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Early Earth less ‘Hellish’ than previously thought?

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Zircão (zirconium silicate ZrSiO4)/Creative Commons

From ScienceDaily:

From the early 20th century up through the 1980’s, geologists generally agreed that conditions during the Hadean period were utterly hostile to life. Inability to find rock formations from the period led them to conclude that early Earth was hellishly hot, either entirely molten or subject to such intense asteroid bombardment that any rocks that formed were rapidly remelted. As a result, they pictured the surface of the Earth as covered by a giant “magma ocean.”

This perception began to change about 30 years ago when geologists discovered zircon crystals (a mineral typically associated with granite) with ages exceeding 4 billion years old preserved in younger sandstones. These ancient zircons opened the door for exploration of the Earth’s earliest crust. In addition to the radiometric dating techniques that revealed the ages of these ancient zircons, geologists used other analytical techniques to extract information about the environment in which the crystals formed, including the temperature and whether water was present.

Since then zircon studies have revealed that the Hadean Earth was not the uniformly hellish place previously imagined, but during some periods possessed an established crust cool enough so that surface water could form — possibly on the scale of oceans.

The researchers decided to study zircon crystals, the only known survivors from the era. Apparently the zircons from the Hadean era grew in magmas different from the ones in which zircons formed in Iceland in the last 18 million years:

Most importantly, their analysis found that Icelandic zircons grew from much hotter magmas than Hadean zircons. Although surface water played an important role in the generation of both Icelandic and Hadean crystals, in the Icelandic case the water was extremely hot when it interacted with the source rocks while the Hadean water-rock interactions were at significantly lower temperatures.

What makes this find of more general interest is that life got started on Earth very early in its history:

Some recent research has identified life on land over two billion years ago, consisting of a fungus whose central cavity was filled with symbiotic bacteria. Some Australian fossils are said to date back to 3.5 billion years old, not long after the cooling of Earth’s crust from the bombardment by planetesimals (rocky objects) at 3.85 billion years ago. Of course, some such current findings may be revised. But the general trend has been to the discovery of ever-earlier instances of life on Earth. That means that very complex and precise sequences of events must have taken place in a short period of time. Also, we don’t know in detail what the conditions on early Earth were like so it is difficult to refine the search by ruling out whole classes of theories. More.

If this find—that the early climate was not hellish (Hadean) in all respects—is substantiated, we have better insight into how life was even possible in principle. We still don’t know how it got started.

See also:

Can all the numbers for life’s origin just happen to fall into place?

Maybe if we throw enough models at the origin of life… some of them will stick

and

The Science Fictions series at your fingertips (origin of life)

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Here’s the abstract:

Tangible evidence of Earth’s earliest (Hadean; >4.0 Ga) crust, and the processes and materials that contributed to its formation, exists almost entirely in a record of detrital zircon from Jack Hills, Western Australia, and a few other locations. Iceland, with its thick, juvenile, basaltic crust and relatively abundant silicic rocks, is considered a potential modern analog for the Hadean magmatic environment where >4 Ga zircon formed. We present the first extensive dataset for Icelandic zircon, with trace element and oxygen isotope compositions from samples that span the island’s history and full range of tectonic settings. This statistically robust zircon-based comparison between Iceland and the early Earth reveals distinctions in chemistry that suggest fundamental differences in magmatic environments. Whereas the d 18O signature of Hadean zircons generally exceed that of zircons equilibrated with mantle-derived magma (85%=5.3‰; median 6‰), almost all Icelandic zircons are characterized by a “light” oxygen signature (98%=5.3‰; median 3‰). Deviations from “juvenile” oxygen values indicate that many Hadean zircons and almost all Icelandic zircons grew from magmas with substantial contributions from materials that had interacted with surface waters. In the Hadean case, the interaction occurred at low temperatures, while in Iceland, it was a high-temperature interaction. Icelandic and Hadean zircons are also distinct in their Ti concentrations (Icelandic median concentration 12 ppm, Hadean median 5 ppm). Titanium in zircon correlates positively with temperature of crystallization, and this difference in median Ti concentration suggests a temperature difference of at least 50?̊C. Other differences in trace elements compositions are consistent with the interpretation that Icelandic and Hadean zircons grew in magmas with very different origins and histories (e.g., the heavy rare earth element Yb is almost an order of magnitude higher in Icelandic zircon). A comparison with elemental data for Phanerozoic zircon from different environments demonstrates that the Hadean population is unusually depleted in Ti, but otherwise similar to zircons from continental arc settings. Zircons from Iceland, and from modern evolving rift environments where oceanic lithosphere and upwelling asthenosphere are replacing continental lithosphere, are compositionally intermediate between mid-ocean ridge and continental arc zircon populations. The elemental distinctions are consistent with fractionation of zircon-bearing magmas under hotter and drier conditions in Icelandic, mid-ocean ridge, and evolving rift environments and cooler and wetter conditions in arc and, especially, Hadean environments. (paywall)

