Rob Stadler: (puncturing the balloon) The fact that it is recognized as a meaningful contribution is a testimony to the desperation to show progress—it stands out only because no meaningful progress can be made in any direction that is actually relevant to life.
Origin Of Life
Are researchers closer to understanding the origin of life?
At Knowable Magazine: The vent hypothesis is somewhat controversial, but recent experiments lend weight to it.
Refreshing realism on the origin of life
Note: “Despite our growing knowledge, there remain numerous key challenges that may be addressed by a combined theoretical and experimental approach.” We’ve been hearing that for decades. We’re missing something.
Another recipe for the origin of life
The eternal may-have: “But in the early stages of Earth’s evolution, a young, active sun emitting more cosmic rays and a different atmospheric makeup may have allowed these cosmic visitors to nudge primitive, fragile biomolecules towards their forms we see today.”
Podcast: Origin of life is not like winning a lottery
From the intro: ” a naturalistic origin is less like winning a long-odds lottery, and more like the chances of an inventor successfully building a perpetual motion machine.”
Is NOTHING sacred? Silicon-based life “may not be likely”?
At Air & Space: “There aren’t many organic silicon compounds to begin with, and silicon-based life in water, or on an oxygen-rich planet, would be all but impossible as any free silicon would react quickly and furiously to form silicate rock. And that’s pretty much the end of the story.”
Dr Selensky on a Tour vs Cronin debate on OoL
He writes: >> Participants: From the naturalists’ camp: chemist Lee Cronin (University of Glasgow, UK). From the skeptics’ camp: chemist James Tour (Rice University, USA). Okay, origin of life research. Like in any other research, there should be no magic: garbage in — garbage out. Between 25:00 and 26:00 Lee said something like this: We Read More…
Special issue of journal Life commemorates origin of life researcher David Deamer’s 80th birthday
The open-access issue includes an interview with Deamer, who researched the question for fifty years.
Stanford: Cosmic rays helped create chirality in early life. Rob Sheldon responds
Sheldon: Sabine Hossenfelder has said that particle physicists are “lost in math,” > trained to play with “beautiful” equations rather than actual physics. Here we have a similar example in astrophysics. Roger makes one unsupported assumption after another, leading to an effect so small as to “need amplification.”
New study shows high oxygen levels 2 billion years ago; Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts
Perhaps its only in imagination that things can just randomly swish into existence and grow very complex, given enough time. The thing is, there isn’t enough time.
Brian Miller vs. Jeremy England, Round 2
Origin of life is more fun when it is a genuine discussion rather than a speculation based on a chance finding.
New at Inference Review: A sizzling exchange on the origin of life
If we create a great deal of fuzz around the questions, we can certainly smother any growing realization that intelligence underlies life.
We are told: The recipe for the origin of life has been revised
Scientists revising their origin of life theories is—in the present climate—somewhat like fiction writers revising their novels. Nothing in the world wrong with it. But let’s be clear what level of real-world information we are talking about.
Astonishing! Astrophysicist determines that the odds are against a random origin of life
One might ask why he thinks that “science” must find a random origin for life. Who decided that life originated randomly? What if it did not? Is science still committed to finding a random origin?
Sea creature challenges our conception of life
Is it one life form or many? Does it age or does it just die when something happens? What about apparent communal information processing in some colony organisms like the Paris Blob? The questions that seemed easy for an ant colony aren’t quite that way here.