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Re: Creating Life.
i posted this in here last year or year before...
funny how he needed a real cell as his model and a computer generated reconfiguration of dna messages (that they had to study in order to replicate)----
yet people like the guy in the video claim life is no big deal or great mystery...if it took this much intelligence to mimic a real cell (and they have not created their own cell casing-they just re-used a previously functioning natural cell);
how can they claim life is not intelligent design?
this seems to contradict that...
especially when you take into account that it takes billions of cells working in precise cooperation to operate huge multi-organ life forms -
Re: Creating Life.
So if they come up with life in a laboratory and make it from inert chemicals is that not creating life? Yes it is one cell but that one cell went on to grow millions of new cells.
That is the beginning of life.
The complexity of an organism like man was evolved over millions of years so the fact that man has been able to create a living cell of very complex structure yet only have the first piece of an entire creature is not the important issue.
The issue is that man has done what only God was thought to be able to do.
Create life.
It may be intelligent design but man put it all together in this lab and not God.
There is no doubt that science will build on this first step to create living organisms and most likely (Kurzweil) by the 2030's.Comment
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Re: Creating Life.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">how can they claim life is not intelligent design?
this seems to contradict that... </div></div>
the short answer is they are not trying to use random, natural spontaneous convergence over terrific spans of time.
there is more than enough evidence to plausibly suggest life began just like that.Comment
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Re: Creating Life.
there is absolutely nothing random about the genetic sequence...
anyone who sees anything random in this is hell-bent on maintaining that type of philosophy...
it is clearly a carefully controlled environment calculated to achieve the outcome which they did...
they have not shown how this could have happened randomly unless computers were designed to create random solutions rather than carefully thought out complex logarithmsComment
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Re: Creating Life.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">So if they come up with life in a laboratory and make it from inert chemicals is that not <span style="font-weight: bold">creating life</span>? Yes it is one cell but that one cell went on to grow millions of new cells.
That is the beginning of life.</div></div>
i thought you say that life was not <span style="font-weight: bold">created</span>...otherwise that leads you to the word <span style="font-weight: bold">creator</span>...
then again they sometimes picture god as an older man with white hair & white beard so venter could be god of a new species----
once we see what this species is;
next step-
create life independently without using anything from the un-intelligent designer who/which they are trying to emulate;
that means take materials from nature & create your own cell...
don't remove the nucleus from a previous cell...
just create it from scratch as the original did it....or create an environment where it happens spontaneously;
this story has not been bigger because the human mind knows they have not really created life...
and their painstaking intellectual quest to create life further makes their contention that it is un-intelligent rather curiousComment
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Re: Creating Life.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">there is absolutely nothing random about the genetic sequence...
anyone who sees anything random in this is hell-bent on maintaining that type of philosophy...
it is clearly a carefully controlled environment calculated to achieve the outcome which they did...
they have not shown how this could have happened randomly unless computers were designed to create random solutions rather than carefully thought out complex logarithms </div></div>
what has been proven, is that it is plausible that life began from simple structures, which can spontaneously combine on their own, and then evolved into more and more complicated structures and forms.
if what you said was true, we would find examples of irreducible complexity.
we do not.
not a single example of irreducible complexity has ever been found.
the evidence and observations made present enough information to form a consensus view that in the early stages of life, the genomes of various organisms WERE fairly random as they began to experience selection pressures, their formation and evolution certainly were not carefully controlled lol, or you wouldn't have "X" amount of broken or non functional genes inherited by you from these earlier life forms. you can't regrow your arm if it got chopped off, but your genetic relative, the salamander still can. You can only perform this feat in the womb.Comment
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Re: Creating Life.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
this story has not been bigger because the human mind knows they have not really created life...
and their painstaking intellectual quest to create life further makes their contention that it is un-intelligent rather curious </div></div>
better strap on your seat belt bredren!Comment
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Re: Creating Life.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: monk</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
this story has not been bigger because the human mind knows they have not really created life...
and their painstaking intellectual quest to create life further makes their contention that it is un-intelligent rather curious </div></div>
better strap on your seat belt bredren! </div></div>
I think I said this before but the coming of the technological milestone we are calling the Singularity is analogous to the roller coaster ride at amusement parks.
