Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Are researchers closer to understanding the origin of life?

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Some researchers think they are closer:

Researchers think they’re getting warmer: They’ve created amino acids and primitive membranes by simulating conditions found at scalding vents on the ocean floor

Scientists suspect that deep hot vents like these might have seeded life on Earth about 4 billion years ago. Some hydrothermal vents release alkaline fluids, which could supply the energy needed to build complex organic molecules. And the basic chemistry of life “appears to match what you might expect if life began in this hot, dark, chemical-energy-powered setting,” says earth system scientist Timothy Lenton of the UK’s University of Exeter, a coauthor of a 2017 article on ocean biogeochemistry in the Annual Review of Marine Science.

The vent hypothesis is somewhat controversial, but recent experiments lend weight to it. In one, NASA astrobiologist Laurie Barge and her colleagues showed how amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could have formed near alkaline vents. Barge, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, became interested in the origin of life on Earth while searching for life not on Earth. Geology and biology would be closely linked anywhere, she says — whether on another planet or in a deep-sea vent here on Earth. …

Some scientists aren’t convinced that life originated at a deep, alkaline hydrothermal vent. David Deamer, a biophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is one of several who say that salty ocean water would destroy the fatty acids needed to create cell membranes. He has shown that vesicles can form in freshwater — no deep-sea vents needed — by wetting and drying fatty acids. He offers the example of blowing soap bubbles. Soap is disordered in a solution with water, but blow a puff of air into it and the molecules assemble themselves into a membrane. Anne N. Connor, “Searching high and low for the origins of life” at Knowable Magazine

Actually, this is just another spin on hydrothermal vents. They were bound to be a hot idea. Trouble is, there is no way to be sure how life originated, even if you could create life yourself, using a specific recipe. That might not have been the actual one. Life may also have had multiple origins. But it is fun to read about.

Hydrothermal vents today:

See also: The Science Fictions series at your fingertips – origin of life What we do and don’t know about the origin of life.

