Something I don't understand...

[Dr.GH]

There are two good websites that provide accessable information on the origin og the universe,

Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial

And, The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

The best book on the origin of life is by Iris Fry, The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview (2000, Rutgers University Press). It is only ~6 years old but there are already tons of new material results.

 

[Lignoba]

Basically an easier way to look at it is to view the entirity of eternity nto as a time line, but mroe of as a time cirlcle with no beginning and no end. The Big Bang is the initial burst of energy taht starts a new universe, and it sends all matter soaring through the universe, but when the gravity that held everythign together stops everything and begins to pull it back, we begin what is called the Big Crunch, where all matter is packed back into that original ball that started the universe, where a new universe begins with the matter used in the old universe.

At least thats the theory.

 

[dad]

No, not really, it was just a parody of you. You make up this stuff such as maybe the laws of the universe were different back then, but refuse to consider other ramifications of such things.

Actually, it was quite a common idea not that long ago, that maybe somehow the universe may collapse 'back' in on itself, and turn into the speck again, and do the whole thing all over!!! I still meet people who think that, who haven't heard, if I have it right there, that that idea is now quite passe! So even if you were pulling our leg with weird imagination, you can't out weird the sci guys!

 

[Trillian]

There are two good websites that provide accessable information on the origin og the universe,

Ned Wright's Cosmology Tutorial

And, The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

The best book on the origin of life is by Iris Fry, The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview (2000, Rutgers University Press). It is only ~6 years old but there are already tons of new material results.

Thanks. I'm going to start reading through those websites.

 

[Trillian]

Is it just me or are most of the people answering me very young?? I don't remember high school science being so good that at 17 and 18 years old I could handle a conversation on this topic. Of course, I skipped a lot of high school... probably why I'm here now

 

[dad]

Basically an easier way to look at it is to view the entirity of eternity nto as a time line, but mroe of as a time cirlcle with no beginning and no end.

Why would we have to do that? How is it that you think you can rule out a beginning and an end? Any particular reason we have to spin our wheels uselessly for eternity here, going round and round, That sounds like circular reasoning if I ever heard any!!

 

[TeddyKGB]

I'm not an all out creationist: I haven't really made up my mind yet, but I do believe that dad makes a point when he says it's easy to just say that there were different laws at the early moments of the universe. It doesn't seem much more scientific than any creationist theories.

It is not the case that cosmologists just "say" that the laws were different. The "laws" are little more than mathematical abstractions; the equations that represent them return undefined values when presented with extremely small time and distance.

 

[Lignoba]

Why would we have to do that? How is it that you think you can rule out a beginning and an end? Any particular reason we have to spin our wheels uselessly for eternity here, going round and round, That sounds like circular reasoning if I ever heard any!!

Because thats the only way I can think of as to how the universe started, that it didnt start, but has always been and will always be.

 

[TeddyKGB]

The story that I wrote down earlier, which I'm pretty sure was Pasteur now that you've said the name, only proved that complex life forms can only come from life that already exists, right?

Right.

So, does that mean that very simple life forms can come from proper conditions w/ no life? In other words, are we today getting new simple life forms that are 'spontaneously generating'?

No. While we may, through trial-and-error perhaps, re-create the requisite environment, we are going to be hard-pressed to duplicate the conditions - a billion years or so, a surfeit of organic chemicals, and several million square kilometers of water - that helped produce the first self-replicators.

 

[dad]

Right.

No. While we may, through trial-and-error perhaps, re-create the requisite environment, we are going to be hard-pressed to duplicate the conditions - a billion years or so, a surfeit of organic chemicals, and several million square kilometers of water - that helped produce the first self-replicators.

Ha.

 

[dad]

Because thats the only way I can think of as to how the universe started, that it didnt start, but has always been and will always be.

I understand trying to imagine how it came to be all by it's lonesome is a mind melter!
I am fortunate to have the creation of the world, and the garden as a starting point. No spinning required. I don't even have to squish the entire universe into a little speck that could fit on the head of a pin.

 

[Alex1210]

Basically an easier way to look at it is to view the entirity of eternity nto as a time line, but mroe of as a time cirlcle with no beginning and no end. The Big Bang is the initial burst of energy taht starts a new universe, and it sends all matter soaring through the universe, but when the gravity that held everythign together stops everything and begins to pull it back, we begin what is called the Big Crunch, where all matter is packed back into that original ball that started the universe, where a new universe begins with the matter used in the old universe.