It starts out slowly and gradually chugs up that long slow hill to the top at which point everything changes: you get a glimpse of the amazing view and then you're off on the wildest ride of your life.
I think you and I and a relative handful of others have grasped the meaning of Kurzweil's predictions while others seem to go about their way oblivious to the dramatic and unpredictable changes coming in a few short decades.
The other analogy would be rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
I think we'll be throwing away a lot of figurative deck chairs come the Singularity.Comment
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Re: Creating Life.
<span style="font-weight: bold">How Did Life Begin?
A Perspective on the Nature and Origin of Life.
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/2011...#ixzz1K2EmkbV6</span>
Author: Deisler, Paul F
Date published: January 1, 2011
THE EARTH WAS FORMED AROUND 4.6 BILLION YEARS ago, searingly hot and hostile to life. Estimates of how long it took to cool enough for liquid water to appear range from about 200 million (recent estimates) to about 800 million years (earlier estimates).1-2·3 Molecules formed on Earth and in space, among them the building blocks of life, dissolved in the water - but life did not yet exist. Some 1.1 billion years after Earth's birth, or about 3.5 billion years ago, the first living cells to produce fossils that we have so far been able to detect appeared. Life then existed; the remarkable transition from "non-life" to "life" had occurred.
Current scientific detection technology and exploration have not yet found traces within the transition period to show how non-life became life. Research on possible traces is ongoing.4 In the meantime, ideas about the transition include religious beliefs, secular conjectures, and scientific hypotheses. A complete, scientifically proven path through the transition period from non-life to life is still to be worked out to the satisfaction of most scientists. This makes for contention among those with divergent points of view. Among those with views diverging from mainstream science are the proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) creationism. Controversy is particularly heated in the area of the teaching of science, especially evolutionary theory. Here we will focus on what is known scientifically about the nature and origin of life.
The Big Question, and the Gaps that Need Filling
How might the first living cells have formed from a collection of non-living molecules? Even the simplest cell is a marvel of complexity. 5'6,7 It is an exquisitely intricate, self-regulating, chemical nano-machine of a high order that could not have appeared spontaneously and complete out of the water and chemicals in a pond or sea on the early Earth. Thus, in the difficult search for life's origin many matters are yet to be resolved, though the general mechanisms of evolution are clear and well supported. Science is a work in progress and the patience and persistence needed to fill in gaps in knowledge and to understand the results are paramount.
The first gaps to be filled are in the fossil record. The oldest fossils of once living cells are some 3.5 billion years old. They are contained in stromatolites, layered, fossilized deposits of minerals and mat-like colonies of bacteria.8 These fossils cannot be the very first cells since the ability to form and live in complex, competitive yet mutually supportive colonies of chemically intercommunicating cells would have to have been acquired by earlier, separately living cells, possibly dating back to almost 3.8.billion years ago.9
In his exposition of the general mechanics of planetary formation, Douglas Lin notes that the extremely hot early Earth underwent many millions of years of intense, often destructive bombardment by objects from space.10 It was also subject to extreme volcanism and was hostile to life. Later, a cooler Earth underwent a lesser bombardment, continued volcanism, and thereafter liquid water appeared.
On the early Earth, there were plenty of energy sources for chemical reactions; in space, it was supplied and is still supplied by ultraviolet radiation. Many types of molecules were formed naturally on Earth and in space, including the building blocks of life. Molecules formed in space were transported to Earth on dust, ice crystals, meteorites or other spatial objects, as happens today. Extensive studies of the appearance of the key substance - water - on Earth are beautifully summarized in a video made by the National Geographic Society.11 While both terrestrially and spatially formed molecules contributed to the array of molecules on the early Earth, extraterrestrial sources appear to have offered the richer variety of molecules. Molecules probably formed on dust particles in space before Earth existed.
Turning to chemistry at the beginning of the transition period, among the building blocks of life are the amino acids that make up proteins, including enzymes; the components of nucleotides that form ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA); the lipids, important in cell wall structure; and a number of the original elements of the Periodic Table. Nucleotides are made up of nucleobases, certain sugars and phosphates. RNA's nucleobases are adenine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil, and DNA's are the first three listed for RNA with guanine replacing uracil.
