The text below was originally posted to another forum, where actually it was rather off-topic. Here, it should be on-topic. There is some dispute that Evolution cannot have yielded the enormous complexity represented by Life. The text contains assumptions regarding that claim, and calculations based on those assumptions. When I first wrote it down, I made the assumptions blindly, not knowing in the least what the result would be. I simply tried to make reasonable assumptions. At the end of the text is an invitation for others to refine the assumptions and calculations as may be appropriate.
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Here I'd like to try something I've not heard about before. Let's pretend we have a group of simple molecules. Let's now make two assumptions, that after Energy and Time have affected those molecules, one tenth of them will have combined to make molecules that are twice as complex. {We do have experimental verification that Energy and Time can indeed provide opportunities for simple molecules to combine into more complex molecules.} After more time, one-tenth of those more-complex molecules combine to create more new molecules, again twice as complex. Suppose we extrapolated this until complexity-of-Life resulted; how many original simple molecules are we talking about? Well, first let's pick something as an example of life's complexity. I'll select mitochondria, which are bacteria-like things that exist inside most eukarote cells. They can reproduce and by themselves meet a number of characteristics of living organisms, but they are also somewhat stripped-down, being symbiotic with the cells that they inhabit. They do not need much in the way of defenses against other organisms; the host cells do that for them.
SO: a mitochondria has roughly 16,500 bases with 13 recognized genes, ~1 micrometer in diameter and ~1-10 micrometers in length. I'll use 5 micrometers of length. Next, how many atoms can fit inside a cylinder of that size? Well, an atom is measured in Angstrom Units, a ten-billionth of a meter (1 micrometer is 10,000 Angstroms), and most atoms range in diameter from 1 to 5 Angstroms.
http://mimp.mems.cmu.edu/~ordofmag/atomsize.htm. Since the molecules associated with Life are overwhelmingly more often small than large, I'll select 2 as the average. The occasional big cesium atom that some life-form might require is more-than-balanced by many many tiny carbon atoms. Now to compute: The formula for a cylinder is (height)*(pi)*(radius-squared). If we convert the chosen mitochondria cylinder to Anstroms we get: (50,000)*(3.14)*(500-squared), or 39.25 billion cubic Angstroms. The formula for a sphere is (4/3)*(pi)*(radius-cubed), so using that on our chosen average atom-size we get (4/3)*(3.14)*(1-cubed), or 4.187 cubic Angstoms. Dividing that into the other number tells us how many atoms fit into the mitochondria cylinder: 9,375,000,000 (9.375 billion). If we assume a simple molecule has four atoms (water has three, ammonia has four, methane has five), then we divide again to see how many simple molecules could have been combined, in multitudinous ways, to make up the complex parts of a living mitochondria cell: 2.344 billion. Let us now pretend that this is equivalent to one huge complex molecule, and go back to the very first assumptions of this exercise: One tenth of a group of simple molecules combine to make other molecules that are twice as complex.
If the end-result is a complex of 2.344 billion simple molecules, how many molecules did we start with? This is pretty easy to figure, by first finding out how many doublings occurred, to yield that complex of 2.34 billion molecules: 31-and-a-fraction; I'll call it 32. Now we multiply 2.344 billion by ten, 32 times: 2.344 x 10-to-the-41st-power. That's a lot, but we need a better mental picture of it. There is a unit in Chemistry called "the mole", which is 6.02 x 10-to-the-23rd; it is a factor that lets Atomic Weight be converted into grams (a mole of hydrogen atoms weighs about 1 gram; a mole of oxygen atoms weighs about 16 grams, and so on). I need a reasonable weight for my average 4-atom molecule, and I will choose 26, the weight of 4-atom acetylene. I'm hoping this number is more than what a more-rigorous version of this computation would use, so that it could not be said that I was too lenient in my assumptions. Okay, we now compute: divide 2.344x10E41 by 6.02x10E23 to see how many moles of simple molecules we have been playing with: 3.89x10E17. Multiply that by 26 to find out how many grams that is: just over 10-to-the-19th power. Divide that by one million to convert grams to metric tons: 10-to-the-13th power,
ten trillion metric tons of simple molecules. How does this compare to all the organic matter (made from simple molecules!) at the Earth's surface regions? One estimate is 10-to-the-16th tons, or one thousand times the amount needed by the above calculations.
Jean-Marc Jancovici – Articles et tudes de Jean-Marc Jancovici. Ce conseiller en organisation propose services et connaissances dans les domaines de l'nergie et du climat Therefore it seems
mathematically reasonable that upon the Earth enough simple molecules existed (by a factor of a thousand!), that under the influence of Time and Energy, could have combined to form more complex molecules, at a rate of one-tenth-per-doubling, until complexities equivalent to that needed by Life was achieved. Yes, that is not the same thing as Life itself forming, but at least we know that the background requirement, many complex molecules needed for Life, appears not to be prohibited! And, of course, the Earth is not considered to be the only place in the universe where simple organic molecules have had opportunities to combine into more complex ones. The Panspermia hypthesis increases the chance that Life came about, during interactions between complex molecules, by multiplying the preceding result by however-many planets were brewing complex molecules over billions of years. Could be millions or billions, in this Galaxy alone.
{The preceding text is freely offered to anyone who would like to post it elsewhere, for anyone who might like to apply more rigor to the ideas/assumptions therein.}
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In response to someone who asked for a more condensed description of the above text, I answered:
The result is that the early Earth had a thousand times as many interacting organic molecules as needed to explain the complexity of Life, and that result thereby supports the assumption that life could have originated on Earth as a result of natural events, no Creation of Life needed.
Here I will also note that none of the above pays attention to how much time each step took place, where the assumed one-tenth of molecules combined into double complexity. However, if it can be assumed that the first step took one month, and each succeeding step took twice as long, then the total time is about 2-to-the-33rd-power months, which is somewhat more than 700 million years. A decent chunk of Geological Time, that. Well, actually we have evidence for a
faster speed of the first appearance of Life on Earth; it is known that Life did appear almost as soon as it was possible (the Earth had to cool from the molten state first). Less than two hundred million years after the oceans formed, I think the evidence is. That would be more like counting doublings of weeks instead of months (165 million years).
This message has been edited by FutureIncoming, 03-20-2006 07:55 PM
This message has been edited by FutureIncoming, 03-20-2006 08:06 PM
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