At least thats the theory.

Unfortunately, you are a little off. While this may have been a popular theory 10 or 15 year ago, it is no longer accepted. Projects have shown that the energy density of the universe is not large enough to cause collapse, and counterintuitively it seems the universe is actually accelerating in it's expansion. "Dark Energy" is evoked to give this phenomena a name. Many theories about how this occur require such an energy to be present in space itself.

 

[Alex1210]

Right.

No. While we may, through trial-and-error perhaps, re-create the requisite environment, we are going to be hard-pressed to duplicate the conditions - a billion years or so, a surfeit of organic chemicals, and several million square kilometers of water - that helped produce the first self-replicators.

There is an even better explanation for why new life is not constantly being created. The current ideas of how life began involve self-replicating RNA. The thing is that RNA is not stable enough in an oxygen rich atmosphere, like we have today. When life first appeared there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. (The oxygen was put there by plant-like organisms)

 

[TeddyKGB]

There is an even better explanation for why new life is not constantly being created. The current ideas of how life began involve self-replicating RNA. The thing is that RNA is not stable enough in an oxygen rich atmosphere, like we have today. When life first appeared there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. (The oxygen was put there by plant-like organisms)

Well, the atmosphere is actually the least problematic of the primordial conditions to replicate.

 

[Beastt]

I'm going to leave the Big Bang for those more versed in the theory. But I will attempt to put you a little closer to the idea when it comes to abiogenesis.

Firstly, as has already been stated, the idea that life cannot come from non-life is wide-spread, but wrong. Since non-life can come from life, it seems completely natural to me that the inverse is also true. In fact, the name "abiogenesis" literally means life from non-life.

Most of what I'm going to cover comes from ongoing research under the direction of a guy named Jack Szostak. If you find any of what I offer interesting, a better understanding can be had by typing his name into a search engine and checking out the links. The goal of this research is to recreate an environment which could have existed naturally on a younger Earth and to put together actual living organisms without using any biological material. And while they've not yet succeeded, I find the progress they have made to be not only fascinating but highly encouraging.

Firstly we need to make sure that no one is expecting an antelope to spring up from a petri dish full of mud. That's not what we're talking about at all. We're talking about the most simplistic life form which is far less sophisticated than the microbes most of us are familiar with today. Many seem to believe that the most simple form of life would still require DNA, a membrane, mitochondria and a whole list of other relatively sophisticated structures. This is simply not true. The simplest form of life could be as ordinary as a droplett of oil containing genetic matter. And this is the focus of Szostak's current work.

He starts with a tiny droplett of fatty acids. Fatty acids are known to form naturally in nature and they are non-biological. These tiny dropletts which they refer to as "vesicles" will be the body of our biological creation. Because it isn't water soluable, it can act as both the membrane and body to our cell. But now we need some genetic material inside our cell. Attempting to do this lead to an interesting discovery. There is a naturally existing form of soil, a clay actually, called "montmorillonite clay". It was found that when this clay existed in close proximity to the vesicles of fatty acids and some of the basic building blocks of genetic material called "nucleotides", that the clay acted as a catalyst to draw the nucleotides into the vesicle. So now we have these bits of genetic building blocks inside our little droplet. It might help you to think of this as tiny bits of magnetized iron power inside a drop of oil.

So what would happen if we had tiny magnetized bits of iron powder inside a drop of oil? The magnets would do what magnets do. They would align themselves as the laws of physics would demand -- north pole to south pole and south pole to north pole. But of course, we're talking about nucleotides and not magnets. But nucleotides are chemicals and chemicals will react to other chemicals in consistent and predictable ways. Science has known for a long time that nucleotides will self-assemble into protein strands and though the strands which form inside these vesicles so far are far less sophisticated than DNA, they're not terribly far behind RNA. And RNA is known to be able to self-replicate.

So all we need now is the ability for these vesicles to divide and for the genetic material they hold to replicate and we have something which might be classified as living. From there, evolution takes over and begins making changes to the genetic strands inside the vesicles and we're on our way.

