity show up? Do you think that the unpredictability of weather could be an 'artifact' of granularity? ... of finite precision? How about turbulence?

I think so. I think turbulence is one example of evidence for discrete space-time.

 

[Schneibster]

I was saying you were confusing the tools with reality - you say I'm confusing the map with the territory. Okay - it's a standoff: we each accuse the other of the same sin. Interesting.

No, we're not. You'd like to represent it that way, but can only do so by ignoring 90% of what I wrote and chopping it up like this. If you have answers, make them- this game is for suckers, and I'm not playing. Answer what I wrote, not what you want to and ignore the rest, or I will stop talking to you. Your choice.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

@schneibster

Originally Posted by hammegk

And hopefully those great minds agree that GR implies analog, QM implies not-analog.

Have you commented on hammegk's quote above?

My experience in QM is confined to transistors and such where boundary conditions are easily identified. In an unbounded universe, would there be a finite set of occupiable quantum states?