Comments
Confronting Science’s Logical Limits - John L. Casti - 1996 Excerpt: It has been estimated that a supercomputer applying plausible rules for protein folding would need 10^127 years to find the final folded form for even a very short sequence consisting of just 100 amino acids. (The universe is 13.7 x 10^9 years old). In fact, in 1993 Aviezri S. Fraenkel of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the mathematical formulation of the protein-folding problem is computationally “hard” in the same way that the traveling-salesman problem is hard. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Confronting_Sciences_Logical_Limits.pdfbornagain77
September 20, 2014
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As a footnote to 'non-local', beyond space and time, quantum information being found in every DNA and protein molecule, it is also interesting to point out that we now have evidence of quantum computation being performed in DNA and protein molecules.
Quantum Entanglement/Information in DNA - video https://vimeo.com/92405752 Is DNA a quantum computer? Stuart Hameroff Excerpt: DNA could function as a quantum computers with superpositions of base pair dipoles acting as qubits. Entanglement among the qubits, necessary in quantum computation is accounted for through quantum coherence in the pi stack where the quantum information is shared,,, http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/dnaquantumcomputer1.htm Quantum Dots Spotlight DNA-Repair Proteins in Motion - March 2010 Excerpt: "How this system works is an important unanswered question in this field," he said. "It has to be able to identify very small mistakes in a 3-dimensional morass of gene strands. It's akin to spotting potholes on every street all over the country and getting them fixed before the next rush hour." Dr. Bennett Van Houten - of note: A bacterium has about 40 team members on its pothole crew. That allows its entire genome to be scanned for errors in 20 minutes, the typical doubling time.,, These smart machines can apparently also interact with other damage control teams if they cannot fix the problem on the spot. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311123522.htm
Of note: DNA repair machines ‘Fixing every pothole in America before the next rush hour’ is analogous to the traveling salesman problem. The traveling salesman problem is a NP-hard (read: very hard) problem in computer science; The problem involves finding the shortest possible route between cities, visiting each city only once. ‘Traveling salesman problems’ are notorious for keeping supercomputers busy for days.
NP-hard problem – Examples Excerpt: Another example of an NP-hard problem is the optimization problem of finding the least-cost cyclic route through all nodes of a weighted graph. This is commonly known as the traveling salesman problem. - per wikipedia
Yet it is exactly this type of ‘traveling salesman problem’ that quantum computers excel at:
Speed Test of Quantum Versus Conventional Computing: Quantum Computer Wins - May 8, 2013 Excerpt: quantum computing is, "in some cases, really, really fast." McGeoch says the calculations the D-Wave excels at involve a specific combinatorial optimization problem, comparable in difficulty to the more famous "travelling salesperson" problem that's been a foundation of theoretical computing for decades.,,, "This type of computer is not intended for surfing the internet, but it does solve this narrow but important type of problem really, really fast," McGeoch says. "There are degrees of what it can do. If you want it to solve the exact problem it's built to solve, at the problem sizes I tested, it's thousands of times faster than anything I'm aware of. If you want it to solve more general problems of that size, I would say it competes -- it does as well as some of the best things I've looked at. At this point it's merely above average but shows a promising scaling trajectory." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130508122828.htm
Since it is obvious that there is not a material CPU (central processing unit) in the DNA, or cell, busily computing answers to this monster logistic problem, in a purely ‘material’ fashion, by crunching bits, then it is readily apparent that this monster ‘traveling salesman problem’, for DNA repair, is somehow being computed by ‘non-local’ quantum computation within the cell and/or within DNA; We also have evidence of quantum computation solving the 'travelling salesman problem' within protein folding:
DNA computer helps travelling salesman - Philip Ball - 2000 Excerpt: Just about the meanest problems you can set a computer belong to the class called 'NP-complete'. The number of possible answers to these conundrums, and so the time required to find the correct solution, increases exponentially as the problem is scaled up in size. A famous example is the 'travelling salesman' puzzle, which involves finding the shortest route connecting all of a certain number of cities.,,, Solving the travelling-salesman problem is a little like finding the most stable folded shape of a protein's chain-like molecular structure -- in which the number of 'cities' can run to hundreds or even thousands. http://www.nature.com/news/2000/000113/full/news000113-10.html