Again, I should state that these tiny units aren't yet considered living. But they have been observed to compete with one another for genetic material in true Darwinian fashion. Hence they demonstrate Darwinian Competition. And if the solution they're in is sloshed around near a porous material such as pumice stone, the pumice can strain them, causing them to break up and therefore, replicated. Once split in two, they rely upon the natural catalystic nature of the clay to provide them with more nucleotide material.

Hopefully, this is easy enough to follow and I didn't make too many errors along the way. I read an article about this about 2-years ago in a magazine and I've looked at a couple of websites since. But I, in no way, claim to hold an intimate understanding of the processes involved. Hence, I may have misrepresented tiny steps along the way but this should give you the basic idea. I should also make it clear that this isn't necessarily the way it happened or the only way it might have happened. It's simply one possibility.

 

[dad]

Since non-life can come from life, it seems completely natural to me that the inverse is also true. In fact, the name "abiogenesis" literally means life from non-life.

Seeming natural to you is one thing, but as you say so far, it is only an idea. Dead things come from living things, because death and decay exist. I don't see how that means living things must come from dead things.

...The goal of this research is to recreate an environment which could have existed naturally on a younger Earth ...

Could have existed is one way to put it. But think about it, did they have a team of top scientists, aiding and abbetting the mix in the tube, in this best of imagined conditions for making it happen back then? After many many years of working on this stuff, if they ever gwt it right, I find it amusing one would look at the result as an accident?

The simplest form of life could be as ordinary as a droplett of oil containing genetic matter.

Hopefully, we can stick it in a primordial pond, and have it at least crawl out?

.. Fatty acids are known to form naturally in nature and they are non-biological. These tiny dropletts which they refer to as "vesicles" will be the body of our biological creation.

Well put, creation!

.. It was found that when this clay existed in close proximity to the vesicles of fatty acids and some of the basic building blocks of genetic material called "nucleotides", that the clay acted as a catalyst to draw the nucleotides into the vesicle.

Granny had a clay fetish?

So all we need now is the ability for these vesicles to divide and for the genetic material they hold to replicate and we have something which might be classified as living.

Still, there seems to be more to it.
"Scientists have long been fascinated by how living cells are able to replicate DNA using building blocks floating randomly inside the cell’s nucleus. The interior of the nucleus is filled with a gel-like liquid known as nucleoplasm. The DNA building blocks, known as nucleotides, float around in this liquid like ingredients in a molecular soup. Also present in the nucleoplasm are proteins known as polymerases, which pluck nucleotides from the soup as needed when copying DNA." Just sounds like it all is no accident to me.
http://www.livescience.com/technology/050928_dna_robots.html

From there, evolution takes over and begins making changes to the genetic strands inside the vesicles and we're on our way.

Then we would need to chat about the time needed.

..if the solution they're in is sloshed around near a porous material such as pumice stone, the pumice can strain them, causing them to break up and therefore, replicated. Once split in two, they rely upon the natural catalystic nature of the clay to provide them with more nucleotide material.

Hmm, God made man of clay, coincidence? Later, some men got sloshed. We're close on this!

 

[MQTA]

If Lucretius sees this, he can explain the details.

But no, the basic understanding is not that there was nothing at all. In fact the basic understanding is that all the energy which makes up the universe today existed when the big bang was initiated. But it existed in an infinitesimely small point. The big bang is not an explosion--it is the expansion of that point into a much larger volume. The expansion created space, time and matter.

What I don't get is, what was in its physical place in space prior? How can it expand when there's nothing to expand into.

I'd rather think the universe is how it is, and no matter how far back in time human vision can go, it's still the same universe. We make an awful lot of assumptions from the point of view this planet gives us of the rest of the universe.

If we can see back 13.7 billion years, based upon how far we think the furthest point of light we've ever seen, then I would imagine that 13.7 billion years ago, or if we were to be 13.7 billion light years from THIS location in the universe, that the universe would look quite different than we think we see now. If we were back 13.7 billion years, we may still see the light that took 13.7 billion years to reach us. If we go 13.7 billion light years from here, we'd have a whole different view of the universe.

I guess we just can't accept that the universe, for all intents and purposes, has been here all along. It's life that's transitory.

Same for expansion and contraction... it's only a point of view that we think we see it and a comparison of mere earth years dividied by 13.7 billion years minimum.

