OOL Research
by MikeGene
Recently, OOL researcher Jeffrey Bada was able to replicate the famous Miller-Urey experiment that showed the non-biotic synthesis of several amino acids. From my end, skepticism of abiogenesis has never been significantly indebted to the irrelevance of Miller-Urey, as I have always been willing to grant the abiogenetic production of monomers. Yet, in reading this account, three things stand out.
First, what does it say about the fruitfulness of the OOL research paradigm when the replication of a 54-year-old experiment (albeit with minor modifications) is considered "news" by Scientific American? You would think that after 50 years of research, the origin of monomers (a simple part of the story) would have long been settled. But then again, maybe that's just me.
Second, note this part from the SciAm article:
But the Miller-Urey results were later questioned: It turns out that the gases he used (a reactive mixture of methane and ammonia) did not exist in large amounts on early Earth. Scientists now believe the primeval atmosphere contained an inert mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen"”a change that made a world of difference.
When Miller repeated the experiment using the correct combo in 1983, the brown broth failed to materialize. Instead, the mix created a colorless brew, containing few amino acids. It seemed to refute a long-cherished icon of evolution"”and creationists quickly seized on it as supposed evidence of evolution's wobbly foundations.
A few years back, I recall this very point being argued by ID people and ID critics. In response, the proponents of abiogenesis used PubMed to dig up obscure papers that suggested otherwise and thus declared this was not a real problem. But if those obscure papers were relevant, then why is it that an expert in OOL research ignored them and went to the trouble of resurrecting the Miller-Urey experiment?
Third, consider what Bada did:
Bada discovered that the reactions were producing chemicals called nitrites, which destroy amino acids as quickly as they form. They were also turning the water acidic"”which prevents amino acids from forming. Yet primitive Earth would have contained iron and carbonate minerals that neutralized nitrites and acids. So Bada added chemicals to the experiment to duplicate these functions. When he reran it, he still got the same watery liquid as Miller did in 1983, but this time it was chock-full of amino acids. Bada presented his results this week at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in Chicago.
Again, what does it say about the status of OOL research that it would take over 50 years to realize this? It sure looks like OOL researchers make minimal efforts to determine whether their reaction conditions are all that realistic from a geological perspective.
And here, one gets the distinct impression that this experiment is effectively being guided according to a specified end. It comes off like a social scientist carefully trying to figure out why a certain poll failed to deliver desired results and then going back to tweak the poll so that it would deliver the desired results.
Wouldn't it be better for researchers to first try to approximate what the chemical conditions of the early Earth might have looked like and then test the cocktail(s) for abiogenetic potential?
April 16th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
In my view it speaks to the futility of the approach to life's origins. But that is good news from an ID perspective in that it opens up new approaches that could be more fruitful.
Good question. Perhaps a commenter with some sympathy toward assumptions underlying the experiment will clue us in.
That's also my impression. Where are the indications of objectivity or a willingness to consider alternative ideas?
Yes, but doing so runs the risk of completely exposing the sterility of abiogenesis.
Comment by Bradford — April 16, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
But if you do that you might get an ideologically inconvenient result.
Dawkins H. Science ! You couldn't have that.
Comment by thesciphishow — April 16, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Hi Bradford,
I'm a huge skeptic of abiogenesis, but "sterility" is a word that is too strong for me. In my mind, it is a possibility, but I don't see good reason to move much beyond this level. And after almost 60 years of research, I just think there should be something more solid here.
I'm curious. Let's say the year is 2107 and we're still basically in the dark about abiogenesis. Is there a point at which non-teleologists might start to question whether it actually happened?
Comment by MikeGene — April 16, 2007 @ 10:22 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Based on some of the comments made at Telic Thoughts and similar forums I would think not. The positions of many are predetermined. As for the nature of abiogenesis research itself, it seems to me the mindset ignores an essential fetaure of life that ID could account for namely, explaining, not a chemical pathway to life's building blocks, but rather a causal factor that explains why monomers would form the specific patterns necessary to confer function to life's basic universal enzymes like RNA polymerase for example. The knee jerk response is the operation of natural selection but selection must be applicable at ground zero in a prebiotic environment where encoding conventions and encoding patterns are non-existent. This, in turn, infers that these properties must first come about through a chemically deterministic process in my view. A basis for a future blog entry might be found herein.
Comment by Bradford — April 16, 2007 @ 10:57 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Sure. As I've said before, while I'm a reasonably confident materialist, I'm fairly agnostic regarding abiogenesis. Evidence regarding events that occurred almost four billion years ago, of which nearly all physical and genetic traces have been effectively erased by deep time, is simply too scarce to be able to draw any conclusions with confidence. All we can say at this stage is that we just don't know how the first life formed on Earth.
That said, I don't see the failure of researchers to derive a coherent explanation for the naturalistic origin of life as strong evidence against this scenario (as Bradford does). Imagine, for a moment, that life did form naturalistically through a necessarily tortuous series of chemical steps. Why should we expect this process to be easily replicated in a modern lab, given our dismal understanding of the conditions on the early Earth, the types of environment in which the first cells formed, or even the order in which the various steps occurred in the formation of those cells? Add to that the vast time-scales over which these processes occurred, and you have a recipe for experimental frustration. So the failure of abiogenesis research to make strong progress in any specific direction is precisely what you would expect regardless of whether abiogenesis was naturalistic or not. In other words, the difficulties involved in this research do not provide any particularly useful information about the validity of the underlying paradigm.