Chemical experiments done in laboratories under simulated early earthly conditions,12 under simulated or actual spatial conditions,131415'16,17 or in various current natural environments on Earth; many radio astronomical and spectroscopic observations of matter in space; and the examination of meteorites (especially the extensive examination of the Murchison Meteorite that fell near Murchison, Australia, in 1969) all lead to the conclusion that the building block molecules, including nucleotides, were present on the early Earth (along with many other molecules). Summaries of information on compounds synthesized by natural processes in space are many; among them are slides prepared by Natalia Gontareva18 and a paper by Michael Simakov.19
Once on Earth, the building blocks, in the presence of water, minerals, and other influences could react to form new molecules. Here are just a few examples of reactions of interest in thinking about the origins of life. Jason Bardi20 has shown that amino acids in aqueous solution, catalyzed by carbonyl sulfide, a substance common in volcanic gases, readily form peptides several amino acid units long, a step toward the longer proteins and enzymes. Peptides can replicate themselves.21,22 It is well known that lipids in water self-assemble into double-walled, celllike vesicles, providing possible containers for reactions of nucleotides and amino acids. Researchers have created lipid vesicles, including semi-permeable vesicles containing strips of DNA which, in water, have facilitated the replication of the DNA when nucleotides are also present in the water.23,25,26 Recently, the nucleotide 5'-guanosine monophosphate, found in RNA and composed of guanine, ribose, and phosphate has been found to self-assemble into spiral helixes geometrically reminiscent of the RNA in living cells.27
Various catalysts, organic or inorganic, present on early Earth, may have played important roles. For example, Montmorillonite clays have been found to catalyze reactions leading to the formation of RNA from its nucleotides. Lately these clays have been shown to speed up the formation of lipid vesicles 100-fold and these vesicles can surround and contain RNA absorbed on the clay particles.28
Peptides, proteins, and the components of DNA and RNA self-assemble under a wide variety of conditions into a wide variety of forms in aqueous solution with catalysts present or on certain, catalytic, solid surfaces.29 Whether amino acids and nucleotides can assemble into primitive forms of ribosomes or not is not yet known, nor is it known whether peptides, possibly including some of the amino acids not now found in natural enzymes, can act as primitive enzymes. If such things can happen, then the mutually catalytic molecules required for full replication with variation might have formed soon on the early Earth. Such questions are among those that must be left to future investigations.
While the reactions discussed demonstrate the reacti'/ity of certain building blocks of life and might even suggest starting points for paths from non-life to life they have not yet shown the way to complete paths. Numerous starting points and paths have been suggested and published, one of the most mentioned being the "RNA World" proposal.30 A recent report that a self-sustained replication of an RNA enzyme has been achieved in vitro may prove to be a step toward I inding a complete RNA World path from nonlife to life.31 (For excellent and highly readable sumn aries of the major proposals for paths leading from non-life to life see Stuart Kauffman's Reinventing the Sacred32 and three Wikipedia entries).33,34,35
The Chemistry of Life Today
In 1828, Friedrich Wöhler synthesized urea in his laboratory, a molecule previously synthesized only in living beings. By this act, he demonstrated that no "life force" was required to synthesize such a moler ule and thus the science of synthetic organic chemistry was born. Later, organic chemistry led to biochemistry, the chemistry of life.
The development of the chemistry of life has progressed by leaps and bounds over the last several decades. Merely glancing through recent journals or doing simple online searches reveals many examples of progress. Some examples include the laboratory synthesis and modification of complex molecules of life such as proteins and enzymes; the laboratory synthesis and modification of forms of RNA and DNA; the synthesis of infectious poliovirus in the absence of a natural template;36 a breakthrough in reprogramming cells37; the synthesis by Venter, et al., of the complete, 582,970 base pair genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium 38; and, most amazing, Venter, et al., recently reported the design, synthesis, and assembly of the millionplus base pair genome of Mycoplasma mycoides which, when inserted into M. capricolum cells created new M. mycoides cells that are controlled only by the synthetic insert.39 The new cells were shown to be fully living.
As Rudy M. Baum has written, "biology has in the past four decades become a chemical science."40 The Royal Society of Chemistry, recognizing this, now publishes the journal, Chemical Biology. The day of synthetic biology appears to have dawned.