If we were to observe the tektonic plates from the center and bottom of the atlantic, we'd think this planet is expanding, too.

I think we have a lot of wrong assumptions based upon short time frames. Like the weather patterns, we watch them for what, 118 years, and then make all sorts of predictive models. 118 years out of 4.5 billion years isn't enough to make a prediction. Same for the ozone hole, how do we know it doesn't belong there and has a 1 billion open/close cycle? We're judging from a few decades of observation.

 

[MQTA]

Thanks, lucretius. Your answer made perfect sense...

I guess my real question is the abiogenesis part. My understanding (from 6th grade science class) is that life doesn't come from no life. What I remember was a story where maggots found on rotton meat was the example. I guess people used to think that the rotting meat produced maggots (life from no life) and then someone, who I imagine is famous enough that I should know his name, put two pieces of rotten meat in containers, one w/ access available for flies and one w/ air but no access, and the one w/ no access did not produce maggots. The conclusion being, obviously, that life comes from life, i.e. the maggots came from the flies and not the rotten meat.

So- once upon a time, there was a rock and somewhere along the line that rock became a planet that is beaming w/ life of all kinds. How did that happen?

Thanks.

Tril

Maybe the rock was more like an egg. The planet is one living cell. Other rocks aren't fertile eggs, due to the condition and location of where they are from their sun. All the planets get hit by comets and meteors. The comets and meteors contain dna from life elsewhere in the universe, so they're like multicultural sperm flying about the galaxy. They hit mars or jupiter, nothing. They hit Earth and Viola.

Humans take 9 months, Planet Earth takes 999 million years and we're still growing.

 

[MQTA]

So, does that mean that very simple life forms can come from proper conditions w/ no life? In other words, are we today getting new simple life forms that are 'spontaneously generating'?

Thanks again...

Tril

Where is there No "Life" on this planet? and what is your definition of "life"?

Is a Rock alive? Does a rock contain "life"? What IS "life"?

When you look at organisms, you view "life". You see a dog, it's alive, breathing, moving, barking. But is that the "life", or just a conglomeration term for all that's living, combined, to make the dog? But if you telescope, or microscope, as it may be, from the overall view of the dog, what do you see?

You have an unseen and probably as yet unknown amount of other 'life' that we'd consider 'living', within the dog. All sorts of arachnid type creatures, parasites maybe, germs, bacteria, viruses, blood cells. Atoms. Is an Atom by itself Alive? Or does it have "life"? If there's "motion" or 'energy', is it "life"? If you examine the atom, do we not think we see a nucleus and then electrons orbitting? That's motion, that's "life".

Do we think an egg is alive? What about a sperm? Under a microscope, they sure look 'alive', or have some sort of 'life' to them.

Like your fresh meat and maggots... the Earth is in that airtight container and there are no maggots, nor flies. But if one got in, viola... maggots. Earth was sitting here minding it's own business and along comes a comet filled with debris from other planets. Maybe with life, maybe not. But it's made up of SOMETHING. We don't know "how it works", but on the scale of the universe, we look at Earth and look backwards. Earth may be just one point along the way.

Everything just gets recycled. The Earth is just in the middle of a long chain of events going back further than we'll ever know. We don't know a lot of things, but that doesn't change the existance, function and reality of the situation.

We may just never have the ability to figure out the reality, but it sure does WORK just like it's gonna.


Does any of this make any sense?

 

[MQTA]

Unfortunately, you are a little off. While this may have been a popular theory 10 or 15 year ago, it is no longer accepted. Projects have shown that the energy density of the universe is not large enough to cause collapse, and counterintuitively it seems the universe is actually accelerating in it's expansion. "Dark Energy" is evoked to give this phenomena a name. Many theories about how this occur require such an energy to be present in space itself.

I think the expansion is just a visual problem. From our spot in this universe it only looks like we're expanding. If the universe is the totality of all that is, there's no Place to Expand to. If there's no boundaries, it just keeps going, or maybe the universe is spherical, but that still gives an 'other side'. Who knows. We're pretty much all bound to this planet, this solar system, this galaxy. If humans ever make it beyond the solar system, perhaps some day some generation will know, but it'll be surely after all of us here are gone, even the ones who are just pregnant now.

So for all intents and purposes, the universe just is exactly what it is, much larger than I'm going to explode my brains on