Hi, david12.
It seems we are getting a bit far afield in this topic and are drifting away from abiogenesis towards cosmology. I think we can all agree that the Earth existed before life came to exist - why don't we set aside the origins of the planet and elements themselves for now, and focus on how the primordial Earth could have given rise to life from non-life?
First, let's make one thing
very clear - no one in their right mind claims that a bunch of raw elements spontaneously formed into a bacteria. That has
nothing at all to do with the predictions of abiogenesis. The tired old Creationist analogy of a tornado assembling a 747 from its constituent parts purely by chance also has no ties to the actual predictions of abiogenesis - chemical reactions are
not random, and you cannot simply combine any random selection of elements all willy-nilly and form a molecule. If you light a match in a cloud of hydrogen and oxygen, you will form H2O. Not H5O, not HO3, but H2O. Chemical reactions follow certain rules based on the properties of the atoms themselves.
Now, as I said, the origin of life according to abiogenesis was not some randomly assembled single-celled organism. The Creationist claims that such spontaneous formation is competely impossible and rediculous are absolutely
true. Fortunately, that's not what abiogenesis predicts.
The early Earth was made up of a certain mix of...well, stuff. We know what this general mixture was composed of based on rocks surviving from that early era, as well as observing other planets in our solar system that never developed beyond this point. The surface and atmosphere of the Earth contained lots of hydrogen, water vapour, ammonia and methane. Several years ago, an experiment was conducted using a mix of those componds, combined with electrical discharges (which would have existed naturally as lightning and other static electricity), and ultraviolet radiation (provided readily by the Sun). The resulting reaction produces amino acids - the building blocks of proteins, necessary for all modern life.
Since the experiment closely duplicated the actual conditions of the early Earth, it has conclusively shown that certain chemicals necessary for the formation of life
can form spontaneously under the conditions present on Earth millions of years ago.
Unfortunately, this only proves that abiogenesis is worth persuing. Further evidence is scarce, because very little work beyond this experiment has been done thus far. Various universities, including Harvard, are currently setting up entire divisions devoted solely to abiogenesis research, to see if the prevailing hypothesis accurately describes a mechanism by which life could arise from non-life.
Let's delve a little deeper into abiogenesis, and see where we would have to go from simple amino acids. As I said earler, we aren't looking for the spontaneous formation of a cell. What we are
realy looking for is something far more simple - a self-replicating molecule.
We know from evolution that life changes because the self-replication of our cells is imperfect - they don't duplicate themselves 100% identically, alowing genetics to change over many generations. So what we are looking for is an imperfectly self-replicating molecule - that's all. Not a cell with a nucleus and a cell wall or membrane, no organelles - just a single molecule that replicates itself using materials in its immediate surroundings, and can form in slightly different patterns based on its environment and flaws in the copying process.
RNA is a good modern analogy to what we're looking for. RNA is actually a decent candidate for the
actual first self-replicating molecule - if we can show that RNA can spontaneously form given the conditions present in the early Earth, abiogenesis will be proven to be an entirely plausible and possible mechanism for the origin of life. Check out
this Wikipedia entry regarding the hypothesis proposing RNA as the earliest form of life. RNA is simply a chain of nucleotides, which are releatively simple molecules. The hypothesis states that, in the early primordial soup, these simple organic molecules would form covalent chemical bonds with each other, forming longer and longer chains. Some of the bonds would be weak, and the chains would break. Others would be stronger. Certain randomly combined chains would form with the catalytic properties we see in RNA today, causing the molecule chains to self-replicate. Now that we have a self-replicating molecule, natural selection takes over, and evolution begins, using small changes in the RNA structure guided by natural selection to form more and more efficient forms of early life.
Now, as the Wiki article states, RNA has a few problems as a candidate for the first self-replicator. We have yet to produce its constituent nucleotides in experiments of the type I mentioned earler (which isn't evidence against it - remember, not nearly enough research has been done yet), and one of them readily reacts with hydrogen (meaning it's unlikely to have simply existed in this environment). But RNA does serve as a great example of a very primitive self-replicating molecule. Early life may not have consisted of RNA, but if abiogenesis is accurate, some similar self-replicating molecule was the starting point of life.
So, to tie this all back to your original question:
The first life form was
not a bacteria, as you seem to believe. The first life form, as predicted by abiogenesis, was a very simple self-replicating molecule (not a cell, or even remotely that complex), something akin to RNA, that formed due to normal chemical reactions given the conditions of the early Earth. Abiogenesis reasearch today is attempting to create a self-replicating molecule, or at least the building blocks of one, using the primordial soup of componds and elements we know were present millions of years ago.
As to your other implied question, "How did the elements themselves form if they werent made," that's a question for the Cosmology forum. I suggest you propose a new topic there, and we can talk about the origins of matter and energy.
Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.
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