The well known fact that chemical substances, including both legal and illegal drugs, have effects on our bodies, minds, moods and even our spirits is further, direct proof of our biology's chemical nature. That biology is chemistry is now fact, a fact that means that life, at its base, is chemistry. These facts provide a new outlook and direction, and additional tools, for the search for the beginnings of life.
Backward in Time to Abiogenesis
Many evolutionary steps led up to today's numerous, complex living species. Evolutionary theory is, today, scientifically established beyond anything that Charles Darwin could have dreamed.41, 42, 43 It is therefore reasonable to think that the first cells detected did not just suddenly appear, but that they were a step in the evolutionary chain and that still earlier evolutionary steps led up to them.
Such steps would have to reach backward in time from the first living cells into a period of lifeless (abiotic) chemical evolution that began after the non-living, chemical building blocks of life began to appear. Even the shortest estimate of the length of the transition period, 300 million years, is more than adequate when it is considered that what matters in evolutionary processes is not the amount of time that passes but the number of generations (or their chemical equivalents) that pass. Molecules react very rapidly; single cells reproduce very rapidly.
That abiotic, chemical evolution can occur during the transition period is a key assumption in the proposals made for pathways from non-life to life; but is it possible? The earliest proof that such evolution is possible is found in a series of in vitro experiments that, together, produced something called Spiegelman's Monster and its cousins.
The Lessons of Spiegelman's Monster
In 1961, Sol Spiegelman became interested in how RNA viruses replicate. These viruses consist of a strand of RNA coated with proteins, unlike other viruses that include DNA rather than RNA. An article in Profiles in Science, published by the National Library of Medicine tells what Spiegelman and his co-workers found out.44
In his work, Spiegelman used the Q virus, a bacteriophage that readily invades cells of E-coli. In brief, over a period of several years Spiegelman showed that replication takes place with the aid of an enzyme whose synthesis in the invaded cell is initiated by one of the four proteins that coat the viral RNA. Certain proteins in the invaded cell are brought together by the viral initiator protein to form the enzyme Q replicase. The enzyme proved to be relatively easily isolated. Spiegelman also learned how to remove the protein covering from the RNA, leaving strands of naked RNA. When Spiegelman and his co-workers added strands of this RNA to an aqueous solution in a test tube containing Q replicase plus the nucleotides needed for RNA production, replication of the RNA occurred. This pioneering discovery led to a spate of work by many researchers with the result that much is now known about RNA and its chemistry. Similar work has taken place on DNA and the results have many applications in both cases.
In his masterful narrative of life's history, The Ancestor's Tale, Richard Dawkins summarizes several key experiments, following the replication study by Spiegelman, in which Spiegelman's Monster and its cousins were made.45 Here are two such experiments. In one, Spiegelman repeated the above-described experiment, but with smaller concentrations of the nucleotides present and for shorter spans of time. He prepared a series of over 70 test tubes with the same nucleotide and Q replicase concentrations as in the first test tube. At the end of the set span of time, he added an aliquot (a fractional part of a larger volume) of liquid from the first vessel to the second; after the set span of time, from the second to the third; etc .... At the end of the series, he had produced strands of RNA containing an average of 218 nucleotide units as opposed to an average of 3,600 units in the original strands. The reduced RNA became known as Spiegelman's Monster.
As the experiment proceeded from test tube to test tube, the contents of the tubes were sampled to determine changes in the properties of the RNA. Among the changes noted was that, at each stage, the average length of the RNA strands decreased; also, the RNA became less and less infectious to E-coli. When the average strand length reached 550 nucleotide units, the RNA stopped infecting the E-coli cells altogether. The shorter the strands became, the more rapidly they replicated, thus becoming dominant within the RNA population. Simply put, evolution had occurred in vitro according to the logic of evolution's beautifully simple but inexorable chemical rules. This finding made a great stir in the popular press of the day in the vein of "science creates life," a claim denied by Sol Spiegelman.