It's essentially impossible to predict what our scientific landscape will look like in 2107 - hell, if someone had told me ten years ago that I would now be able to freely access near-complete genome sequences of more than 50 eukaryotes and ten times that many prokaryotes, I'd have laughed out loud. But barring the collapse of civilisation, I'd expect that we will have access to almost unimaginable scientific resources a century from now. If abiogenesis research is still floundering in the face of such resources, I'd imagine most scientists would be (at least quietly) searching for alternative explanations.
Comment by Mesk — April 16, 2007 @ 11:52 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 3:53 am
Your real question about the rerunning is this, I suspect: "How dare they rerun it and show again that the ID/anti-evolution crowd is in error!?"
That's what Bada is doing. Why keep at it? Because there are new findings all the time, and new complaints from creationists all the time, and new twists all the time.
I suppose one might wonder why you're even bothering to ask these questions, if you're not following astrobiology. And if you're following astrobiology, why don't you know the answers to these questions already?
Here's some information you appear not to have figured in, why Bada is trying the experiments at all: http://www.spaceref.com/news/v...
Also, see this: http://www.spaceref.com/news/v...
And see especially this, which shows how Bada plans to employ some of the results in searching for life on other planets: http://www.spaceref.com/news/v...
Comment by edarrell — April 17, 2007 @ 3:53 am
April 17th, 2007 at 3:55 am
Wouldn't it be easier just to turn on the light? Ever read Astrobiology magazine?
Comment by edarrell — April 17, 2007 @ 3:55 am
April 17th, 2007 at 6:00 am
Hi Mesk,
This assumes we can say that the first life forms did indeed "form" on Earth. How do we know this?
I agree. But the same argument holds for the design of the first life forms, even more so. At least in the case of non-teleological origins, one can play with regularities and produce results, making it look like a problem is being incrementally solved.
If the year was 1960, and you told abiogenesis researchers that they'd still be working on the relevance of the Miller-Urey experiment 50 years from then, they'd probably laugh out loud too.
And compared to 1953, we now have "almost unimaginable scientific resources."
I'd like to think so. If I had a lifespan that would reach to 2107, I might be tempted to sit out this particular debate until then. But at some point, you have to make a judgment call as to when it's okay to search for alternative explanations.
Comment by MikeGene — April 17, 2007 @ 6:00 am
April 17th, 2007 at 6:30 am
Edarell:
In thinking out loud, ed nicely demonstrates the way a critic's mind is enslaved to stereotypes. Using the psychic powers provided by his conditioned brain, the delusional critic deciphers my "real question." LOL.
Really? Then tell us the chemical conditions of the early Earth and how this was determined.
Ed does not seem to understand that skepticism is an essential ingredient of science.
Ed apparently thinks his internet links answer my questions. So here's another question for Ed. What does his non-teleological theory predict they will find on Mars?
Actually, the links provided by Ed are quite interesting and raise a couple of points. First, consider this:
Hmmm. Chiral molecules "could only have come from some life form?" The whole test is premised on the notion that non-biotic processes cannot generate chirality (a "creationist" argument). So how did life acquire this feature?
Ah, another demonstration that "looks like" arguments are at the heart of all of our inquiries. As I have suggested before, ID people need only follow the lead of the OOL researchers.
Comment by MikeGene — April 17, 2007 @ 6:30 am
April 17th, 2007 at 9:24 am
edarrell:
How is the ID crowd in error when all that is demonstrated is the appearance of some amino acids in a larger mix that includes other substances. How does this demonstrate life's origins?
Bada fine tuned conditions until they yielded the hoped for outcome. How is that approximating prebiotic conditions?
Comment by Bradford — April 17, 2007 @ 9:24 am
April 17th, 2007 at 9:41 am
From the SciAm report:
My bold. Seems to me Bada did try to mimic primitive earth conditions more accurately than earlier experiments. That's how it is approximating prebiotic conditions, Bradford. Of course it is still a very crude approximation. In reality, there were millions of years available for interesting organic compounds to form. Not something one would want to replicate in the lab.
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 9:41 am
April 17th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Hi MikeGene,
Is somebody stopping you? We are already doing research on the possibility of life having ever existed on Mars; if it did, the first earth organisms might have been martians piggybacking on a meteorite. And haven't researchers found evidence of amino acids originating in space? If the amino acids were brought to earth by meteorites, they wouldn't have to originate here.
Comment by Aagcobb — April 17, 2007 @ 10:00 am
April 17th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Mike asks:
Bada's work is not a replication of Miller-Urey; it is based on Miller-Urey, but with new starting conditions dictated by updated knowledge of the chemistry of the ancient earth. If Bada had been trying to replicate Miller-Urey, he would have used identical starting conditions.
Bada's results are newsworthy because we have three similar but distinct experiments: Miller-Urey(1953), Miller(1983), and Bada(2007). Each experiment was based on new information about conditions on the primordial earth. Each yielded results dramatically different from the previous experiment. That's newsworthy.
Replicating Michelson-Morley today would be boring; rerunning Miller-Urey with updated starting mixtures is not.
Yes, I think it's just you. Why would you expect the question of monomer production to be settled if the primeval atmosphere's chemical composition were still being debated and revised?
Was Bada one of these unnamed "proponents of abiogenesis" who pointed to the relevance of these "obscure papers" If he wasn't, why should they have constrained him from revisiting Miller-Urey? And even if he thought they were relevant, how would that rule out rerunning a variant of Miller-Urey?
I'm not a prebiotic geochemist, and I certainly didn't know that Miller (1983) produced nitrites, or that nitrites inhibit amino acid formation. Perhaps you can explain to us why OOL researchers should have been able to figure this out faster than they did.
