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Origin Of Life

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." Read More ›

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 found in a laboratory how chemicals can be steered towards decision making. (emphasis mine). This is already telling. I am fine with experiments in a test tube. But as soon as naturalists need to explain something non-trivial like the alleged naturalistic emergence of decision making or information translation, they use imagination. Closer to the end of the debate, Cronin gives way to it: in 5 Read More ›

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." Read More ›

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. Read More ›

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. Read More ›

New origin of life book argues, even the simplest life forms are extraordinarily complex

Rob Stadler: By studying the simplest forms of life and laboratory efforts to synthesize life, we know that the simplest living organisms are extraordinarily complex. Al life contains highly interdependent subsystems and hierarchical layers of information that flows between the subsystems. Read More ›