Another experiment that Dawkins cites, conducted by Spiegelman and another well-known researcher in the field, Leslie Orgel, was similar to the first except a small amount of ethidium bromide was added to the solution at each stage. This substance, often used as a staining agent, is a mutagen that inhibits viral growth. At the end of the experiment, a cousin to Spiegelman's Monster, approximately as short as the Monster, resulted that was immune to ethidium bromide. Here is an example of abiotic evolution in test tubes in which a characteristic that is protective against a hostile environment was acquired, while other characteristics were lost as the rate of replication increased.
These beautiful and elegant experiments do more than demonstrate that evolution can take place in vitro. Taken together, these experiments provide us with proof of the existence of a chemical system capable of evolving where the participating molecules, the replicase, and the RNA are composed of major building blocks of life and appropriate "nutrients" (the nucleotides) are present. This is the Monster's first lesson.
A study at the University of Florida used a DNA molecule not found in nature.46 Two nucleotides different from the usual four were added to normal DNA to create a six-nucleotide DNA. This DNA, together with a DNA replicase chemically modified to accommodate the six-nucleotide DNA evolved as Spiegelman's RNA had, forming a genetically distant cousin of the Monster.
A second, fundamental lesson that emerges is that when appropriate molecules made of the building blocks of life are brought together under conditions permitting them to react in stages, their chemistry leads to replication with variation in each stage. This result is not controlled by the experimenter-it is a chemical propeity of the system of chemicals.
In a second Florida study DNA synthesized with eight different nucleotides added to the usual four also replicated (its ability to respond to selection is yet to be tested).47 In any event, the original Spiegelman's Monster and its cousins are no longer alone.
Considering all of these findings and the much more complex chemical steps followed by cells as they replicate, vary and are selected by their environment, it is clear that life is a chemical phenomenon and evolution is a chemical process.
None of the evolving systems can be said to be on the path from non-life to life; the replicases are far too evolved to be the original catalysts needed to facilitate travel along that path. However, with the demonstrated existence of chemical systems made up of nembers of the building blocks of life that are capab e of abiotic evolution, a third lesson of Spiegelman's Monster and its cousins is that the scientific search for the possible beginning of the evolution of life is likely to be sucessful if it passes through an abiotic evolutionary stage,
Though RNA and DNA have certain catalytic properties, it appears that another catalytic molecule is required for replication to take place with variation, and the search for the beginning of a path from non-life to life must include finding such catalysts. These might be organic (for example, peptides that may or may not be exclusively made from the amino acids composing today's proteins) or inorganic substances, including minerals.
Life versus Non-life
The experiments by Spiegelman and others show that abiotic evolution occurs. They also raise the question of what "living" means, at least at the cellular level and below. One can write about "living cells," but are they not complex, chemical machines, each of whose components is a non-living molecule?
What we now call "living cells" might better be called "fully functioning, self-regulating, evolutionary, chemical systems." This designation clearly includes what we now think of as systems of chemicals capable of evolution and of sustaining and propagating themselves within their environments, although their appearances and structures might be very different from what we now call a "cell." Here, then, is a general definition of "living" at the level of the cell, and at more primitive levels: an entity is deemed to be "living" if it can obtain its nourishment from its natural environment, is capable of replication with variation, is capable of selection by its environment, and is fully self-propagating in its environment.
Under this definition, Spiegelman's Monster and its cousins are not "living," as Spiegelman noted, because they require the intervention of an experimenter to move aliquots of liquid from stage to stage. However, a virus, whose environment includes the environment of its host cell and the host, itself is "living," under the same definition and the dividing line between "living" and "non-living," at this level, is clear.