Comments
EugeneS, You're most welcome! I found Dr. Tour to be refreshingly open and, because of the long-term research that he and his team conduct in synthetic molecular microbiology, he's highly qualified to discuss these subjects. He even has an open invitation to any scientist to instruct him how prebiotic conditions could possibly give rise to the fundamental components of life. He promised not to be argumentative but just to ask well-informed questions. No takers so far. Similarly in this forum, there are those who simply post their assertions as irrefutable truth or make ad hominem attacks. They vanish when it looks like they will be refuted because they're not really interested in becoming informed. The reasons behind their positions are not rooted in logic or science, but they simply use them as tools that can be discarded when no longer convenient. Maybe, they derive pleasure from getting us dogs to chase them like squirrels in a forest. But they actually serve the purpose of honing our logic and stimulating research in areas that we're less familiar with and that's a good thing. I'd also recommend occasionally asking them for the sources of their assertions, but they rarely bother because that's not why they're here. Thanks, my friend. -QQuerius
July 26, 2020
July
07
Jul
26
26
2020
08:32 AM
8
08
32
AM
PDT
Querius,
How did you ever logically reach that conclusion?
Bravo. Logic is definitely not their friend. Thanks for the link to James Tour's video.EugeneS
July 26, 2020
July
07
Jul
26
26
2020
05:25 AM
5
05
25
AM
PDT
Fasteddious @ 20, Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Darwinists throw the magician’s cape of deep time over the Origin Of Life event(s) and assert that the composition of the seawater was profoundly different back then. Undoubtedly, this seawater included generous quantities of Unobtanium. Furthermore, they assert an aqueous beginning involving warm ponds, ponds in caves, tide pools, deep sea vents, profoundly different atmospheric compositions, lightning strikes that would have made Doctor Frankenstein applaud, and possibly even carbon-rich meteorites. However, starting life from within a mineral-rich clay matrix was rejected a priori due to its disturbing similarities with the book of Genesis, making it immediately unacceptable. Move along. Nothing to see here. No, we must return to new and wonderful versions of the Miller-Urey experiment. But Darwinists will tell you that the recipe was lost but it absolutely “musta” happened because (ta-da) we’re here! However, there are dissenters. Carl Sagan, Francis Crick, and several others proposed the theory of Directed Panspermia, that life was seeded on earth by some amazing advanced intergalactic civilization! So, even if the correct recipe for the first life on earth were discovered, it would take at least 60 million years to demonstrate or to falsify. And chirality was simply a happy accident that allowed only right-handed DNA and left-handed amino acids to survive. This is the reason that James Tour posts outstanding videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4sP1E1Jd_Y -QQuerius
July 25, 2020
July
07
Jul
25
25
2020
05:59 PM
5
05
59
PM
PDT
at 8 ET states,
Until researches accept Intelligent Design they will never be able to determine the OoL
At 12 Retired Physicist responds
That’s like saying if Astrophysicists want to ever make any progress they need to switch to astrology. Only the most deluded person could believe that.
Actually, and apparently completely contrary to what Retired Physicist believes, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design is not based on the presupposition of naturalism and/or methodological naturalism.
From the essential Christian presuppositions that undergird the founding of modern science itself, (namely that the universe is rational and that the minds of men, being made in the ‘image of God’, can dare understand that rationality), to the intelligent design of the scientific instruments and experiments themselves, to the logical and mathematical analysis of experimental results themselves, from top to bottom, science itself is certainly not to be considered a ‘natural’ endeavor of man. Not one scientific instrument would ever exist if men did not first intelligently design that scientific instrument. Not one test tube, microscope, telescope, spectroscope, or etc.. etc.., was ever found just laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analyzed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial logic and immaterial mathematics that lay behind the intelligently designed experiments in the first place. Again, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of intelligent design and is certainly not based on the presupposition of methodological naturalism.
Moreover, forcing people to assume naturalism and/or methodological naturalism, leads to catastrophic epistemological failure. Although the Darwinist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science, (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that Darwinists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to:
Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has unreliable, (i.e. illusory), beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the reality of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Who, since beauty cannot be grounded within his materialistic worldview, must hold beauty itself to be illusory (Darwin). Bottom line, nothing is truly real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, beauty, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, Darwinian Materialism and/or Methodological Naturalism vs. Reality – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaksmYceRXM
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
Thus Retired Physicist may falsely claim that assuming Intelligent Design is akin to assuming astrology all he wants, but the shoe is squarely on the other foot. Again, It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be. Of supplemental note: Darwinists ultimately seek to ‘scientifically’ explain everything in materialistic terms. i.e. Reductive materialism. And yet, if something is not composed of particles or does not have physical properties (e.g., length, mass, energy, momentum, orientation, position, etc), it is abstract, even ‘spiritual’. Numbers, mathematics, logic, truth, distance, time, beauty, ugliness, species, person, information, science, etc.. etc.. all fall into that category of being an abstract property of the immaterial mind. It is amazing how many things fall into that ‘abstract’ category even though most everyone, including atheists, (“atheists” also happens to be an abstract term itself), swear that they exist physically. Perhaps the most devastating place that the denial of the abstract realm is for Darwinists, scientifically speaking, is with abstract mathematics.