Because the initial conditions were updated based on new scientific knowledge? To sustain your accusation, you'd need to show that the initial mixture was changed not to better represent prebiotic conditions on earth, but simply to get the desired result. Do you have any such evidence?
Comment by keiths — April 17, 2007 @ 10:59 am
April 17th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Hi Aagcobb,
Doesn't this just push the question back? Then what was the mechanism (on Mars) that allowed prebiotics to to naturally synthesize into bio-macromolecules? All we really need to know is what the geological composition of Mars is and what its early atmosphere was like to determine the plausibility of Mars being a more likely spot of abiogenesis than Earth.
Comment by Doug — April 17, 2007 @ 11:26 am
April 17th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Keiths said:
Mike said:
Mike also quoted:
Keiths, where does Mike not address what you mention in your critique?
Comment by Doug — April 17, 2007 @ 11:29 am
April 17th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Keiths,
This is a quote from the actual article:
Comment by Doug — April 17, 2007 @ 11:34 am
April 17th, 2007 at 11:46 am
For some after about 5 years of research….
OOL reasearch (and failure to recreate life by the semblance of a random non telic environment) has inspired the ID movement. Dean Kenyon, author of Pandas and People was one of the first to jump ship.
It took him 5 years before self-doubt arose. Another 15 before he finally rejected everything he had lived for previously and accepted ID. Kenyon's reversal (circa late 1970's) has been vindicated so far.
The important development theoretically is that Yockey, Trevers and Abel demonstrated OOL is independent of any known chemistry or any chemistry that may be discovered.
Consider that a computer can be made of:
1. magnetic relay switches
2. vacuum tubes
3. germanium transistors
4. silcon transistors
5. bio molecules like DNA
The salient feature of a computer architecture transcends the chemical properties of the materials used to construct it as seen from the fact computers can be made of diverse materials.
The salient features of a computer are the information content. That content must of necessity be decoupled from the chemistry because for an informatic system to arise, the chemistry must allow UNCERTAINTY not determinism in certain dimensions.
Chemical evolutionary researchers fail to realize they aren't even solving the correct problem. Some of the salient features of life (i.e. the fact that life is a computer among many other characteristics) are independent of chemistry. So why look to chemistry to solve the OOL problem????
The chemical evolutionary approach is akin to trying to figure out how to use the periodic table to explain thermodynamics. There is a major category error!
Trevors and Abel state it plainly:
Chemical OOL is a doomed enterprise. It's like trying to use the periodic table or chemistry as an explanation for thermodyanmics, but in this case it is trying to use chemistry as an explanation for information dynamics. It will never work. It is inherently doomed as an enterprise. It is the search for square circles.
Morowitz at my Alma Mater has been at this for 50 years. 50 YEARS! His work was unwittingly significant in the genesis of the ID movement, as the one of the movements most important books, Mystery of Life's Origin drew heavily from Morowitz.
It appeared to me he stormed out of an IDEA meeting in 2005 when I cited recent theoretical research, especially that of Yockey, who likened Morowitz to a Tar Baby:
PS
I figured you'd like a rabbit story, Mike.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 17, 2007 @ 11:46 am
April 17th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
As a real life designer with about 25+ years experience I have learned to be very skeptical of the "back of the napkin" type proposals. And yes, I have actually worked on some ideas that my boss at the time had sketched on the back of a napkin or placemat, after selling a client on an idea over lunch. Most of these ideas in my experience are either not very good or they require a lot of modification and tweaking. It's easy to come up with a great idea in the abstract over lunch. But usually, it's very difficult to translate the boss's great idea into a practical real world solution. Sometimes it's not possible at all.
IMO all present theories about the origin of life (OOL) are still at the "back of the napkin" stage. There is a lot of supposition and speculation, with a lot of posturing of egos and hubris, but very little by the way of real world solutions.
With such a poor track record why do discussions about OOL often develop so much passion? I'd like to suggest it is because the researchers and other advocates are already metaphysically invested. In their view there is only one possibility: life had to have a natural origin. But how do they know this? What evidence do they have to believe this assumption is true? Or is their belief simply that; a belief?
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — April 17, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Oh, I guess the fine-tuning argument must have gone out of fashion. Once upon a time it took incredibly precise fine-tuning to get the chemistry just right for life to be even possible. Now it turns out that the good stuff has nothing to do at all with chemistry. A real eye-opener.
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Hi Doug,
I was just making the point that, contrary to what MikeGene seems to think, its already ok to start looking at alternatives to amino acids forming on the pre-biotic earth. So who is stopping him from doing so? Besides, since, as I pointed out, amino acids arrive from space in meteorites, its possible they needn't naturally synthesize on either earth or mars.
Comment by Aagcobb — April 17, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Mike, to one of edarrell's links:
Amino acids are synthesized all the time by natural and unnatural means here on earth, and are about even in left and right chirality. Life as-we-know-it here on earth can only USE left-handed AAs, so right-handed ones aren't useful. The chirality of AAs in proteins here on earth is likely a result of who first biosynthesized them (common descent).
There's no reason (as in 'law') that life on other planets has to be left-handed. It could as easily be right-handed, if life indeed spontaneously generates in local conditions and evolves via common descent. Heck, life elsewhere could even be racemic - using both left and right-handed AAs, since proteins can be constructed with both chiralities present. That right-handed molecules are harmful to life on earth doesn't necessarily mean anything to any life elsewhere.