Closing in on an Answer
Things are beginning to come together: the knowledge of how the building blocks of life came to be; a rapidly growing understanding of their chemistry and reactivities; the chemical nature of life today; the lessons of Spiegelman's Monster and its cousins; the finding of many extra-solar planets48 (not yet suitable for life as we know it, but that may soon change49,50,51); and the generality of the mechanics of planetary formation. These all point toward a conclusion that what is called "life" and its evolution are natural, chemical phenomena that follow the very complex, amazing but ultimately comprehensible laws of chemistry. "Living" nature must therefore also have likely begun elsewhere in the cosmos and life will therefore prove to be, when we have the means to detect its traces at interstellar distances, sparsely scattered within, but endemic to our galaxy. By inference, it should be scattered throughout our homogeneously expanding, observable and unobservable, universe.52
A new, beautiful, cohesive, sometimes fearsome and still mysterious image of our home begins to emerge. We can no longer consider ourselves unique; rather, we are part of the universe, its processes and its diversity, all the way back to the Big Bang. Belief systems that incorporate values that aid us to live with one another, giving us strength in time of need, do not need to be "real" or "rational" in their entirety. However, they do need to evolve to accept the magnificent reality of the universe as science reveals it to us so that we may find those personal faiths that are so deeply beneficial to us within a developing understanding of our home.53
The GFAJ-1 Microbe
On December 2, 2010, at a press conference at its Washington, D.C. headquarters, NASA announced the discovery of a naturally occurring bacterium in which phosphorus can be replaced by arsenic in macromolecules to yield fully functional new bacteria. Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a fellow in NASA's astrobiology program and a member of the panel of scientists that made the announcement at the NASA press conference, discovered the new bacteria (strain GFAJ-i) in Mono Lake in California, an alkaline lake high in salt and other minerals, including arsenic. Limited, specialized forms of life, such as certain algae, live naturally in the lake.
Meticulous, extensive and detailed in vitro and ancillary analytical studies, using the bacteria from Mono Lake, were made by Felisa Wolfe-Simon and her colleagues.54 These experiments demonstrate that, in the presence of varying amounts of arsenic (as arsenate) and phosphorus (as phosphate), including zero of each, separately, and none of either (a control experiment), along with necessary nutrients, the bacteria grow and multiply, utilizing arsenic in their macromolecules in place of phosphorus when necessary (in the control experiment there was no growth). Arsenic was found in various macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids (thus, in DNA); it was also found in lower molecular weight metabolites. Not reported was whether arsenic replaced phosphorus in the important, energy-producing molecule, ATP, as might be expected for the arsenic-bearing bacteria to function normally.
Arsenic is a chemical analog of phosphorus, lying just below phosphorus in the Periodic Table. Arsenic's atom is more massive than that of phosphorus, but the atomic radii and electronegativities of the two atoms are similar. Both atoms also form similar chemical bonds (though arsenates are less stable than phosphates). It is also known that certain metabolic pathways cannot distinguish phosphates from arsenates. In the light of this, arsenic's utilization in place of phosphorus in macromolecules might be expected. The work of Felisa WolfeSimon and her colleagues confirms this hypothesis. The mechanism of this alternative utilization is not known.
While substitutions of some other atoms of trace elements are well known, such as copper for iron in the blood of certain arthropods, this discovery was a surprise to many who counted phosphorus as one of the absolutely essential six atoms in the structures of the macromolecules of life. This is a major discovery in itself.
New possibilities now arise for the first appearance of life on Earth and the chemistry of life now enters new, unknown territory. Potentially, further research might lead, in time, to knowing what the chemical combinatorial rules or criteria are that are required to form life in the first place. As to extraterrestrial life, this, and what other future studies might find, will at least affect the search for such life by expanding the definition of habitability, and thus make environments such as that found on Saturn's moon Titan much more interesting places to search.
As might be expected, there was much speculation on the web following the news conference, some of it wild, reflecting the intense hope that this discovery inspires. Much is yet to be learned about this new bacterium, however, but it was interesting to learn from the astrobiologist Paul Davies (in a Wall Street Journal opinion editorial) that the GFAJ1 designation stands for Give Felisa a Job, since at the time of its discovery Felisa Wolfe-Simon was struggling to get the funding for her research and still had no academic appointment. Work such as hers could very well lead to a good position and support.
Acknowledgement. My thanks go to my daughter, Julia M. Deisler. Ph.D., a professor of English and a free-lance editor, for editing the semi-final draft of this article. Her corrections and suggestions have greatly clarified and improved the final version.
