[extropy-chat] ET is a Bacterium

[Mike Lorrey]

--- The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> --- Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> 
> > No it wasn't, or you're confusing things. 
> > "Spontaneous generation" back then
> > referred to life being frequently and ubiquitously
> > formed in dead matter under
> > human-normal conditions; Pasteur showed that no,
> > life did not spontaneously
> > arise in a flask of sterilized broth, nor did
> > maggots come from screened meat.
> 
> That he did and despite the fact that the broth had
> all the basic building blocks of life, nothing
> happened. So what you are suggesting is that had he
> electrocuted the broth while shining UV light on it at
> 52 atm of pressure in a methane atmosphere for a
> million years, some primordial cell would have oozed
> out of it?  

Try 100 million years, which is how long it took after the planetesimal
impact on Earth for life to start showing up in the fossil record.
Given that experimenters have shown how such environments create all
the amino acids and other organics needed for life in a few days, it
isn't out of the question to believe that a planet full of such
organics for 100 million years would cause the chemicals to further
combine, self replicate (as some do), and eventually become cells.

> 
> 
> > 
> > This has no relevance to spontaneous generation in a
> > planet-wide ocean subject
> > to UV, lightning, and tides, over 100 million years.
> 
> Is the ocean somehow more nutritious than the broth?
> 
> > But they aren't certain that life 3.8 billion years
> > ago came from pre-existent
> > life.  In fact, they study how it could have formed.
> 
> Obviously. But they don't have any good verifiable
> theories yet. It is one thing to zap some gases with
> electricity and get amino acids. But amino acids do
> not live. We have a good grasp of the chemistry, but
> where, how, and when did the biology happen? You say
> it happened on Earth. I say maybe not. It might not be
> possible to spontaneously generate life any more. It
> might require the physical constants of the universe
> to be different than they are now.

The problem you have with your panspermian theory is that you are
merely pushing the date of origin further back and away as a means of
avoidance. At some point, somewhere, even by the panspermian theory,
life had to spontaneously arise. If it could happen in one place, it
could happen in others. No one place in the universe is totally unique
in its chemistry. Refusing to deal with the question smacks of cultism.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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