Amino acids arriving from space are predominantly left-handed. This (according to theory and NASA) is because of polarized radiation sources in this region. If polarized radiation sources can determine a predominance of left-handed AAs in this region of space, life is NOT the only source of left-handed molecules (AAs or proteins)!
The question Miller-Urey - even tweaked for more accurate local conditions - seeks to answer is whether life spontaneously generates from AAs generated locally or AAs coming from space. The better to inform us of what to look for on other planets/moons in our system. Space-generated AAs will be predominantly left-handed, everywhere in this region. If local conditions determine the chirality of life, we'd be wasting our time to seek only left-handed life forms.
Seems like either way, we could still expect that life in other regions or on other planets/moons in this region could as easily be right-handed or racemic. Unless it uses space-synthesized molecules.
Comment by Joy — April 17, 2007 @ 12:51 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Hi Aagcobb,
Didn't mean to read more into your post than you actually posted. Sorry about that.
But Mike doesn't rule out the natural synthesis of monomers:
Regarding the amino acids arriving from space; are these amino acids a racemic mixture? If not, how do they achieve chirality? How do the biologically relevant ones get seperated from the biologically non-relevant amino acids.
I would assume that covalent bonding in the amino acids would get compromised to some degree from being irradiated by harmful rays. Rays that would disrupt covalent bonds - considering carbon-carbon bonds and carbon-hydrogen bonds with their non-polar nature, irradiation of these bonds should lead to homolytic cleavage resulting in free radicals.
There's alot of obstacles that need to be surmounted even in this scenario.
Comment by Doug — April 17, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Hi Doug,
Check out the article I linked to in my first post; as Joy also mentioned, amino acids found in meteorites are predominantly left-handed.
Comment by Aagcobb — April 17, 2007 @ 1:16 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
Chemistry makes life possible, it does not make it probable.
Transistors make and vacuum tubes make computers possible, they do not make computers probable nor inevitable.
Fine tuning is to life what transistors are to computers, it only makes it possible, it is not the most essential ingredient. Information is the most essential ingredient.
Sal
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 17, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Monomer synthesis is like the formation of transistor parts, not even full blown transistors, much less logic gates and memory circuits.
We can, for the sake of argument assume all the parts are there to build life. The issue is the assembly instructions.
Chemical law can carry out assembly instructions, it cannot create them.
As far as the assumption of having all the parts, a dead creature has all the parts. Does anyone think having all the parts is anywhere near leading toward life?
The efforts of the OOL reaserchers are valiant but in light of the fact we see dead and decaying creatures with far more essential hardware in place than what all the OOL labs have ever produced, and yet we don't see spontaneous new life emerge from these dead creatures, why, from a purely empirical standpoint would we expect OOL to succeed????
The OOL issue has reached a higher level of clarity because we now understand the important relationship of life to computer science. The most major problem OOL must solve is the formation of a computer, not the formation chemicals which build the computer.
But even in the formation of materials, things are not going so well. ReMine has said that is part of the Biotic Message, namely, life was deliberately architected to prevent naturalistic explanations. So far the hypothesis is prevailing very well with respect to OOL.
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 17, 2007 @ 1:36 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Salvador T. Cordova wrote:
This is an interesting argument. However, it seems that a naturalist might, in the face of it, simply agree with what you say—and then declare, well, nature just contains information all by itself, without any intelligent designer/programmer putting it there.
At least I think this how I interpret the following:
I doubt Emmott and these 'leading researchers' think of themselves as offering an argument for ID, though I have some sympathy for the view that the existence of coded or programmed information suggests an intelligent agent who did the coding/programming.
I don't know if this is what Mike Gene et al have in mind when they talk about 'front-loading'.
Comment by stunney — April 17, 2007 @ 1:42 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
stunney!
You' da man! Thanks for this great find in the NY Times!
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 17, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
My bold Raevmo. Prebiotic earth contained a lot more than iron and carbonate minerals. Picking and choosing some chemicals from a smorgasbord of many, specifically to neutralize nitrates and acids, is fine tuning the original experimental results to get the desired outcome. Citing long time periods is not a solution; only an indication that the one invoking this lacks causal specific data.
Comment by Bradford — April 17, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Let's hope your eyes remain open from this point on. It does take some chemical fine tuning to make life possible- but it takes much more. It may be possible to cite a natural mechanism that generates nucleotides at some point. It takes a non-chemical explanation to explain why they would align in just the right patterns needed to confer biological utility. It requires even more to allow their translation, subsequent amino acid polymerization according to code and correction mechanisms for the inevitable genetic errors a prebiotic environment would cause.
Comment by Bradford — April 17, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I take a Kurzweil-esque perspective on this. The 20th century was equivalent to 20 years of progress according to current technology trends and rates of change. In the next 14 years, we'll make another 20 years of progress, and another 20 years of progress in just 7 years, and so on and so forth. If by 2100 we're still just playing around with how the early earth conditions might have produced monomers, that would just be sad.
Comment by Guts — April 17, 2007 @ 2:07 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Keiths wrote:
Please quote that part of the paper and reference the sources he used that showed that new information when you get a chance.
Comment by Guts — April 17, 2007 @ 2:07 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Mike, great post on a most interesting topic.
John_A_Designer asks:
"With such a poor track record why do discussions about OOL often develop so much passion? I'd like to suggest it is because the researchers and other advocates are already metaphysically invested. In their view there is only one possibility: life had to have a natural origin. But how do they know this? What evidence do they have to believe this assumption is true? Or is their belief simply that; a belief? "
A most excellent question.