Skepticism of NASA Claim of Alien Life
As we were going to press a number of scientists began expressing their skepticism of the claims of NASA scientists that they had discovered a new form of life in Mono Lake, specifically a bacteria that apparently replaced phosphorus with arsenic. University of British Columbia microbiologist Rosie Redfield, for example, told Carl Zimmer of the New York Times that she was shocked; "I was outraged at how bad the science was." Redfield promptly penned a critical blog (http://bit.ly/epYgiQ), leading other scientists to chime in. Forest Rohwer from San Diego State University, for example, admitted that, "It would be really cool if such a bug existed," but noted that, in his opinion, "none of the arguments are very convincing on their own." Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado went so far as to tell the New York Times: "This paper should not have been published." Why? According to Harvard microbiologist Alex Bradley, the NASA scientists immersed the DNA from the Mono Lake specimens in water as they analyzed it. The problem with this technique is that arsenic compounds fall apart quickly in water, which means that the bacteria's genes would have fragmented. Since the DNA retained its structure, Bradley believes that this implies phosphate was in place, not arsenic. How could this have happened? Because the NASA scientists were feeding the bacteria salts, which were contaminated with a tiny amount of phosphate. So skeptics argue that it is possible that the bacteria re-incorporated the phosphate back into the structure and thereby displacing the arsenic.
Nevertheless, the NASA scientists are sticking by their original claims, responding to their critics that they would allow science to take its course as other iabs attempt to duplicate their results. This whole process of give and take, in fact, is how science works. Peer review leading to publicationeven in a prestigious journal such as Science-is only the first step. Peer commentary and skepticism, as we witnessed in the weeks following the NASA press conference, is the next normal step, which is now being followed up by additional experiments and research that will, in time, tell us whether or not the original claims were valid.
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/2011...#ixzz1K2EMu5J8Comment
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Re: Creating Life.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: monk</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">there is absolutely nothing random about the genetic sequence...
anyone who sees anything random in this is hell-bent on maintaining that type of philosophy...
it is clearly a carefully controlled environment calculated to achieve the outcome which they did...
they have not shown how this could have happened randomly unless computers were designed to create random solutions rather than carefully thought out complex logarithms </div></div>
what has been proven, is that it is plausible that life began from simple structures, which can spontaneously combine on their own, and then evolved into more and more complicated structures and forms.
if what you said was true, we would find examples of irreducible complexity.
we do not.
not a single example of irreducible complexity has ever been found.
the evidence and observations made present enough information to form a consensus view that in the early stages of life, the genomes of various organisms WERE fairly random as they began to experience selection pressures, their formation and evolution certainly were not carefully controlled lol, or you wouldn't have "X" amount of broken or non functional genes inherited by you from these earlier life forms. you can't regrow your arm if it got chopped off, but your genetic relative, the salamander still can. You can only perform this feat in the womb.
</div></div>
if life were so easy to randomly form & develop, how come you have not discovered life on any of the planets we have observed?
you say the salamander is our 'genetic relative'....
why choose the salamander?
are you not aware that every single living thing on earth is our 'genetic relative'?
so what a salamander can grow a limb?
there are plenty of things we can do which the salamander can not...birds fly...we don't...it's no big deal nor any great mystery of evolution...
i find that term 'irreducible complexity' to be a cop-out...what does it really mean?
anything can be broken down into smaller & smaller parts...
even the cilla on a cell are made up of smaller fibers which are in turn composed of something smaller;
it is simply not prudent to take something plausible completely off the table when one is trying to find the answer to some great mystery...
assuming chance, random origins at the exclusion of all other possibilities is very curious indeed...Comment
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Re: Creating Life.
The Big Question, and the Gaps that Need Filling
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">How might the first living cells have formed from a collection of non-living molecules? <span style="font-weight: bold">Even the simplest cell is a marvel of complexity</span>. 5'6,7 <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-size: 11pt">It is an exquisitely intricate, self-regulating, chemical nano-machine of a high order that could not have appeared spontaneously and complete out of the water and chemicals in a pond or sea on the early Earth.</span></span> <span style="font-style: italic"><span style="font-weight: bold">Thus, in the difficult search for life's origin many matters are yet to be resolved,</span></span> though the general mechanisms of evolution are clear and well supported. Science is a work in progress and the patience and persistence needed to fill in gaps in knowledge and to understand the results are paramount</div></div>.
random-chance dumb-luck origin?;
the stubborn fact is that we have not eliminated the possibility of intelligent design..hard for some to swallow this i know (even though the author of that article above pretty much admits it here)...
they think intelligent design implies a perfect omnipotent force that would have made all things perfect...
but that is all a matter of philosophy...some would say the earth is perfect....as well as magical--- when you consider the environments on all the other planets we have discovered & observedComment
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Re: Creating Life.
the stubborn fact is that we have not eliminated the possibility of intelligent design..hard for some to swallow this i know (even though the author of that article above pretty much admits it here)...
they think intelligent design implies a perfect omnipotent force that would have made all things perfect...
but that is all a matter of philosophy...some would say the earth is perfect....as well as magical--- when you consider the environments on all the other planets we have discovered & observed
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jah-yout,
You may not have eliminated intelligent design as an origins of man theory but a great many have.
