What is Digg?344 Comments
- InspectorGadget, on 02/02/2008, -28/+98Suck it, creationists.
- HenvY, on 02/02/2008, -6/+58How the ***** did you beat all of those other sperm to the egg? Natural selection my ass.
- ensleader, on 02/03/2008, -4/+50"One morning in late 1997, Stanley Miller lifted a glass vial from a cold, bubbling vat."
He called his invention: Miller Light - xXJAGXx, on 02/02/2008, -5/+34Um, this is cool - why complain about it being on the front page? It certainly deserves the position, so STFU and enjoy it instead of being elitists... oh wait, I forgot who I was talking to for a minute.
- Fihiro, on 02/02/2008, -2/+30Quit making us look bad then =p
- RG13, on 02/02/2008, -0/+20Uhhhh.... doesnt 1 + 0 + 8 = 9?
- IanPhillips, on 02/03/2008, -2/+21All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no landing there.
- exomni, on 02/03/2008, -4/+22Seriously, did you even bother to read the ***** article? It answers your question on the fourth page:
"That is a good start, but it leaves unanswered the question: How do you get from tiny snippets of RNA to longer, well-crafted chains that could have acted as the first enzymes, doing fancy things like copying themselves The shortest RNA enzyme chains known today are about 50 bases long; most have more than 100. To work effectively, moreover, an RNA enzyme must fold correctly, which requires exactly the right sequence of bases.
A young scientist named Alexander Vlassov stumbled upon a possible answer. He was working at SomaGenics, a biotech company in Santa Cruz, California, to develop RNA enzymes that latch on to the hepatitis C virus. His RNA enzymes were behaving strangely: They normally consisted of a single segment of RNA, but every time he cooled them below freezing to purify them, the chain of RNA spontaneously joined its ends into a circle, like a snake biting its tail. As Vlassov worked to fix the technical glitch, he noticed that another RNA enzyme, called hairpin, also acted strangely. At room temperature, hairpin acts like scissors, snipping other RNA molecules into pieces. But when Vlassov froze it, it ran in reverse: It glued other RNA chains together end to end.
Vlassov and his coworkers, Sergei Kazakov and Brian Johnston, realized that the ice was driving both enzymes to work in reverse. Normally when an enzyme cuts an RNA chain in two, a water molecule is consumed in the process, and when two RNA chains are joined, a water molecule is expelled. By removing most of the liquid water, the ice creates conditions that allow the RNA enzyme to work in just one direction, joining RNA chains."
etc etc
Seriously, people like you make me sick. - Fihiro, on 02/02/2008, -5/+22Amazing. That is amazing!
- wc3452, on 02/02/2008, -4/+21Yes.
- iPsyko, on 02/02/2008, -3/+19I ain't no DAMN icicle!
..what? - lgc90, on 02/02/2008, -0/+16Maybe?
- rossmills, on 02/03/2008, -1/+15If you change "it IS" to "it could still possibly be" then you don't sound so in-your-face-with-no-proof. I learned that one a long time ago.
- tybris, on 02/02/2008, -1/+15Because it is awesome.
- JohnFrum, on 02/02/2008, -2/+15That explains it. Moose eggs are easy to catch.
- Sornos, on 02/02/2008, -1/+14I am a meat popsicle.
- raid517, on 02/02/2008, -2/+15So I'm curious, I know digg isn't normally the place to ask such questions - but who currently is filling Miller's shoes in this field of research since his death? I mean who is most noted for their work in trying to build life from scratch? Miller was the main star in his field in his day - but who is carrying the torch most now?
- tossayo, on 02/02/2008, -0/+12i honestly need to go back to school and review basic addition :(
- HenvY, on 02/02/2008, -3/+15eh?
- inactive, on 02/02/2008, -4/+16What does abiogenesis have to do with Evolution natural selection? Oh wait you're just parroting creationist strawman arguments...
- insomn3ak, on 02/02/2008, -3/+15We should be sending probes to the surface of Europa, like we did for Titan.
- otakushark, on 02/03/2008, -2/+13Nature has assembled computers. Biological computers that blow away electronic ones in many ways. They're called BRAINS.
If we all agree that a person is alive, then what about a cell? If you agree a cell is alive, then what about a strand of DNA? Eventually, you work your way down to the atomic level, and since I doubt anyone would consider oxygen or carbon to be alive, you see that when you dig down deep enough, everything alive is constructed of materials that aren't alive themselves. The same thing applies to sentience. - kanabiis, on 02/02/2008, -2/+13ah yes, the fundamentally flawed watchmaker explanation, updated.... its still intellectually dishonest, and completely lacks an understanding of biological principles... but hey, it sounds good to the uneducated masses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy - Brad324, on 02/03/2008, -0/+10I see... and you were competing with the sperm of how many different countries? Did your mom let loose at a NATO meeting or something?