Comment by Eric Anderson — April 17, 2007 @ 2:14 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
Ah, so the scientists were being dishonest. Promoting their atheist agenda by intelligently designing their experiment. Sneaky bastards.
I'm curious, how did you discover that they cherry-picked their chemicals like that?
And what would have been your - more honest - choice of chemicals?
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Raevmo wrote:
This manifests a failure to distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions, as Salvador pointed out.
The fine-tuning argument is alive and well, thank you. However, I personally happen to be more interested in the subsequent question of how life arose and developed on the Earth, which (other than a grateful nod to the finely tuned universe for existing) has essentially nothing to do with said fine tuning.
Comment by Eric Anderson — April 17, 2007 @ 2:24 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Raevmo wrote:
Uh, from the article. To wit:
Sure, "primitive Earth would have contained iron and carbonate minerals," but what other minerals would it have contained? Why weren't the others added?
Look, I am not too cynical about the research Mike cites, because I think it is a valuable endeavour to try and determine what kinds of conditions must have existed in order for amino acids to form. To the extent the experiment teaches us that the mixture must have contained iron and carbonate minerals, that is helpful information. We need to be careful, however, to not read anything particularly consequential into the results. We still do not know if their conditions and input parameters faithfully reproduced the conditions on early earth. It seems exceedingly unlikely, just based on the reasearch parameters, but it is possible. We still have all the problems of racemic mixtures, interfering reactions, and then the problem of building life itself.
The researchers should be applauded for their efforts in the present instance, but it is quite revealing that after a half century, their research efforts and results bear a striking resemblance to the paltry results obtained by the Miller-Urey experiment.
Comment by Eric Anderson — April 17, 2007 @ 2:28 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
For the record, one YEC predicted this because the Hydroplate explosion may have sent biotic material from Earth to space, and from the perspective of Newtonian mechanics it could reach any planet in the solar system including Mars.
See: The Origin of Asteroids and Meteoroids
In the spirit of balanced inquiry, the alternative non-YEC explanation:
Morowitz colleague Robert Hazen concurs that bacteria have supposedly lived in rocks for half a billion years. See his book Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins
The idea of living bacteria inside rocks for billions of years is not a stretch for many OOL researchers. As cool as the idea may be, and as much as I'd almost wish to believe it is true, I think it highly unlikely. 4 billion year old living bacteria in a metorite?
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 17, 2007 @ 2:31 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Even if life could be made in a laboratory, how would that prove that life could have evolved spontaneously sometime in the Earth's past?
In the lab case, life would be the result of conscious rational agents at work, intelligently designing it—namely the scientists using their minds with the conscious purpose of making life.
So, to extrapolate from the lab to 'early conditions on Earth', one would have to posit some analogue of the scientists—that is, an analogue of rational agents who have the conscious purpose of making life—existing way back before life got started on Earth.
What is that analogue?
If there was no analogue, then how can the laboratory synthesis of life be construed as giving us any scientific information about the origin of life on Earth?
Comment by stunney — April 17, 2007 @ 2:48 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I don't believe that. However Hazen and Morowitz have lamented Stan Miller's conduct in the OOL community and how he ruled it with an iron hand with some rather questionable tactics.
Bada did co-author a paper with Reiner Protsch who was later involved in a radiometric dating fraud. See: Anthropologist resigns in 'dating disaster'
The paper dealt with decay of homo-chirality. Bada's paper was of intense interest to me, and I saw that there were systematic errors in Bada's paper with Protcsh. It didn't surprise me Protsch was later charged with fraud. I could see inklings of it as I researched a Bada's paper published in the 1970's.
I described my findings here and here.
The bottom line is that even though Bada is a fine chemist, some of his prior work shows he's not immune to even accepting fraudulent data and could not even see it when it was staring him in the face. Others like RH Brown, Michael Brown, and myself could see systematic errors in his research.
If that's the case for something as basic as homo-chiral decay rates, how does that bode for anything else for Bada's work?
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 17, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Sal:
Actually, we do see new life emerge from dead creatures. It's the living creatures feasting and multiplying on the dead creatures. These feasting highly evolved creatures would easily outcompete the kind of crude replicators that may once have existed at the dawn of life on earth.
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Raevmo,
Just to be clear, were these creature novel or pre-existing?
PS
Did you receive the copy of the book I sent you by John Sanford? Glad to see you again, here at TT!
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — April 17, 2007 @ 3:04 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
stunney:
So if meteorologists recreate the origin of rain from clouds in the lab, then we cannot extrapolate that to the origin of real rain without invoking intelligent rainmakers?
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 3:17 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Sal:
Just to be clear, pre-existing. I don't think you missed my point though, but just to be clear: my point was that we don't see the spontaneous emergence of life de novo all around us simply because pre-existing life would outcompete and destroy any crude replicators in the unlikely event that they would emerge. After all, present life is literally born to compete.
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Yes I did, thank you, that was very kind of you. It probably won't come as a great shock to you to learn that his writings did not persuade me to abandon my views.
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Hi Sal,
Considering that this would be the greatest scientific discovery of the 21st century if true, the story is six years old, and I never heard of it before now, I concur.
Comment by Aagcobb — April 17, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Raevmo wrote:
So, is it your position, that if we eliminate the competing life forms from a sample of inanimate matter that we should be able to see the "spontaneous emergence of life de novo?" If not, why not?
Let me offer one possibility: perhaps we don't "see the spontaneous generation of life de novo all around us" because it doesn't happen.
