dailygalaxy.com — A recent mathematical analysis says that life as we know it is written into the laws of reality. DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids - the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are thermodynamically destined to occur wherever they can.
Jul 9, 2009 View in Crawl 4
jjh941Jul 9, 2009
DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids..... this is an insult to anyone that has taken high school biology. Buried.
radicaldementiaJul 9, 2009
This article has some of the facts mixed up. Proteins, not DNA, are made of amino acids. DNA, being a nucleic acid, is a polymer made of sugar (deoxyribose), phosphate groups, and nucleobases. DNA encodes sequences of amino acids which are translated into proteins in your cells.The idea that all life in the universe would be mostly made of the same stuff is certainly not new. We've known for a long time that 10 of the 20 amino acids used in life can naturally form throughout the universe (the others being created biologically as life became more complex). It seems this new study is helping quantify the probability of each amino acid being created in non-biological processes.Furthermore, this study reinforces the relatively new molecular coevolutionary theory, that since proteins cannot replicate themselves, another less stable molecule (in our case nucleic acids, but particularly RNA) must develop alongside proteins which encodes them. So if other lifeforms in the universe are based on proteins, they should also have some other molecule that contains gene-like sequences, though not necessarily DNA.Here's the full research paper<a class="user" href="http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.0402">http://arxiv.org/abs/0904.0402</a>
flanativeJul 10, 2009
So, DNA is an extension of his noodely appendage
quisquisJul 10, 2009
"Atoms are named after a group"...Atoms are named after the greek word atomos which means indivisible. There may have been a group, but we gave them the name. Back then they were just every day philosophers.
quisquisJul 10, 2009
There is no basis for your assertion that other life in our solar system is unlikely.
speedsteamboatJul 11, 2009
@saranagati: You've missed the point entirely. If not for the rocks and water and gases life could not exist so how can you say they are separate things? Obviously the are intrinsically connected if not one in the same. How can you say that one thing is more or less complex than another when you can not even point to any separation between the two in the first place? This isn't about scientific definitions. Science deals with patterns. We're not talking about patterns in reality, we're talking about actual reality itself.@nimadude: A half way agree with you. There certainly are no "answers", but I'm not arguing any. I'm merely pointing our the fallacies inherent in the all too common idea of particular things in the universe.It's not really about belief or religion. All of these things are plain for anyone to see before you. If I held a closed hand in front of you and told you there was or was not a rock in my hand, you might BELIEVE I was or was not lying and that there was or was not a rock. When I opened my hand and you saw for yourself whether or not there was a rock there belief disappears and experience takes its place. It is the same here. If you just take a moment to see and experience the world we live in, the way that everything is in constant motion and constantly influencing and being influenced by everything else then any belief about whether things are or are not separate will vanish in the face of experience. Don't take my word for it. Just try it.
speedsteamboatJul 11, 2009
@Quisquis: Sure there is. We've already investigated a number of bodies around our system. We have a pretty good idea of what's going on and it is not especially promising when it comes to the formation of life as we understand it. I'm not saying it is impossible, but the fact is that clearly Earth already has the golden ticket for life in our solar system. We've grabbed the prime real-estate with our orbital distance. Our planets size and elemental consistency is all within a good range for the formation of life. There simply isn't a planet or moon near us with a very similar make-up, and since we can fairly easily understand Earth to be a model of what type of circumstances produce life that makes the formation of life on these other, very different bodies unlikely. Again, not impossible, just not entirely likely.
cornstarch5Jul 13, 2009
Consider that there are established patterns in the universe--the "laws of nature"). Things like pi, gravity, thermodynamics, etc. are all things that can be observed throughout the universe. Does that mean that God picked these things out? No. What if there are patterns and laws that exist for the formation of life? I think that this seems more likely. We don't know everything. When something happens that can't yet be explained, it doesn't mean that God did it.Also:Seeing a watch, it is safe to assume that there was once a watchmaker.Seeing the universe does not mean that there has to be a universe-creator. It's horribly presumptuous to assume that our reality has to have had a creator. What if it has always been around in some form or another? As of right now, it is impossible to conceive of anything that happened before the big bang, because we can't observe those conditions. In other words, why assume that we had to be made? The existence of God does not help us to make any reasonable conclusions about our current condition.
saranagatiJul 13, 2009
wow i really wish i hadn't bothered to come back and look at the response to that comment (sure you're not going to at this point either). I can say that a life is more complex than a rock because a rock is either a single element or multiple molecules being held together by covalent bonds. That's the only thing they need to do to stay as rocks. Sure over time the half-life of the elements will affect the makeup of the rock possibly turning it into a new rock but that's it. A life on the other hand has to absorb molecules, break up those molecules, convert the atoms from those molecules into new molecules, and transport those molecules all over the life forms body to grow, repair, process other molecules etc.I also never said anything about life and non life being separate things. Life needs to consume material to maintain life however very few life forms that aren't plants consume non-life as subsistence.