What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? – M. Anthony Mills – April 16, 2018 Excerpt: Barr rightly observes that scientific atheists often unwittingly assume not just metaphysical naturalism but an even more controversial philosophical position: reductive materialism, which says all that exists is or is reducible to the material constituents postulated by our most fundamental physical theories. As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that you do not exist. For you are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way. Not just you, but tables, chairs, countries, countrymen, symphonies, jokes, legal contracts, moral judgments, and acts of courage or cowardice — all of these must be fully explicable in terms of those more fundamental, material constituents. In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html
Mathematics is considered the backbone of all science, engineering, and technology, and yet, in irony of irony, the reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian evolution denies the very reality of the one thing, i.e. mathematics, that it most needs in order to be considered a scientific theory in the first place. In fact, besides mathematics, it turns out that the term ‘science’ itself is an abstract term that cannot possibly be grounded within the reductive materialistic framework that provides the foundation for Darwinian evolution! How much does science weigh? How gfact does science go? Is science positively or negatively charged? Or etc.. etc.. Thus, not only is Darwinian evolution NOT science, it actually, because of its reductive materialistic foundation, denies the very reality of science itself. :) Again, when examining the details of their worldview, It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.bornagain77
July 25, 2020
July
07
Jul
25
25
2020
04:03 PM
4
04
03
PM
PDT
The OP says, "showed how amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, could have formed near alkaline vents", with emphasis on the "could have". This raises the obvious experimental suggestion: go to one of these thermal vents that are spewing out water too hot for life to remain alive, take samples and see how many and which amino acids are coming out. If they are mixed left and right chirality, then you have evidence that they may have been formed by chemistry in the vents themselves. If they are all left handed, then they must have come from life nearby somehow - perhaps from creatures torn apart by the high temperatures. Will these investigators take a dive for the team and perform this test? Or will they continue to hide behind cooked up lab experiments, and "could have" explanations?Fasteddious
July 25, 2020
July
07
Jul
25
25
2020
12:20 PM
12
12
20
PM
PDT
Mike1962, Yep. They once hid behind random events and deep time, but the amount of time required is not enough, so they had to conjure an infinite number of unobservable universes such that the most improbable events and fine tuning of constants becomes a certainty in one of them. And we're the lucky, perfect one! Woohoo! How's that for a science stopper? ;-) -QQuerius
July 25, 2020
July
07
Jul
25
25
2020
08:21 AM
8
08
21
AM
PDT
Retired Physicist @12: That’s like saying if Astrophysicists want to ever make any progress they need to switch to astrology. Naaaa. If Astrophysicists want to ever make any progress they need assume a rationally constructed universe. I mean, really now, what sort of progress could they make if the universe was irrationally constructed?mike1962
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
10:22 PM
10
10
22
PM
PDT
Seversky,
Investigation into what?
Using my examples, it's investigation into what's behind mysterious ductless glands (the thyroid was once considered "vestigial" by scientists) and "junk DNA," now called non-coding DNA.
If the nature of this putative designer is undefined, something which ID proponents resolutely refuse to do, then there is no way to know what evidence might support such a claim.
How did you ever logically reach that conclusion? Why would a "putative designer" need to be identified to support the claim that something was designed? For example, researchers claim that chimpanzees made some stone tools that look like early human artifacts. Does it matter whether chimpanzees or humans made the stone tools to decide that they are not naturally formed? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/monkeys-make-stone-ldquo-tools-rdquo-that-bear-a-striking-resemblance-to-early-human-artifacts/ Retired Physicist,
The other side, astrology, publishes approximately 5 papers per year.
Huh? The reference to astrology is irrelevant to what I posted. ID researchers are performing scientific research simply with a presumption of design. They ask the questions like, "What might this so-called vestigial organ be producing?" or "What could this portion of so-called junk DNA actually be doing?" -QQuerius
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
08:54 PM
8
08
54
PM
PDT
One side, astrophysics, publishes tens of thousands of new research papers a year, every year. The other side, astrology, publishes approximately 5 papers per year. One side is doing science, the other is a few quacks hanging out on the Internet, accomplishing nothing except reinforcing each other’s delusions.Retired Physicist
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
07:08 PM
7
07
08
PM
PDT
Querius @ 14
ID is simply the presumption of design, which encourages further investigation.
Investigation into what? If the nature of this putative designer is undefined, something which ID proponents resolutely refuse to do, then there is no way to know what evidence might support such a claim.
In contrast, the presumption of an extremely unlikely confluence of random events over massive amounts of time does not encourage further investigation.
I suspect there is great deal more research being conducted into the naturalistic origins of life then there is into intelligent design. Abiogenesis researchers can at least investigate possible pathways that may lead from inanimate chemicals to the simplest conceivable life-forms. What can ID researchers study by comparison?
Some examples include the presumption of purposelessness in “vestigial organs” and “junk DNA.” In both of these cases, scientists were satisfied with ignorance, while ID researchers were not.
Neither the nature of vestigial organs nor the nature of "junk DNA" in the human genome have been revealed by ID research but rather by naturalistic science.Seversky
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
06:43 PM
6
06
43
PM
PDT
That’s like saying if Astrophysicists want to ever make any progress they need to switch to astrology.