And protein folding is found to be 'NP-complete'
Combinatorial Algorithms for Protein Folding in Lattice Models: A Survey of Mathematical Results – 2009 Excerpt: Protein Folding: Computational Complexity 4.1 NP-completeness: from 10^300 to 2 Amino Acid Types 4.2 NP-completeness: Protein Folding in Ad-Hoc Models 4.3 NP-completeness: Protein Folding in the HP-Model http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sorin/pdfs/pfoldingsurvey.pdf
Here is the paper that proved that protein folding belongs to the physics of the quantum world and that protein folding does not belong to the physics of the classical world:
Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from. To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That's a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo's equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/
A few more supplemental notes:
A Few Hundred Thousand Computers vs. (The Folding Of) A Single Protein Molecule – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHqi3ih0GrI Quantum states in proteins and protein assemblies: The essence of life? – STUART HAMEROFF, JACK TUSZYNSKI Excerpt: It is, in fact, the hydrophobic effect and attractions among non-polar hydrophobic groups by van der Waals forces which drive protein folding. Although the confluence of hydrophobic side groups are small, roughly 1/30 to 1/250 of protein volumes, they exert enormous influence in the regulation of protein dynamics and function. Several hydrophobic pockets may work cooperatively in a single protein (Figure 2, Left). Hydrophobic pockets may be considered the “brain” or nervous system of each protein.,,, Proteins, lipids and nucleic acids are composed of constituent molecules which have both non-polar and polar regions on opposite ends. In an aqueous medium the non-polar regions of any of these components will join together to form hydrophobic regions where quantum forces reign. http://www.tony5m17h.net/SHJTQprotein.pdf
bornagain77
September 20, 2014
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In fact an entire human can, theoretically, be reduced to quantum information and teleported to another location in the universe:
Quantum Teleportation Of A Human? – video https://vimeo.com/75163272 Will Human Teleportation Ever Be Possible? As experiments in relocating particles advance, will we be able to say, "Beam me up, Scotty" one day soon? By Corey S. Powell|Monday, June 16, 2014 Excerpt: Note a fascinating common thread through all these possibilities. Whether you regard yourself as a pile of atoms, a DNA sequence, a series of sensory inputs or an elaborate computer file, in all of these interpretations you are nothing but a stack of data. According to the principle of unitarity, quantum information is never lost. Put them together, and those two statements lead to a staggering corollary: At the most fundamental level, the laws of physics say you are immortal. http://discovermagazine.com/2014/julyaug/20-the-ups-and-downs-of-teleportation
Thus, not only is information not reducible to a energy-matter basis, as is presupposed in Darwinism, but in actuality both energy and matter ultimately reduce to a information basis as is presupposed in Christian Theism (John1:1). Besides providing direct empirical falsification of neo-Darwinian claims as to the generation of information, the implication of finding 'non-local', beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’ quantum information in molecular biology on a massive scale is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious:
Does Quantum Biology Support A Quantum Soul? – Stuart Hameroff - video (notes in description) http://vimeo.com/29895068
Verse and Music:
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Johnny Cash and Rosanne Cash - September When It Comes - song about life and mortality http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2WilM6ljUg
bornagain77
September 18, 2014
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That quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that ‘information’ in its pure ‘quantum form’ is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints (Bell Aspect, Leggett, Zeilinger, etc..), should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale is a direct empirical falsification of Darwinian claims, for how can the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy) ’cause’ when the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ falsified material particles as its own causation in the first place? Appealing to the probability of various 'random' configurations of material particles, as Darwinism does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the material particles themselves to supply!
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 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,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php Closing the last Bell-test loophole for photons - Jun 11, 2013 Excerpt:– requiring no assumptions or correction of count rates – that confirmed quantum entanglement to nearly 70 standard deviations.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-06-bell-test-loophole-photons.html etc.. etc..
In other words, to give a coherent explanation for an effect that is shown to be completely independent of any time and space constraints one is forced to appeal to a cause that is itself not limited to time and space! i.e. Put more simply, you cannot explain a effect by a cause that has been falsified by the very same effect you are seeking to explain! Improbability arguments of various ‘special’ configurations of material particles, which have been a staple of the arguments against neo-Darwinism, simply do not apply since the cause is not within the material particles in the first place! And although Naturalists have proposed various, far fetched, naturalistic scenarios to try to get around the Theistic implications of quantum non-locality, none of the ‘far fetched’ naturalistic solutions, in themselves, are compatible with the reductive materialism that undergirds neo-Darwinian thought.
Why Quantum Theory Does Not Support Materialism By Bruce L Gordon, Ph.D Excerpt: The underlying problem is this: there are correlations in nature that require a causal explanation but for which no physical explanation is in principle possible. Furthermore, the nonlocalizability of field quanta entails that these entities, whatever they are, fail the criterion of material individuality. So, paradoxically and ironically, the most fundamental constituents and relations of the material world cannot, in principle, be understood in terms of material substances. Since there must be some explanation for these things, the correct explanation will have to be one which is non-physical – and this is plainly incompatible with any and all varieties of materialism. http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbscience.aspx?pageid=8589952939
Thus, as far as empirical science itself is concerned, Neo-Darwinism is falsified in its claim that information is ‘emergent’ from a reductive materialistic basis. Of related interest, by using this ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, ‘quantum information channel’ of entanglement, such as they use in quantum computation, physicists have reduced material to quantum information. (of note: energy is completely reduced to quantum information, whereas matter is semi-completely reduced, with the caveat being that matter can be reduced to energy via e=mc2).
Ions have been teleported successfully for the first time by two independent research groups Excerpt: In fact, copying isn’t quite the right word for it. In order to reproduce the quantum state of one atom in a second atom, the original has to be destroyed. This is unavoidable – it is enforced by the laws of quantum mechanics, which stipulate that you can’t ‘clone’ a quantum state. In principle, however, the ‘copy’ can be indistinguishable from the original,,, http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2004/October/beammeup.asp Atom takes a quantum leap – 2009 Excerpt: Ytterbium ions have been ‘teleported’ over a distance of a metre.,,, “What you’re moving is information, not the actual atoms,” says Chris Monroe, from the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland in College Park and an author of the paper. But as two particles of the same type differ only in their quantum states, the transfer of quantum information is equivalent to moving the first particle to the location of the second. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2171769/posts Scientists Report Finding Reliable Way to Teleport Data By JOHN MARKOFF - MAY 29, 2014 Excerpt: They report that they have achieved perfectly accurate teleportation of quantum information over short distances. They are now seeking to repeat their experiment over the distance of more than a kilometer. If they are able to repeatedly show that entanglement works at this distance, it will be a definitive demonstration of the entanglement phenomenon and quantum mechanical theory. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/science/scientists-report-finding-reliable-way-to-teleport-data.html?_r=2 Researchers Succeed in Quantum Teleportation of Light Waves - April 2011 Excerpt: In this experiment, researchers in Australia and Japan were able to transfer quantum information from one place to another without having to physically move it. It was destroyed in one place and instantly resurrected in another, “alive” again and unchanged. This is a major advance, as previous teleportation experiments were either very slow or caused some information to be lost. http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-04/quantum-teleportation-breakthrough-could-lead-instantanous-computing How Teleportation Will Work - Excerpt: In 1993, the idea of teleportation moved out of the realm of science fiction and into the world of theoretical possibility. It was then that physicist Charles Bennett and a team of researchers at IBM confirmed that quantum teleportation was possible, but only if the original object being teleported was destroyed. — As predicted, the original photon no longer existed once the replica was made. http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/teleportation1.htm Quantum Teleportation – IBM Research Page Excerpt: “it would destroy the original (photon) in the process,,” http://researcher.ibm.com/view_project.php?id=2862
bornagain77
September 18, 2014
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bloodymurderlive, Stephen Meyer's argument, in his book 'Signature In The Cell', is indeed based on presently known cause to produce the effect in question, i.e. 'Inference to the Best Explanation',,,
Stephen Meyer - The Scientific Basis Of Intelligent Design - video https://vimeo.com/32148403
But there is further evidence from physics that undermines any materialistic claim for explaining the information we find in life. First it is important to learn that classical 'digital' information, such as what we find encoded in computer programs, and yes, as we find encoded in DNA, is found to be a subset of ‘non-local' (i.e. beyond space and time) quantum entanglement/information by the following method:
Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy – June 2011 Excerpt: 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
And it is also of importance to learn tha this quantum information is ‘conserved’ i.e. cannot be created nor destroyed;,,,
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html Quantum no-deleting theorem Excerpt: A stronger version of the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem provide permanence to quantum information. To create a copy one must import the information from some part of the universe and to delete a state one needs to export it to another part of the universe where it will continue to exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_no-deleting_theorem#Consequence
Moreover, this ‘spooky action at a distance’, non-local, quantum information, though at first thought to be impossible to maintain in ‘hot and noisy’ cells, is now found in molecular biology on a massive scale, in every DNA and protein molecule:
Quantum entanglement in hot systems – 2011 Excerpt: The authors remark that this reverses the previous orthodoxy, which held that quantum effects could not exist in biological systems because of the amount of noise in these systems.,,, Environmental noise here drives a persistent and cyclic generation of new entanglement.,,, In summary, the authors say that they have demonstrated that entanglement can recur even in a hot noisy environment. In biological systems this can be related to changes in the conformation of macromolecules. http://quantum-mind.co.uk/quantum-entanglement-hot-systems/ Quantum entanglement holds together life’s blueprint – 2010 Excerpt: When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA’s helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours. “If you didn’t have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA,” says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. http://neshealthblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint/ Does DNA Have Telepathic Properties?-A Galaxy Insight – 2009 Excerpt: DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn’t be able to.,,, The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible. per daily galaxy DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States, Research Shows – June 2011 Excerpt: — DNA — can discern between quantum states known as spin. – The researchers fabricated self-assembling, single layers of DNA attached to a gold substrate. They then exposed the DNA to mixed groups of electrons with both directions of spin. Indeed, the team’s results surpassed expectations: The biological molecules reacted strongly with the electrons carrying one of those spins, and hardly at all with the others. The longer the molecule, the more efficient it was at choosing electrons with the desired spin, while single strands and damaged bits of DNA did not exhibit this property. per science daily Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA - short video https://vimeo.com/92405752 Coherent Intrachain energy migration at room temperature – Elisabetta Collini and Gregory Scholes – University of Toronto – Science, 323, (2009), pp. 369-73 Excerpt: The authors conducted an experiment to observe quantum coherence dynamics in relation to energy transfer. The experiment, conducted at room temperature, examined chain conformations, such as those found in the proteins of living cells. Neighbouring molecules along the backbone of a protein chain were seen to have coherent energy transfer. Where this happens quantum decoherence (the underlying tendency to loss of coherence due to interaction with the environment) is able to be resisted, and the evolution of the system remains entangled as a single quantum state. http://www.scimednet.org/quantum-coherence-living-cells-and-protein/ Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from. To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That's a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo's equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/ etc..
bornagain77
September 18, 2014
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Bloody @ 2 You appear to have succumbed to “Miller’s Mendacity.” Go to our glossary (link below) and look that phrase up. If you still have questions, let me know. https://uncommondescent.com/glossary/Barry Arrington
September 18, 2014
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So the early conditions on earth were more favorable to life than previously thought... Doesn't this at least contribute to explaining the origin of life? It at least removes one obstacle. And what is left over? As I understand the argument from Stephen C. Meyer, one must explain the origin of digital information by naturalistic means. The claim is that intelligence is the only known cause for digital information, but how can this be true? Is it not true that orderly sequences have equal probabilistic resources as disorderly sequences? The claim from the materialist view is that nature only requires that orderly sequence to appear once, and then the orderly form can be stabilized by selection and evolved by continuous selection-variation cycles. Or so goes the story, and yes, it is far more nuanced that this. What we observe is that cellular machinery is also required to stabilize the orderly sequences. There are myriad hurdles in the way of the materialist explanation for the origin of biological information. But it provides, at least, a working hypothesis. And is that hypothesis not strengthened by realizing that orderly outcomes have the same probabilistic resources as disorderly outcomes? However complex the simplest possible lifeform must have been, is it not merely an entity of bare probability? I digress. The article claims that we have no idea how life got started. To properly understand what must be meant by "how," we should ask what design theorists mean when they answer the how question by reference to intelligence. They do not presume to know the specific mechanisms and tools by which an intelligent designer employed to create the digital information of life, they merely claim that intelligence is the only observable cause of digital information, and thus is our only explanatory resource. But now, if we employ the same use of the word "how," which requires only that we appeal to known causes rather than identifying the specific mechanisms and tools used to create digital information, the burden on the materialist view is significantly lightened. Indeed, has it not been lifted altogether? One need only point out that all possible outcomes of a shuffled deck of alphabetic flashcards have equal probabilistic certainty - including outcomes that spell out MLK's I have a dream speech. The situation may be different if multiple trials were required, as randomness would ultimately return outcomes to disorderly equilibrium. Yet that is the whole point: The materialist view only requires that nature get it right once. I may be speaking out of turn, because I have struggled more with Dembski's math than with Meyer's philosophy. But it seems to me that Meyer has regularly made a claim that cannot be supported in his oversimplified form. Clearly, digital information can emerge from randomness. It seems to me that this is sufficient to make the materialist view the epistemic equivalent to the design inference. Somebody please set me straight!bloodymurderlive
September 18, 2014
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Since then zircon studies have revealed that the Hadean Earth was not the uniformly hellish place previously imagined, but during some periods possessed an established crust cool enough so that surface water could form — possibly on the scale of oceans.
Interesting. I'm very interested to know how the oceans formed. Are scientists genuinely serious when they say they think that asteroids brought the water? Where did all that water come from? And how can we really know? Are our hypotheses scientific ones meaning they are testable and falsifiable?tjguy
September 18, 2014
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