Category: Origin Of Life
Panspermia (maybe life came from outer space) is back, in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology
| May 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Cambrian explosion, Extraterrestrial life, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, Viruses |
Abstract: We review the salient evidence consistent with or predicted by the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology. Much of this physical and biological evidence is multifactorial. One particular focus are the recent studies which date the emergence of the complex retroviruses of vertebrate lines at or just before the Cambrian Explosion of ∼500 Ma. […]
Science at sunset: Dark energy, if it exists, might make a multiverse hospitable to life, if it exists
| May 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Cosmology, Culture, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Multiverse, Origin Of Life |
From ScienceDaily: Questions about whether other universes might exist as part of a larger Multiverse, and if they could harbour life, are burning issues in modern cosmology. Now new research led by Durham University, UK, and Australia’s University of Sydney, Western Sydney University and the University of Western Australia, has shown that life could potentially […]
Kirk Durston: What progress have we made over six decades in understanding the origin of life?
| May 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Origin Of Life |
From Kirk Durston at P2C-Change: So what progress has science made over the past 60 years? I just counted the number of papers and articles on the origin of life I have filed on my computer—54, and that is only a small sampling of what is out there. Reviewing this collection, the news is not […]
Is origin of life simply an attempt at history without hard data?
| April 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Culture, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Recently, these stories popped over the desk (might as well address them all at once): From Dirk Schulze-Makuch at AirSpaceMag: Life May Have Begun in Ocean Sediments, According to New Theory During the Hadean time period, more than four billion years ago, the Earth was much more active than it is today, and hot water […]
Origin of life: Rob Sheldon on “lies, damn lies, and models”
| April 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Origin Of Life |
Pos-Darwinista writes to draw our attention to the following Abstract: Universal biology and the statistical mechanics of early life Nigel Goldenfeld, Tommaso Biancalani, Farshid Jafarpour Published 13 November 2017.DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2016.0341 All known life on the Earth exhibits at least two non-trivial common features: the canonical genetic code and biological homochirality, both of which emerged prior to […]
Has origin of life become a Templeton and NASA cash cow?
| April 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From Suzan Mazur at Oscillations: One of the stickiest origins projects Templeton has recently funded is “Cooperation and Interpretation in the Emergence of Life,” which looks to find purposeful RNA fragments that agree to cooperate. Six hundred thirty thousand dollars ($630,000) has been awarded for said project to the team of Christopher Southgate-–a British theologian/biochemist, […]
Could there be life adrift in Venus’s clouds?
| April 3, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From Deborah Byrd at Space: Living earthly microbes inhabit virtually every nook and cranny of our world, including extremely harsh environments like Yellowstone’s hot springs, deep ocean hydrothermal vents and the toxic sludge of polluted areas. Earthly bacteria have also been identified, alive, as high in our atmosphere as 25 miles (40 km) up. Neighboring […]
Astrobiology Magazine: So intelligent design WAS necessary for life to get started
| March 23, 2018 | Posted by News under Origin Of Life |
Well, they do not quite say it. But get this: From Charles Q. Choi at Astrobiology: Assuming that early life adapted to survive in a checkerboard of many different kinds of environments, “the complex ecological relationships between different species may have been a part of life on Earth since very near its beginning, and LUCA […]
JAD on “Self-Replicating Machines and OoL”
| March 19, 2018 | Posted by kairosfocus under Back to Basics of ID, Design inference, Functionally Specified Complex Information & Organization, Origin Of Life |
Here at UD, we often have commenters whose remarks are well worth headlining. Here, we have JAD in action, suggesting to GP: “Here is something you might consider as a seed for a future topic for a future OP.” Yup, and even as an embryonic thought, it is well worth posting — a first, rough […]
What are we looking for when we look for the earliest life?