Comment by Eric Anderson — April 17, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Good Lord, I guess I painted myself in a corner here. I took issue with Sal's "proof" that it is pointless to use chemistry to study OOL because we don't see OOL in decomposong corpses. Even if it did, which would be extermely unlikely, such "de novo" life wouldn't stand a chance against the life already present. I didn't mean to suggest that by, for example, irradiating a corpse with gamma rays to kill all life, we would create the ideal conditions to see new life emerging. I suppose if we were to dump a million irradiated corpses on a lifeless planet with roughly the same conditions that existed on earth 4 billion years ago, it might speed up the developing of new life. Let's try that shall we?
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 3:59 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Your analogy is inadaquate. Recreating rain from clouds is the equivalent of recreating a cell from a prebiotic chemical mix. All that has been shown is that amino acids form under specified conditions which is roughly analogous to finding a material on which water vapor might condense.
Comment by Bradford — April 17, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
This is nothing more than an empirically unsupported assertion propped up by circular reasoning. What does a racemic amino acid mix "compete" with?
Comment by Bradford — April 17, 2007 @ 4:16 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
With life. There would be competition between the reactions that produce AAs and, say, bacteria that utilize the same AA precursors.
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
raevmo wrote:
Well, how do the meteorologists re-create it? Ex nihilo?
Theists believe God is the creator, not only of life, but of rain too. Clouds as well. Planets. All that stuff.
But leaving God specifically out of it for now, you are confusing knowing the nature of, or replicating some natural phenomenon, with generating a natural phenomenon. In the lab, if scientists generate some electricity, or tomatoes, or plasma, or rain, this in no way tells us that electricity, or tomatoes, or plasma, or rain arose by spontaneous generation.
That conclusion would be going beyond the evidence.
And, as you know, going beyond the evidence is A Bad Thing.
Comment by stunney — April 17, 2007 @ 5:45 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Don't worry, stunney. Experiments aren't going to disprove God. No more than they are going to prove the necessity of Divine Intervention (aka ID). But hey, I enjoy your philosophical posts, so please keep em coming, sunshine.
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 6:06 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Hi Aagcobb,
Did I say someone was? Do you think it would be reasonable to explore alternatives?
Or visa versa.
Sure. Did you happen to read my posting? I noted, "From my end, skepticism of abiogenesis has never been significantly indebted to the irrelevance of Miller-Urey, as I have always been willing to grant the abiogenetic production of monomers."
Comment by MikeGene — April 17, 2007 @ 6:38 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
What does a racemic amino acid mix "compete" with?
What would it compete with in a prebiotic world? What's the point of the experiment?
Comment by Bradford — April 17, 2007 @ 6:45 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Hi Keiths,
You write:
I noted that minor modifications were made. He repeated the experiment with them.
Of course it's newsworthy. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been picked up by SciAm. But you've now tried twice to sidestep my point - what does it say about the fruitfulness of the OOL research paradigm when the replication of a 54-year-old experiment (albeit with minor modifications) is considered "news" by Scientific American? I'd say that it tells us 54 years of research have not been very fruitful. Not at all. Does this mean abiogenesis did not happen? Nope. Is it evidence against abiogenesis? I don't think so. It simply means that every time non-teleologists tell us about all the "progress" that is being made, they're probably "framing." In reality, we're all effectively clueless about the origin of life.
And this reminds me of something. Over the years, I have encountered dozens and dozens of ID critics on the internet who have also been scientists. They've preached about the lack of ID research and there is, of course, much validity to that argument. Furthermore, most expressed great confidence that the earth did indeed spawn life. But among all those scientists, I don't think one was an OOL researcher. Now why is that? Why is it that all the cyber-scientists preaching about this "progress" and expressing all this cyber-confidence don't seem eager to jump in an take a shot at a Nobel prize?
Comment by MikeGene — April 17, 2007 @ 7:06 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
raevmo wrote:
Oh, I'm not worried.
I shall, my little rainbow friend.
The point is, rational agents deliberately producing X in a lab constitutes zero evidence that X previously originated by a process of nonrational spontaneous generation.
So, if scientists deliberately synthesize life in a lab tomorrow, can I take it you will not then be so irrational as to claim that it's evidence for the proposition that life originated on Earth, not by a process of rational agency (as in the lab), but by a process of spontaneous generation?
I can?
Splendid:!:
Comment by stunney — April 17, 2007 @ 7:08 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I'm going to step in and play devil's advocate here: If I put chemical X in close proximity to chemical Y and get desired result Z, then I have made a logical step towards the axiom "If X and Y meet, then Z happens." This does constitute evidence in the same way evolutionary gaps are filled - you establish a way of getting towards your mark, given certain conditions, and then you (the scientist) go to work establishing that those conditions were possible. In the context of OOL, that means establishing that 1) the initial conditions were such that life could have arisen from abiotic molecules and 2) that such a process could have occurred in the time proposed. I don't see how this is irrational or unscientific.
Comment by thechristiancynic — April 17, 2007 @ 7:14 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
You're pushing your luck, sunshine. Rational agents setting fire to a tree in the lab and producing CO2 in the process is more than zero evidence for the proposition that CO2 could be produced by a burning tree ignited by lightning.
Comment by Raevmo — April 17, 2007 @ 8:23 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 10:08 pm
christiancynic wrote:
I did not say that it is irrational or unscientific to hypothesize that, if scientists add X to Y in a lab and this habitually results in Z , then Z at some past date could have been been the result of X and Y coming together.
I said that such a lab result is not evidence that the actual occurrence of Z at some pre-human date was in fact the result of X+Y spontaneously coming together.
raevmo wrote:
See previous answer, little rainshower.
