[extropy-chat] ET is a Bacterium

[The Avantguardian]

--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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.

I agree it is not out of the question that life could
have spontaneously arose in 100 million years on
prebiotic Earth. That is not what I am saying. I am
merely weighing probabilities in the face of
uncertainties in Bayesian fashion. However technically
no organic molecules yet discovered truly
self-replicate. Instead they replicate other organic
molecules of different chemistries that in turn
replicate the original organic molecules. It is how
the mechanisms that allow this transfer of information
from one substrate to another and back again developed
that is the true mystery of life's origin. 

> 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. 

No, the idea of panspermia is not that you push the
date back to avoid the question of how life began. The
beauty is that you give a very rare and highly
unlikely set of coincidences much more of an
opportunity to occur. And furthermore once that highly
unlikely genesis occured, the spreading of life
throughout the galaxy was assured. Like with monkeys
and type-writers. If you wanted a monkey to randomly
type Hamlet, you would be more likely to succeed with
a galaxy full of monkeys and typewriters
than with but a single planet full of them.

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.

Well if life is EASY to generate based on the normal
laws of chemistry and physics, then you are correct in
that there is no need for panspermia in order for the
universe to teem with life. But that doesn't seem to
be the case. Do you really think panspermia has
potential as a cult?


The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson


		
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