| March 17, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Here’s a new word: dubiofossil From Sophia Rootsh at Aeon: Schopf’s Apex chert fossils stood in as exemplars of every dubiofossil collected by a geobiologist seeking life in the Archean Era. As Henry Gee later put it in the pages of Nature: ‘It is hard to tell the difference between a bacterium – especially a […]
Diversity of complex viruses messes up origins theories
| March 9, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From Jordana Cepelewicz at Quanta: All of viral evolution is murky: Different groups of viruses likely had very different origins. Some may have been degenerate “escapees” from cellular genomes, while others descended directly from the primordial soup. “Still others have recombined and exchanged genes so many times in the course of evolution that we will […]
Newly discovered complex viruses challenge what we think viruses are
| March 2, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
As Peter Dockill explain at Science Alert, Scientists have discovered two new kinds of virus in Brazil that display such size and genetic complexity we may need to rethink exactly what viruses are, scientists say. The two new strains – dubbed Tupanvirus, after the Brazilian thunder god Tupã in Guaraní mythology – are as prodigious […]
Relax: Fascinating clips of jellyfish, especially the “unknown” creatures of the abyss
| February 20, 2018 | Posted by News under Design inference, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
So labelled in the first vid below. The reader who sent this clip commented, “As I watched the video in amazement, the thought that those creatures are the result of random Darwinian processes didn’t even cross my mind. Whereas, the thought that God is one incredible artist did cross my mind!” At times, jellyfish almost […]
Suzan Mazur has some hard questions for NASA “astrovirology” expert Ken Stedman
| February 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
Yes, “astrovirology” is a new term, for the possibility that viruses originated in space. Suzan Mazur wonders at Oscillations: If viruses originated on Earth—which is NASA astrovirology chief Ken Stedman’s “best guess”—just why do we need a new field called astrovirology? That’s a very good question. If viruses originated elsewhere than Earth, the history of […]
Researchers: Arginine may have been a secret ingredient in the recipe for life
| February 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
That is, if RNA world is correct. From ScienceDaily: Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have now found evidence that the amino acid arginine (or its prebiotic world equivalent) may have been a more important ingredient in this soup than previously thought. “People tend to think of arginine as not being prebiotic,” said Irene Chen, a […]
Claim: Complex self-replicating molecules can emerge spontaneously and relatively easily from simple chemical reaction systems
| February 1, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From Yu Liu and David Sumpter at ArXiv: Spontaneous emergence of self-replication in chemical reaction systems Explaining the origin of life requires us to explain how self-replication arises. To be specific, how can a self-replicating entity develop spontaneously from a chemical reaction system in which no reaction is self-replicating? Previously proposed mathematical models either supply […]
Researchers: Water-based life could get started randomly on Earth if we leave out the water
| January 31, 2018 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From Lisa Zyga at Phys.org: Adam and others have been investigating a leading candidate for a water alternative called formamide, a clear liquid that consists of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Not only does formamide favor polymer bond formation more than water does, it also reacts with other molecules to form nucleobases, amino acids, and […]
Researchers: Horizontal gene transfer may have helped early microbes move out of hot springs
| January 30, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
The microbes are archaea, not bacteria. From ScienceDaily: The first-ever analysis of DNA of a contemporary heat-loving, ammonia-oxidizing organism, published in open-access journal Frontiers in Microbiology, reveals that evolution of the necessary adaptations may have been helped by highly mobile genetic elements and DNA exchange with a variety of other organisms. Most extremophiles are microorganisms […]
Researcher: “… it’s quite possible that life emerged within a few million years of when conditions became habitable.”
| January 24, 2018 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Extraterrestrial life, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From Rebecca Boyle at Quanta: From a seam in one of these hills, a jumble of ancient, orange-Creamsicle rock spills forth: a deposit called the Apex Chert. Within this rock, viewable only through a microscope, there are tiny tubes. Some look like petroglyphs depicting a tornado; others resemble flattened worms. They are among the most […]
Should NASA look for viruses in space?
| January 18, 2018 | Posted by News under Cell biology, Extraterrestrial life, Genetics, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life |
From Alex Barash at Slate: The not-quite life forms have a bad rap. But they’re a reliable sign of life, and it would be exciting to find them in space. For one thing, viruses are an excellent indicator for life itself: Wherever there’s life on Earth, there are viruses, too, and almost invariably in far […]