Comment by stunney — April 17, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
You'll have to ask Andrew Ellington about this. It seems that chirality is acquired quite by accident, but once acquired, stays.
Creationists (including ID advocates) have argued that the presence of chirality indicates God's intervention. Ellington's work showed that chirality arises naturally. You can catch his lecture to the Texas State Board of Education on the topic in the 2003 textbooks hearings (second one, as I recall — just after Stephen Weinberg's testimony). Or you could look up his papers.
Non-biotic processes can and do generate chirality. Life forms, so far as we know, tend to prefer one or the other, but not chiral-neutral systems.
Have you read Astrobiology much? There's a lot of discussion on this type of topic, with real scientists (I don't play one anymore, even on TV).
Comment by edarrell — April 17, 2007 @ 10:14 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Which early Earth? Still molten, or cooling? Hot, or temperate? Pre-anaerobic bacteria or post?
There are some extrapolations made backwards on the basis of how a gaseous atmosphere would change with vulcanism, weather, and certain forms of life. And increasingly, there are samples — from ice going back a good distance but not close to the origins of life, and from rocks, with bubbles, and with the chemical content of rocks laid down at datable times. For example, rocks laid down with unoxidized iron indicates oxygen levels in the air were quite low. Date the rocks: Presto!
You could read about it in the papers. Have you looked at what the astrobiology guys are doing? There is a lot of very sophisticated work going on, under deadline, in order to get the stuff into probes to planetoids in the solar system.
Comment by edarrell — April 17, 2007 @ 10:18 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
This stuff is covered in high school biology texts. Anybody ever take high school biology?
Stanley Miller's first runs were based on assumptions of what was in the atmosphere. Then further study suggested the atmosphere was a bit different. Miller ran new experiments with the newly-discovered data. Then further study suggested further changes. Miller ran the experiments again.
It doesn't matter, really. In each run, Miller got essential life chemicals which creationists had previously argued were impossible to achieve by natural means.
As we fine tune our knowledge of ancient atmospheres, if we didn't rerun the experiments, we'd be a bit derelict, but more annoying, we'd leave ourselves open to creationist claims that the experiments were invalide "because the atmosphere was not what Miller/Bada/Whoever assumed."
Each creationist claim of impossibility has been met with experiments showing probability. Each and every one.
Bada tested to see whether natural means might produce the chemicals. They did. With new data, he ran it again. If he hadn't "fine-tuned" the experiment, you'd have claimed he goofed. But because he fine tuned it, you claim he directed the result.
Real scientists can't win over people who got to their current beliefs through un-rational, non-rational, or irrational means.
Comment by edarrell — April 17, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Hi MikeGene,
Of course I would; thats why I pointed out that someone is already exploring alternatives, so it appears that someone already made the judgment call that its OK to do so. They aren't waiting until the 22nd century.
Comment by Aagcobb — April 17, 2007 @ 11:06 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
stunney wrote:
In other words, stunney wants us to ask whether God might have brought X and Y together in the past, just as scientists have brought them together today to get Z.
The answer, of course, is yes. An unconstrained, omnipotent God is compatible with every possible set of observations (and their opposites). Such a God is unfalsifiable. He explains everything, and therefore nothing.
Comment by keiths — April 17, 2007 @ 11:18 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Edarrell:
Where did that come from? Oh yes, you are paying the obligatory tribute to your stereotypes.
Ed:
vs.
Ed's link:
Ed:
The one that spawned life.
Comment by MikeGene — April 17, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
I'm 100% with MikeGene et al on this.
Abiogenesis has had long enough to prove itself.
On that same note, I suggest we should immediately suspend research into any scientific/medical problem that has remained unsolved/incurable for the past, say, hundred years.
Take cancer for example. It's been how many years now, and all we really have are some 'carpet-bombing' so-called treatments that leave patients ravaged, with no promise that the cancer won't return?
How many other incurable diseases, with millions spent on fruitless research, can you name?
And the reason they remain incurable?
The Wrath of God. Accept it.
Comment by BoZ3MaN — April 17, 2007 @ 11:36 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
edarrell:
The data was old not new. What Bada did was choose a chemical mix designed to neutralize substances that inhibit amino acid formation. He could have just as easily singled out prebiotic substances that have the opposite effect and obtained a different experimental outcome. The broader point however is that reproducing effects first observed in the early 1950s does little to establish plausibility for OOL. In fact it indicates a treadmill effect rather than real progress.
Comment by Bradford — April 17, 2007 @ 11:45 pm
April 17th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
BoZ3MaN writes:
Medical research yields results that have obvious benefits. How does OOL benefit mankind?
Comment by Bradford — April 17, 2007 @ 11:50 pm
April 18th, 2007 at 6:45 am
Hello BoZL:
Then you are confused. I've never said that abiogenesis has had long enough to prove itself. Nor did I say that we should suspend research into it.
I'm starting to get cynical about something else - when people have different perspectives on things, just how much can they truly communicate with each other?
