Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Scientists: All Life on Earth Came from Space Goo

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See here.  Excerpt:

At a UN-sponsored Symposium on the “Space Science and the United Nations” held in Graz, Austria, from 22-24 September 2014, Chandra Wickramasinghe presented a paper entitled “The transition from Earth-centred biology to cosmic life” with co-authors Gensuke Tokoro and Milton Wainwright. The paper, now published in Journal of Cosmology 24, 12080-12096, argues that a paradigm shift with potentially profound implications for humanity has been taking place over the past 3 decades and is on the verge of acceptance.  In an accompanying second paper (JoC, 24, 12097-12101) the same authors show that the recent discovery by radio astronomers of isopropyl cyanide in interstellar clouds adds to earlier discoveries in astronomy that have indicated the widespread occurrence of even more complex organics that can be interpreted as the break up products of living cells when they are exposed to conditions of space. They argue in these two papers the new data is not consistent with the reigning dogma in science that life emerged from inorganic chemicals on the Earth. Life, including a capacity to evolve into the magnificent spectacle we see around us, requires a system infinitely bigger and much older than our truly insignificant planet Earth. A large fraction of the matter in the entire universe and enormous spans were needed generate the all-encompassing “blue print” of life. The authors of the new papers argue that every living species on the Earth, including Homo sapiens, is the result of the assembly of cosmologically derived viral genes. Evidence for this point of view has grown to a stage that it can no longer be denied by the scientific community.

I suspect that the scientists pushing this view would probably object to a design inference on the ground that it just pushes the inquiry back.  There are good answers to that objection that have been posted on these pages many times.  But how would they respond to a similar objection?

Comments
Isn't all this space goo fogging Hubble's mirror? Who is cleaning it off? How much is this costing? What is NASA's budget for windex? Who is covering this up?Cross
February 17, 2015
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"Evidence for this point of view has grown to a stage that it can no longer be denied by the scientific community." Oh give it a rest. Stop with the codswallop and just admit to the public that you just don't have a clue. Inventing all these theories makes for great science fiction but that's where it must end. When will scientist's return to practising, well.... Actual science?humbled
February 14, 2015
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OK, so we're moving back from pond scum to the spontaneous assembly of living cells in the frigid vacuum of interstellar space? Or does-- "the widespread occurrence of even more complex organics that can be interpreted as the break up products of living cells when they are exposed to conditions of space" mean that the pond scum on Earth is the offspring of the original pond scum on Tau Ceti, which was then sorely mistreated in space before a fiery entry into Earth's atmosphere, followed by a stupendously violent (and hot) landing. And this explains the origin of the original pond scum how? I'd also like to object to the use of the technical term "organic", meaning "contains Carbon atoms", to imply "produced by a living organism". Shouldn't we instead be looking for a series of simple chemical reactions that can produce isopropyl cyanide in a vacuum whilst being bombarded with intense radiation?mahuna
February 14, 2015
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Evidence for this point of view has grown to a stage that it can no longer be denied by the scientific community.
Resistance is futile!awstar
February 14, 2015
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