
microbes that breath sulfate/ Guy Perkins and Mark Ellisman, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research
They argue that, if that;s true, life should be common in the universe. From ScienceDaily:
Scientists want to know how long life has existed on Earth. If it has been around for almost as long as the planet, this suggests it is easy for life to originate and life should be common in the Universe. If it takes a long time to originate, this suggests there were very special conditions that had to occur.
Actually, that doesn’t quite follow. There could have been very special conditions at the beginning. And, absent very special conditions, maybe life just would not originate at all.
This new study reveals a primary biological control step in microbial sulfur metabolism, and clarifies which cellular states lead to which types of sulfur isotope fractionation. This allows scientists to link metabolism to isotopes: by knowing how metabolism changes stable isotope ratios, scientists can predict the isotopic signature organisms should leave behind. This study provides some of the first information regarding how robustly ancient life was metabolizing. Microbial sulfate metabolism is recorded in over a three billion years of sulfur isotope ratios that are in line with this study’s predictions, which suggest life was in fact thriving in the ancient oceans. Paper. (open access) – Min Sub Sim, Hideaki Ogata, Wolfgang Lubitz, Jess F. Adkins, Alex L. Sessions, Victoria J. Orphan, Shawn E. McGlynn. Role of APS reductase in biogeochemical sulfur isotope fractionation. Nature Communications, 2019; 10 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07878-4 More.
The question one is left with is, if life is 3.5 billion years old, why did it only become quite interesting about half a billion years ago (if that’s the story)? The microbes that metabolized practically anything just to stay alive didn’t appear to want to do much else. Yes, it’s an old question why they didn’t (couldn’t?) Or maybe they even did. But based on the history of the last half-billion years, there should be an answer.
See also: Photosynthesis Pushed Back Even Further. Time To Revisit The “Boring Billion” Claim
Earth’s “boring billion”now hot again (2015)
The “boring billion” years: New hypothesis suggests oxygen shortage stalled life (2014)
Why was there a “boring billion” years of single cell life? (2014)
You got to love Darwinian theory, it can predict everything and be falsified by nothing. They predicted that life took a long time to evolve from some prebiotic soup. When that prediction failed, well by golly, they predict that life must be very easy to evolve from some prebiotic soup. Small problem, not only do Darwinists unexpectedly have life appearing on earth as soon as it was possible, but now Darwinists do not even have their hypothetical prebiotic soup to appeal to anymore.
Here is a little honesty as to the ‘small problem’ of life that they hand waved off as no big deal.
“Actually, that doesn’t quite follow. There could have been very special conditions at the beginning. And, absent very special conditions, maybe life just would not originate at all.”
Ok, forget all those special conditions.
What about near-perfect conditions in a lab?
Has anybody done it yet?
Humpty Dumpty issue?
Really? Still don’t get it.
But we believe those just-so hand waving fairytales?
What a gullible species we humans are.
Shame of us.
delete
In further rebuttal to their claim that “life should be common in the Universe”, they simply do not have any evidence to support their ‘prediction’ that “life should be common in the Universe”. As Dr. Ross noted in November, “with a database of 2,888 planetary systems and 3,877 planets, only one planetary system and only one planet possess the characteristics that the possible existence of advanced life needs. It requires little effort to discern the identity of that single planetary system and single planet.”
In fact, the planetary systems discovered thus far are turning out to be wildly different from our own and are overturning what we thought we knew about the formation of planetary systems
Moreover, the fact that the Earth has enjoyed a stable planetary orbit for billions of years, at just the right distance from the sun in order to allow liquid water to exist on earth at the right temperature, is nothing short of miraculous,,,
Moreover, the soil on both the moon and mars give no hint of being favorable for life to ‘easily’ originate,,,
As the preceding articles gave a glimpse of, one false assumption the authors in the OP made is that the chemical compositions of exoplanets will be somewhat similar to the Earth’s chemical composition and will therefore be favorable for life. Yet, they have no basis for that assumption,
Besides having the right chemical composition, there are many other factors that must be met in order for a planet to be able to host life in this universe. Dr. Hugh Ross has assembled a list of these factors,
,,, And that is just the probability against getting a life supporting planet in the universe,,, that does not even take into consideration the probability against ‘simple’ life ‘easily’ appearing on that life supporting planet.
Perhaps the most basic false assumption the authors in the article in the OP made is the false assumption of the Copernican principle and/or the principle of Mediocrity,,,
Yet, despite many people (including many Christians) holding the Copernican principle to be unquestionably true, the fact of the matter is that both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have themselves now overturned the Copernican principle and/or the principle of mediocrity as being a valid principle in science.
Moreover, when taking into consideration the recently discovered anomalies in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation which line up with the earth and solar system, then the earth should, by all rights, once again, contrary to the Copernican principle, be considered ‘special’, even central, in the universe once again:
Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” documentary that explains these recently discovered ‘anomalies’ in the CMBR, that ‘coincidentally’ line up with the earth and solar system, in an easy to understand manner.
Moreover besides the earth and solar system lining up with the anomalies in the Cosmic Background Radiation, Radio Astronomy now reveals a surprising rotational coincidence for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe:
Moreover, on top of the overturning of the Copernican principle by the CMBR anomalies, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, in the following video physicist Neil Turok states that we live in the middle, or at the geometric mean, between the largest scale in physics and the smallest scale in physics:
And here is a picture that gets his point across very clearly:
The following site is also very interesting to the topic of ‘geometric centrality’ in the universe;
The preceding interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality. As far as the exponential graph itself is concerned, 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of ‘observable’ length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle and/or geometric mean.
Thus all in all, the findings of modern science paint a very different picture than the one promulgated by atheists, via the Copernican/Mediocrity principle, that the “human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet”,,,
,,, A very different picture than ‘chemical scum’ indeed. The findings of modern science reveal a universe where humans have far more significance and purpose than anyone had dared imagine just a few short decades ago.
BA77,
Excellent insightfully informative commentaries, as usual.
Thanks
Naming such a controversial principle after the famous astronomer denotes a shamefully deep ignorance of the history of modern science. We clueless humans deserve the bottom of the abyss at best.
Yes, dehydrated life came in dissolvable packages that said “just add water and energy”. Nature is even more clever than you thought. 🙄
no agreement in the near future: they haven’t figured it out yet… the debates continue:
Typological thinking: Then and now
Joeri Witteveen (2018)
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.22796
“If it has been around for almost as long as the planet, this suggests it is easy for life to originate and life should be common in the Universe.”
Well, NO. If Life was INSTALLED on Earth, then the arrival of Life and the conditions necessary to CREATE Life are entirely UNCONNECTED things. And clearly the Designer could choose any other planet or moon on which to ALSO install Life.
But the guys who NEED for Life to have arisen “naturally” (without external intervention) also NEED there to be some reasonable biological soup in a tidal pool or someplace in which prebiotic molecules just HAPPEN to attach themselves together in patterns that then replicate.
But if we accept Intelligent Design, then the ENTIRE discussion of how geochemistry might produce a self-replicating molecule is irrelevant. So I wish those guys well and hope then have lots of friendly luncheons together, at which they discuss nonsense.