Comment by MikeGene — April 18, 2007 @ 6:45 am
April 18th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Edarrel wrote:
From what I have read the best creationist and ID arguments deal with probabilities not possibilities. They object to abiogenesis not because it is logically impossible but because it is highly improbable. You appear to to claiming here that recent work has flasified that claim. Am I reading you correctly here? Can you tell me then what the probabilty is the that a simple fuctioning protein (100 or so amino acids) emerged from a pre-biotic organic soup by completely natural means? Do proteins assemble spontaneously? How many proteins or distinct biological functions are required to make a cell that is potentially evolvable, or capable of some kind of natural selection? What is the probability of these first proto cells emerging? What was required for these first cells to reproduce? Did proteins emerge first or was it some kind of kind of genetic material (DNA/RNA) that came first? Since I don't subsribe to any Atrobiology magazines or have a recent copy of a highschool biology textbook handy I was just curious about what you know. Perhaps I've missed something.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — April 18, 2007 @ 12:40 pm
April 18th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Not all medical research has yeilded beneifts. All I'm suggesting is: can the research programs that have carried on for so long; wasting millions on obviously incurable conditions/diseases.
To continue with them is to defy God himself.
"[Why] from a purely empirical standpoint would we expect OOL to succeed????"
It's crystal clear to me -they can't.
Comment by BoZ3MaN — April 18, 2007 @ 1:36 pm
April 18th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
Mike Gene suggests a question that has occurred to me also: When does one throw in the towel?
Never!
But the very fact that a researcher returns to replicate an experiment conducted in the tradition of a failed paradigm ("protein theory") suggests that OOL research is stalemated. Stalemated and not advancing as some correspondents have argued. In the very same year that Miller published his results there was another quite significant development in the history of biology: the publication of Watson & Crick's "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids"¦" The significance of Watson & Crick's paper took some time to absorb. Especially amongst biochemists.
As one historian of science has noted famously, science tends to be strongly ahistorical, even while, paradoxically, building only upon past historical achievements. Scientists, such as Bada, may learn little of the actual history of their field, and therefore fail to understand why a seemingly successful experiment (the production of amino acids under presumed abiotic conditions) is actually a failed experiment"”Which he then proceeds to reproduce! And continue to build upon. OOL research is a perfect example of how science perpetuates itself by pursuing failure"”but not to success! But by adding failure to failure, which lends the illusion (because it "progresses") of success. Even the replication of failed experiment is a success"”if ya see what I saying. Isn't it? Of course it is.
(I say a "failed experiment" because since the mid-1940's (mid-1920's?!) it was becoming increasingly apparent to some biologists and biochemists that amino acids are not the "stuff of life." No one actually believed that. Did they? What they believed was proteins were the stuff of life. Proteins. Not amino acids. No life form is composed of amino acids or nucleic acids, really. Hence the creationists fumbling around for "something else," like "information." But see Watson & Crick. Like the hippo in the bathtub, DNA (and has we've learned over the past coupla decades, nucleic acids, DNA & RNA generally) was a sort of scientific curiosity. Curious but not that curious. Few scientists were actually working on the subject of Watson & Crick's revolutionary paper. A fact that is little appreciated today, when we don't assign DNA a place in the biological "odditorium" along with the duck-billed platypus and human tail-bone.)
If your research is stalemated at ever turn, if you never achieve the success that you envision (and maybe even hope for only in your wildest dreams), then maybe you should return to some very basic assumptions. Assuming you've considered all other possible factors.
OOL research is interesting for many reasons but not the least of which is how the positions assumed seem to have hardened, with few exceptions"”e.g., both Mesk and Mike Gene assumed a certain "agnosticism." Likewise I remain "agnostic" but I think there are some significant problems, not so much with the science, as with"¦ ya know, all that other "stuff."
No matter how much "scientific progress" is made in some areas, there will always remain some mysteries. I like that! I love it! I thrive on it! It is indescribably beautiful to me! It means there will never be an end to science and mysteries!
Like nucleic acids and protein they always come (and go) together.
Comment by Rock — April 18, 2007 @ 1:57 pm
April 18th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
It seems to me that the solution to the OOL requires the developement of Orthogonality Theory. Attempts to explain OOL in term of standard chemistry will not work because one is required to think in terms of just an X axis and a Y axis. With the emergence of "Life" one has the emergence of a Z axis that is orthogonal "independent" to the earlier system (chemistry). What is needed IMO is a theory of the background dimensions and their latent creative fecundity (Orthogonality Theory).
Comment by William Brookfield — April 18, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
April 18th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
BoZ3MaN
You do not appear to be very familiar with medical research. I do not know of any medical research that has wasted millions. The only condition I would even consider labeling "incurable" would be the aging process itself and who knows what could be done with respect to that in the distant future. We learn about diseases bit by bit. The fact that some have not been cured in no way indicates that related research is futile.
As for your defying God comment I'll chalk that up to the petulance that generally comes from EAs when the matter of OOL is rationally discussed.
Comment by Bradford — April 18, 2007 @ 3:08 pm
April 18th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Sometimes atheists complain that the theistic hypothesis explains everything; and therefore nothing.
It's hard to know what to make of such a complaint.
What if, for example, one complained of the hypothesis that the properties, not of God, but of matter explain everything, that they therefore explain nothing?
You know, the old matterdidit jig-and-twostep, in which science is always refining its analyses and hypotheses so that matter can do whatever it's needed to do, even if we need to introduce funny new concepts like fields, or relativity, or quanta, or quarks, or strings, or branes, or cosmic inflation, or multi-dimensional spaces, or X.
And if any phenomenon seems poorly understood in naturalistic terms, we just say it will be, some day, though maybe using funnier concepts, like dark matter, or dark energy, or some other dark physical reality, or something even funnier that we don't know about yet…
Or what about: evolution explains everything about life, and therefore nothing? You know: the old 'The fit survive because they're fit and they're fit because they survive because they're fit survivors endowed with fitness that's conducive to survival of the fit', ahem, Explanation"¦
Or, what would falsify the proposition that