No, it's not. ID is simply the presumption of design, which encourages further investigation. In contrast, the presumption of an extremely unlikely confluence of random events over massive amounts of time does not encourage further investigation. Some examples include the presumption of purposelessness in "vestigial organs" and "junk DNA." In both of these cases, scientists were satisfied with ignorance, while ID researchers were not. -QQuerius
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
06:07 PM
6
06
07
PM
PDT
I will give him this, ET’s understanding of evolution is every bit as good as his set theory. :-oRetired Physicist
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
05:56 PM
5
05
56
PM
PDT
That’s like saying if Astrophysicists want to ever make any progress they need to switch to astrology. Only the most deluded person could believe that. :-D :-)Retired Physicist
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
05:55 PM
5
05
55
PM
PDT
ET
Until researches accept Intelligent Design they will never be able to determine the OoL
Even if they do accept ID, are they really any closer to determining the origin of life?Mac McTavish
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
02:48 PM
2
02
48
PM
PDT
In trying to avoid evidence that is visible to all for the existence of a divine intelligence behind nature, atheist scientists are forced to ascribe creative powers to less and less credible candidates, like mass/energy, the laws of nature, or even to their theories about those laws. John Lennox: God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway?
EugeneS
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
07:24 AM
7
07
24
AM
PDT
ET
Until researches accept Intelligent Design
The strange thing is, they do de-facto. Otherwise, it would not have been possible to do science. It is not possible to do reverse engineering unless you first assume that what you reverse engineer has been engineered. They just call it 'nature'. However, to acknowledge the truth, one has to be an independent thinker, which is a rare thing... In other words, it is a matter of belief. The only thing I personally hold against design opponents is that they should recognise that design is a scientific hypothesis which has evidence backing it up.EugeneS
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
06:16 AM
6
06
16
AM
PDT
Until researches accept Intelligent Design they will never be able to determine the OoLET
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
05:55 AM
5
05
55
AM
PDT
Miller-Urey, here we go again. KFkairosfocus
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
05:06 AM
5
05
06
AM
PDT
Supplemental notes: Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no clue how any organism might achieve its basic form and/or shape,
Darwinism vs Biological Form – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w
The failure of reductive materialism to be able to give an adequate account for the basic form, and/or the positional information, of any particular living organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself. In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remarked that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings “challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics – December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, “We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s,” added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. “So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.” http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html
Also of supplemental note, sequential information in now shown too be a subset of 'quantum positional information' by the following method; Specifically, in the following 2011 paper. researchers ,,, show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.
Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 1, 2011 Excerpt: Recent research by a team of physicists,,, describe,,, how the deletion of data, under certain conditions, can create a cooling effect instead of generating heat. The cooling effect appears when the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement is invoked.,,, The new study revisits Landauer’s principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,, No heat, even a cooling effect; In the case of perfect classical knowledge of a computer memory (zero entropy), deletion of the data requires in theory no energy at all. The researchers prove that “more than complete knowledge” from quantum entanglement with the memory (negative entropy) leads to deletion of the data being accompanied by removal of heat from the computer and its release as usable energy. This is the physical meaning of negative entropy. Renner emphasizes, however, “This doesn’t mean that we can develop a perpetual motion machine.” The data can only be deleted once, so there is no possibility to continue to generate energy. The process also destroys the entanglement, and it would take an input of energy to reset the system to its starting state. The equations are consistent with what’s known as the second law of thermodynamics: the idea that the entropy of the universe can never decrease. Vedral says “We’re working on the edge of the second law. If you go any further, you will break it.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm
Again, Intelligent Design's claim that Intelligence is necessary in order to explain life, has, for all intents and purposes, now achieved experimental confirmation. Also of supplemental note:
(June 22, 2020) "The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies." https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-fourth-law-of-thermodynamics-as-natures-steepest-entropy-ascent/#comment-705065
bornagain77
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
03:34 AM
3
03
34
AM
PDT
At post 1, DavidP points out the obvious elephant in the living room problem that atheists refuse to acknowledge,
Even if you abundantly gave them every ingredient necessary for life around those thermal vents, they don’t just come together automatically. No more than a house would assemble automatically if you tossed in 100 home improvement stores into a planet sized mixing bowl.
James Tour, who is considered one of the top synthetic Chemists in the world,,,
James Tour - Awards Excerpt: Tour became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2020 and was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry's Centenary Prize for innovations in materials chemistry with applications in medicine and nanotechnology.[52] Tour was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015.[53] He was named among "The 50 most Influential Scientists in the World Today" by TheBestSchools.org in 2014.[54] Tour was named "Scientist of the Year" by R&D Magazine in 2013.[55] Tour won the ACS Nano Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society in 2012. Tour was ranked one of the top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade by Thomson Reuters in 2009.,,,, etc.. etc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tour#Awards
