[ExI] Chemical Origins of Life (was Re: Panbiogenesis)

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Feb 04, 2012 at 01:24:30PM +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> In principle, since there is no real reason why one philogenesis should be
> similar to another, it could also be a peculiar direction of terrestrial
> biology, much more so than marsupials for Australia.

It is completely impossible to tell how typical or atypical our
origin and history are without having access to at least one,
preferably multiple samples which originated outside of common causal 
origin. The solar system is probably insufficient, unless we have clear
evidence of multiple independant origins within this very
system (improbable due to crosscontamination). 
 
> In other words, some kind or another of procaryotes could in be pretty
> frequent in the universe, while  eucaryotes may just not be "required".
>
> This, irrespective of how much procaryotes species can be diverse and
> interesting and evolutionary successful, would be a quite boring and bleak
> scenario from our own perspective... :-/

Right, we're looking for someone we can relate to, or at least
look upward to.