- Sornos, on 02/02/2008, -0/+9The surface isn't the way to find anything. We need to go below the surface, and I'm not sure, but I think I remember a project being cooked up.
- copypastry, on 02/03/2008, -1/+10You're Canadian? Jeez man stop embarrassing yourself and making us look bad.
- Fihiro, on 02/02/2008, -0/+9Maybe if he read the article instead of arrogantly stating 'no'
=p - tybris, on 02/02/2008, -1/+10That's a nice discovery. Although it would be a pain to repeat that experiment.
- hydrodev, on 02/03/2008, -5/+13But but but...Who created the ice?
- wc3452, on 02/02/2008, -3/+11the point of the experiment is to show that organic materials can be created from non-organic materials.
- erkokite, on 02/03/2008, -2/+10@source
Understanding of the origin of life will give us many new insights into chemistry and biology. We may not know everything for sure, but we can come up with a plausible explanation that fits the evidence, and is repeatable. Evidence points to a naturalistic origin of life on Earth.
Should we just throw our hands up because it's too difficult? Not try to figure anything out because it is too difficult? Your intellectual laziness is a disgrace to science and it just goes to show the intellectual quality (or lack thereof) of ID proponents. - elliotys, on 02/03/2008, -0/+8They probably converted it to Farenhiet only in the article for the american readers. Highly doubt the scientists used it.
- scabbers, on 02/03/2008, -1/+8Fahrenheit, ***** yeah!!!
- elfprince13, on 02/03/2008, -0/+7furthermore the big bang and evolution are also completely separate theories.
- jon30041, on 02/02/2008, -1/+8Destroy the invaders!
- darrenpauli, on 02/03/2008, -4/+11Fail. Bye!
- inactive, on 02/02/2008, -3/+9I apologize for the language, I have turrets syndrome.
- exomni, on 02/03/2008, -2/+8MY UNCLE AINT NO ICE CUBE.
- kanabiis, on 02/03/2008, -2/+8Rather then typing out pages of explanation, I linked you a nice article to read, and learn from.....
- HairyFotr, on 02/02/2008, -1/+7But then evolution and ID aren't even competitive theories, because one explains how life changes over generations, and the other how life started (but actualy doesn't _scientificaly_ explain anything at all).
- erkokite, on 02/03/2008, -0/+6Computers don't reproduce. Let alone with inheritable traits. You're also assuming that complexity requires a sentient creator. Go read about cellular automata and you'll soon learn otherwise.
- source1984, on 02/02/2008, -18/+24Actually, I think its dishonest of the writer to do this, but read the article carefully, "Miller had filled the vial in 1972 with a mixture of ammonia and cyanide, chemicals that scientists believe existed on early Earth and may have contributed to the rise of life." it is well known, not that openly pronounced though, that Miller had the "contents" wrong in his experiment. Since then, scientific opinion on what the Earth consisted of chemically has changed. So.. this kind of throws his whole experiment into question.
But forget that. Okay you have some nucleotides.. some amino acids... okay. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to create life out of that. Actually forget life, to create a cell out of all this? Many questions to be answered. - inactive, on 02/02/2008, -4/+10Ice Ice Babies...
- dash1185, on 02/02/2008, -2/+8This has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is not meant to explain how life emerged. The confusion is really annoying because it's the principal thing some christians do not like about it.
- wc3452, on 02/02/2008, -0/+61+0+8 = 9...
- cupajoe60, on 02/02/2008, -2/+8HenvY wins. forever.
- erkokite, on 02/03/2008, -3/+9We have repeatable, highly interesting evidence that suggests that ice may have had a role in the formation of early life on Earth. Why should we move on? Why shouldn't we inspect it? Tell us.
- exomni, on 02/03/2008, -2/+8Discover Magazine: a magazine published in the ***** UNITED STATES DUMBASS.
Jesus you elitist ***** piss me off. Complaining about Americans using Fahrenheit in colloquial speech is like complaining about Brazilians speaking Portuguese: sure, Portuguese isn't used in scientific circles or in many places internationally, but we can have some ***** respect for their national identity. - Celios, on 02/02/2008, -1/+6You realize that the Miller-Urey experiment already proved (in 1953 no less) that you can obtain organic compounds from inorganic ones, right? The point of the article isn't that it can be done, it's under what conditions. This isn't a science vs. JESOOS DID IT!1!!1! issue. It's about showing that the same process that scientists think kick-started evolution on early Earth can (and maybe even did) take place in even the most unfavorable conditions.
- tech42er, on 02/03/2008, -0/+5No, they don't have to connect. That's a huge point: all of these theories are separate, You can easily recognize evolution as the mechanism for how new species arise without even considering abiogenesis or even the origin of the universe. You;re right that, ideally, all the theories will connect, but we don't have a theory of anything yet. We're not even close.
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