James Tour put the unacknowledged elephant in the living room problem facing Origin of Life (OOL) researchers this way.
(July 2019) "We have no idea how to put this structure (a simple cell) together.,, So, not only do we not know how to make the basic components, we do not know how to build the structure even if we were given the basic components. So the gedanken (thought) experiment is this. Even if I gave you all the components. Even if I gave you all the amino acids. All the protein structures from those amino acids that you wanted. All the lipids in the purity that you wanted. The DNA. The RNA. Even in the sequence you wanted. I've even given you the code. And all the nucleic acids. So now I say, "Can you now assemble a cell, not in a prebiotic cesspool but in your nice laboratory?". And the answer is a resounding NO! And if anybody claims otherwise they do not know this area (of research).” - James Tour: The Origin of Life Has Not Been Explained - 4:20 minute mark (The more we know, the worse the problem gets for materialists) https://youtu.be/r4sP1E1Jd_Y?t=255
What Dr. Tour touched upon in that preceding comment is the fact that having the correct sequential information in DNA is not nearly enough. Besides the sequential information in DNA there is also a vast amount of ‘positional information’, (i.e. information that tells the molecules exactly where to be in the 'simple cell'), that must be accounted for as well. The positional information that is found to be in a 'simple' one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be immense. On the order 10 to the 12 bits,,, which is several orders of magnitude more information than the amount of sequential information that is encoded on the DNA of a ‘simple’ bacterium.
Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: – Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz’ deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm
,,, Which is the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong – The Creation-evolution Controversy ‘The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.” Carl Sagan, “Life” in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894
And in regards to this vast amount of positional information that must be accounted for, in the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, it was demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position converts information into energy.
Maxwell’s demon demonstration turns information into energy – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html
And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform
And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/
Again to repeat that last sentence, “we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.” Think about that statement for a second. These experiments completely blow the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, (presuppositions about information being merely ’emergent’ from some material basis), out of the water. In other words, directly contrary to Darwinian presuppositions, information, particularly ‘positional information’, is now experimentally shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is a product of an 'observer who describes the system'. And although it can interact with matter and energy, it is shown to be its own independent entity separate from matter and energy that has a quote unquote 'thermodynamic content'. In other words, Intelligent Design, and a semi-direct inference to Intelligence that is necessary in order to explain why life is so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium, has, for all intents and purposes, achieved experimental confirmation via these recent experimental realizations of the Maxwell demon thought experiment. To further establish that the Designer must be God, it is necessary to point out that “quantum information” is now also found to be ubiquitous within life:
Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg
And that this quantum information in particular requires a non-local, beyond space and time, cause in order to explain its existence: As the following article stated, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – October 28, 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” says Nicolas Gisin, Professor at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and member of the team. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121028142217.htm
Materialists simple have no beyond space and time cause to appeal to in order to explain this massive amount of quantum information in life, whereas Christians have always posited a beyond space and time cause in order to explain life, (as well as everything else):
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
bornagain77
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
03:34 AM
3
03
34
AM
PDT
Just like AI specialists, abiogenesis specialists are known for overhyping their abilities. Everyone is as clueless as they have always been on the origin of life.EugeneS
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
02:42 AM
2
02
42
AM
PDT
From the article, "Scientists suspect that deep hot vents like these might have seeded life on Earth about 4 billion years ago. " Last I checked, seeds do not come from non-living anything. Seeds also have a specific purpose, which is to grow specific things. If someone plants watermelon seeds, should anything other than watermelon be expected to grow?BobRyan
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
01:31 AM
1
01
31
AM
PDT
Seems like they're missing an obvious logical step. If life first appeared in the ocean AT these vents, it would make more sense to assume that life entered the ocean THROUGH the vents. We already know that the rocks in the deep mantle are full of bacteria. The researchers seem to assume that the interface of water with heat is the important variable. When discussing meteorites and asteroids, researchers don't miss the FROM possibility. They assume that life came FROM another planet.polistra
July 24, 2020
July
07
Jul
24
24
2020
12:00 AM
12
12
00
AM
PDT
Good point. Even if you abundantly gave them every ingredient necessary for life around those thermal vents, they don't just come together automatically. No more than a house would assemble automatically if you tossed in 100 home improvement stores into a planet sized mixing bowl. Is it just me or does every article about origin of life add the we're getting closer disclaimer? Is it to keep their funding going? Or so materialists don't panic?David P
July 23, 2020
July
07
Jul
23
23
2020
10:41 PM
10
10
41
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply