In the plain Jane story, NASA is studying the origin of life in order to narrow down where to look for it off the planet. But then we read:
A new NASA study has recreated the origins of life, building the ocean’s floors from 4 billion years ago as humanity attempts to understand how life started on Earth and where else it might be found.
The study, conducted by astrobiologists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looks at how life began in hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. …
While it’s important to note NASA has not created life itself in the experiment, it does raise the possibility that the hydrothermal vents could appear elsewhere in the universe and be a building block for life.
“If we have these hydrothermal vents here on Earth, possibly similar reactions could occur on other planets,” said JPL’s Erika Flores, co-author of the new study … Chris
Ciacia , “NASA was able to recreate the ‘origins of life’ and the results are shocking” at [publication]
What’s shocking is the hype. Essentially, the team created some amino acids and “Some researchers believe these could combine (like Legos) and create further complex molecules which could then be a precursor to life.”
As a friend said: Oh.
Another friend wonders whether science news is now neck and neck with Daytime TV.
No wonder some software firms are developing AI to write news stories. Critical thinking is not sought in either the writer or the reader so it’s all good, right?
Paper. (paywall)
See also: NASA is investing more in prebiotic chemistry (Suzan Mazur interview)
and
Origin of life: Could it all have come together in one very special place?
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As Dr Behe said:
They’re puffing up very modest results.
Poor things.
However, isn’t that taxpayer-funded?
Are taxpayers aware of that waste?
Can we get serious now?
This is all covered in Nick Lane’s books The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life and Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution
Both books are highly recommended for understanding the evidence for the materialistic version. Which makes me wonder if Dr. Behe has read them – Nick Lane is also a biochemist- so the evidence comes across on the level Dr. Behe discusses in his 3 books, ie the molecular biochemical level.
ET,
Do those books destroy or at least weaken Dr Behe’s arguments?
PeterA- If life arose from physio-chemical processes, then Dr. Behe’s claims are destroyed. ID is destroyed.
However, the books don’t quite get there. He just Jedi handwaves ATP synthase into existence. But the chemistry of the alkaline vents is where I would put my $$$ if I was a materialist. It is interesting stuff regardless of whether or not it has any bearing on the origin of life
ET,
I would repeat what Dr Behe said:
They’re puffing up very modest results.
Yes and no.
Yes, of course there will always be the puff because all they will have is a narrative. No, the results are not modest, the chemistry is pretty cool and it is always good to know what the other guys are up to.
OK I am greatly confused here.
So they created the origin of life yet they did not create life?
Am I missing something here?
This is an honest question
Creating amino acids have been happening for years we’ve been able to do that in the lab under many different conditions organic molecules and amino acids. This has been a thing a thing for some time.
So I am very confused at why this is re-creating the origin of life and it was somehow successful
Second of all I’m not exactly sure how ID would be destroyed because the laws of physics still dictate how those work, And what were the laws of physics created by what was the first mover?
So yeah yeah the chemistry is very cool but that’s my point the chemistry is very cool and very precise and very amazing too amazing to be honest. it’s hard for me to believe that our universe just happen to come with that set of rules that allowed that type of chemistry to just work
“Some researchers believe these could combine (like Legos) and create further complex molecules which could then be a precursor to life.”
alright …
so why after 200 years of OOL research scientists can’t show us how it self-assembled ? Show us the LEGOS… Show us how !!
I would like to see… after 200 years of research….
in 2014, Jack Szostak a Noble price laureate and very famous OOL researcher wrote:
“Life in lab in 3-5 years….most likely in 3 years” (google it) ….and that was in 2014…. and they are still nowhere close…
Moreover, Jack Szostak retracted his paper on OOL research….
”Definitely embarrassing:” Nobel Laureate retracts non-reproducible paper in Nature journal”
https://retractionwatch.com/2017/12/05/definitely-embarrassing-nobel-laureate-retracts-non-reproducible-paper-nature-journal/
So, please, stop telling just-so stories… show us how!!! We all are stupid creationists … so show us how!
they can’t show us how a cell self-assembled by series of lucky events (by unguided natural process)….
Much bigger problem is, they can’t assemble a simple cell from pre-existing components !!!
ET -Nick Lane should take James M Tour up on his offer of a free lunch and explain to Dr Tour how life came from non life through some evolutionary process, as Dr Tour has no idea how this could happen.
ET- Oh Dr Tour has asked the question of life`s origin of Nobel prize winners, National academy of science members and so on and they did not know either but Nick Lane knows.
All I know is that any time anyone starting from scratch tries to start the origin of life process all they end up with is a very small quantity of racemic amino acids in a goo and without an intelligent intervention in removing these amino acids this is as far as it ever goes , and even with said intelligent intervention it does not go much further.
Most of us would never be gullible enough to swallow the how life got started type sales pitch in any other area of our lives and would see this guy is only stating the 3 of 4 positives and not mentioning the 3 or 4 hundred negatives., but alas our world view blinds us.
ET @6:
Apparently you and I don’t agree on what Dr Behe meant by “puffing up very modest results”?
Remember the Galapagos finch beak issue? Such an microevolutionary adaptation was puffed up (extrapolated) to amazing MACROevo!!!
There’s little (serious) evo (if any at all) in evo-devo literature. It’s mostly devo stuff. Maybe sprinkled with evo terms here and there.
H’mm,
Let’s clip a bit more, with highlights:
Notice, again:
Nor is this framing an imposition by Fox News.
What was actually achieved, per the:
In short, little more than the ultimately futile Miller-Urey results that were so breathlessly headlined from 1953 on, except that vents may make a more chemically plausible context for synthesis of a few AAs etc. Missing in action: an account of how one moves from chemicals in an environment that also contains disruptive forces to a self-assembled, complex and coherently organised, integrated, encapsulated system that uses alphanumerically coded algorithmic information and nanotech execution machinery to effect a self-replicating, metabolic reaction set automaton.
The eye of evolutionary materialistic faith and its substances of things hoped for, not seen, are very much at work here,
KF
Here are a few overlooked problems in their research:
as to this comment from the article,,
Okie Dokie, they imagine a world of ‘self assembling Legos’ that can eventually produce life?,, 🙂
First off, they have no evidence for prebiotic chemistry. i.e. for their hypothetical ‘self assembling Legos’, on early earth:
Secondly, even if every possible atom on the early earth were hypothetically dedicated to nothing but prebiotic chemistry, then still the chance of ‘self assembling Legos’ ever finding even one functional protein molecule by chance would still exceed the age of the universe many times over:
That humorous ‘self assembling Legos’ comment reminds me of this more realistic comment from Dr. James Tour, where he hypothetically gives a ‘dream team’ of scientists all the “Legos” for prebiotic chemistry they could possibly want, and then tells them, using all their intelligence. to assemble the ‘Legos’ into a living cell,,, Tour remarks, “The members scratch their heads and walk away, frustrated,,, The Dream Team will not know where to start.”
And to show just how preposterous their ‘self assembling Legos’ conjecture actually is, here is a quote from Michael Denton that puts the actual situation with ‘simple life’ into a bit more proper perspective,
The elephant in the living room problem that materialistic OOL researchers are constantly overlooking is the ‘information problem’:
Since immaterial information can only come from a immaterial Mind, then perhaps that explains exactly why OOL researchers constantly overlook the ‘elephant in the living room’ information problem in their research?
KF @14:
Yes, exactly.
BA77 @15:
Yes, that’s it.
US taxpayers may want to write to their US senators and representatives to demand that this waste of federal funds is stopped and the funds get reassigned to more beneficial projects for improving science education, healthcare, security, defense, immigration,… yes, even the controversial border wall with drones flying around could be better use of federal funds than this OOL nonsense.
Did NASA recruit Humpty Dumpty for their silly OOL nonsense project? Also they should consult all the king’s horses and all the king’s men who couldn’t put Humpty together again. Note that this is not my original idea, I borrowed it from somebody else.