We eliminated that possibility when we learned that the human genome is evolving, mutating, changing. We are not what we were 100 million years ago and 100 million years from now we will not be what we are now. We are not now what we ever were had we been created one Saturday long ago. Whoever is supposed to be capable of creating the Earth, humanity would presumably be omniscient, not very smart, not just genius but billions of times more intelligent than are humans.
We cannot even conceive of that level of anything.
Try to imagine eternity or the universe.
Well how then can you grasp that level of intelligence?.
Now ask yourself why and how could such a hyper-intelligence make something as flawed as a human being ?
If you look at things as they are it would almost seem that the Intelligent Designer threw the necessary ingredients together in the one hospitable place in the near universe and and just let the primordial soup cook up our random and evolving biosphere while He went merrily on his Johnny Appleseed errand in the universe..Comment
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Re: Creating Life.
ok so let me ask you this...
you say why would a great being create or design something as terrible as earth life...especially humans;
yet you say computers may one day be god...yet humans design computers;
so if humans are so useless...how are they able to create your future god?
or will these computers be spontaneously generated without any designer or creator the way some think life was?Comment
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Re: Creating Life.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: monk</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">there is absolutely nothing random about the genetic sequence...
anyone who sees anything random in this is hell-bent on maintaining that type of philosophy...
it is clearly a carefully controlled environment calculated to achieve the outcome which they did...
they have not shown how this could have happened randomly unless computers were designed to create random solutions rather than carefully thought out complex logarithms </div></div>
what has been proven, is that it is plausible that life began from simple structures, which can spontaneously combine on their own, and then evolved into more and more complicated structures and forms.
if what you said was true, we would find examples of irreducible complexity.
we do not.
not a single example of irreducible complexity has ever been found.
the evidence and observations made present enough information to form a consensus view that in the early stages of life, the genomes of various organisms WERE fairly random as they began to experience selection pressures, their formation and evolution certainly were not carefully controlled lol, or you wouldn't have "X" amount of broken or non functional genes inherited by you from these earlier life forms. you can't regrow your arm if it got chopped off, but your genetic relative, the salamander still can. You can only perform this feat in the womb.
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if life were so easy to randomly form & develop, how come you have not discovered life on any of the planets we have observed?
you say the salamander is our 'genetic relative'....
why choose the salamander?
are you not aware that every single living thing on earth is our 'genetic relative'?
so what a salamander can grow a limb?
there are plenty of things we can do which the salamander can not...birds fly...we don't...it's no big deal nor any great mystery of evolution...
i find that term 'irreducible complexity' to be a cop-out...what does it really mean?
anything can be broken down into smaller & smaller parts...
even the cilla on a cell are made up of smaller fibers which are in turn composed of something smaller;
it is simply not prudent to take something plausible completely off the table when one is trying to find the answer to some great mystery...
assuming chance, random origins at the exclusion of all other possibilities is very curious indeed... </div></div>
i think you miss the point completely.
you are saying that the creation of life requires some intelligence behind it.
i am saying there is an incredible amount of evidence to show that there isn't a lot of intelligence in the design, and it's not necessary to the start.
however, if evolution were unguided, so to speak, then we can predict that we would see examples of rather unintelligent design, since evolution works according to natural selection which is to say various pressures that cause certain traits to pass on.
for example, in the womb, we can regenerate limbs. however, due to evolution, we have a mutation which switches this ability off at birth. so even though we inherited that gene from a common ancestor in our distant past which we share with today's salamanders, our gene no longer works, while the salamander, which did not suffer this protein mutation, still can enjoy limb regeneration.
hardly a smart move, for a designer, to build into his system something like that.Comment
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