Is Abiogenesis a fact?

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.=============================
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.}
============================================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 PMThis message has been edited by FutureIncoming, 03-20-2006 08:06 PM

My post wast about basically one point, which I shall rephrase here. If we can imagine a pyramid of complexity, with simple molecules at the base and complexity-of-life at the top, then how big a base must be associated with that top-level complexity? One way of stating an anti-abiogenesis argument is to say that the top is too complex for the pyramid to "fit" on Earth. Well, I had the idea that a computation could be made to test the argument. I made blind assumptions and stated that they were blind assumptions. The main body of the post, the supporting evidence for the notion that calculations could be made, is something the guidelines recommended including. I do not see how the length could have been avoided, without leaving readers wondering if I was pulling figures out of thin air. I note that in the three+ weeks since it was posted, nobody has complained about the assumptions or the math. Perhaps this means that the abiogenesis debate has received powerful support, and detractors just don't know how to respond, since the calculations indicated that a thousand of those complexity-pyramids could have "fit" on Earth, instead of just-one-would-be-too-big. I like it that way just fine, partly because I have so many other things to do elsewhere that I can't spend a lot of time here, sorry.

No, that is about evolution after life already exists. Here we are talking about the complexity of life as compared to the simple molecules which combined to yield that complexity. So consider a simple three-layer pyramid: (1) the bottom layer has 400 molecules at first. (2) Forty of these combine to make twenty molecules that are twice as complex, the second layer. (3) Two molecules from the second layer combine to form one new molecule for the third layer, also twice as complex as before. That's using the main assumption, that one-tenth combine to make twice the complexity. My original post started with complexity-of-life, one organism, at the top, figured out how many layers it was from the bottom, and then computed how many simple molecules had to exist at the bottom layer: Ten trillion tons of them. Which is a thousandth of the estimated existing organic matter in the world.

Yes, and I was trying to make assumptions that were "conservative" in the sense that improved assumptions would increase the probability that abiogenesis could have happened on the early Earth. Near the end of Msg #33 is an invitation for others to redo the calcs using different assumptions.To Adminnemooseus: I didn't realize that Message Threads in this Forum were expected to be so narrow in their focus; I thought that I was posting something relevant. Regarding the Question in this Thread's Name, I would say that the answer depends on whether you ask Science or Religion. Per Science, and barring a scenario such as is described in Poul Anderson's classic novel "Tau Zero", the Big Bang yielded a lifeless universe, and therefore since life exists now, abiogenesis must have happened somewhere, not necessarily on Earth (where life could have arrived here from elsewhere). And per Religion, it could be noted that even Creation of biological life counts as a sort of abiogenesis....

I thought I defined what I was talking about quite plainly? That pretense involved the assembly of billions of small molecules into a complex whole. While I used the phrase "one huge complex molecule", can you see that this is at least partly equivalent to "the right parts in the right places"? Especially when you include the fact that much of molecular biology is simple key-in-lock mechanics, and that most "wrong" molecules just don't fit (can't become part of the complex whole).

Yes, but I also made part of the problem harder than that simplification suggests by itself. Something like 80-90% of a living cell (depending on what you are measuring) are simple uncombined water molecules, after all, yet I have included that in the "total complexity". Next, note how "total organic matter on Earth" is referenced in the main calculation-paragraph of Msg #33, thereby letting me pretend that water inside a life-form counts as organic matter--when of course it actually isn't. And I used a medium-sized mitochondria cell, whereas the simplest known bacteria are, I understand, rather smaller (and the very first bacterium would have been simpler yet, not having evolved defenses against others). It was partly because I knew I was making those kinds of assumptions/pretenses that I invited others to use different ones that might be more appropriate/accurate. Yet my goal was to get a ballpark figure more than anything else. If the early Earth had, according to my result, materiel allowing a thousand different places simultaneously where molecular complexity could approach Life, then those more accurate calcs should yield many times more opportunities. And that, combined with the key-in-lock stuff I mentioned in my last post, is what the abiogenesis-ists have going for them, when some different interpretation of "complexity" is introduced.

There is a peculiarity about that post (I added the coloration) which nobody seems to have pointed out. From the way the author worked up to the Question (quoted below), it seems to me impossible to call abiogensis anything other than a fact. I am getting the impression that some particular explanation is being referenced as "the theory of abiogenesis", even though it is not detailed. But without such details, just about anything could be called a "theory of abiogenesis". Consider the Intelligent Design notion: The Designer plays with ordinary building-block molecules until an assemblage of them can be "activated" (kind of like starting a fire). Obviously the the assembling/activation-process can be called "life from non-life" or "abiogenesis".The non-I.D. version, of course, simply assumes that if enough building-blocks are lying around, and if they interact in enough different ways, then an equivalent assemblage will eventually form, with "activation" merely being the perfectly natural result of interaction between that assemblage with various independent/loose molecules.In either case we are essentially saying that Abiogenesis is a fact. Why, then, was this Thread started, if the Answer was built into the Question? Because if Abiogenesis is not a fact, then what is the alternative explantion? It must account for both the origin of Life, when every studied molecule in every Life-form, by itself, is an unliving thing -- and it must account for the fact that Life does a huge amount of interacting with unliving molecules.In reading through the posts of this Thread, it has occured to me that Lex_Luthor has been hinting at a certain aspect of Life which perhaps is what the Original Poster was actually talking about. In that and other posts there is an attempt to claim that animate and inanimate matter are inherently different from each other. If so, then the Original Poster could actually be asking this: "Is it considered a fact that the animate form of matter, called Life, could have started its animation spontaneously?" --which counts as a Question that does not appear to have a built-in Answer. Lex_Luthor is clearly claiming the answer is "NO", that some Outside Intial Event was required to start the animation of Life, while others and I would argue that the answer is "YES". That variant Question may open the way for this Thread to encompass all the details about Abiogenesis that have so far been discussed, but only the Original Poster or the Administrators can say for sure. (And since I have a bunch more details I'd like to post to this Thread, related to the animate/inaminate issue, I'm hoping it will be allowed, heh heh. Edited by FutureIncoming, : fixed typo, added some stress to a quote

That just "moves back" the Question. How did that immigrating Life begin? See? Abiogenesis does not require Life to have orginated on Earth; all it requires (per its own name) is that Life arise from non-life. Why should "where" matter in the least? Okay, I see that the Original Post mentions the Earth, and possibly the Thread-narrowness of this Debate Forum might require us to stick to Earth. But at the same time the O.P. includes a pretty generic invitation to discuss abiogenesis, which is not inherently restricted to the Earth (could have happened independently under the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa, maybe). And I even mentioned panspermia myself, back in Msg #33 (although nobody commented on that).Edited by FutureIncoming, : left something outEdited by FutureIncoming, : found something else to add

Not really. We have no reason to think Chemistry works significantly differently now than it did 12 billion years ago, at any other location in this Universe. (And if you want to imagine a much older Universe, you need to get around some problems, like General Relativity implying that the Big Bang generated the very space/time that this Universe occupies.) Anyway, I also tend to think there was sufficient opportunity for Life to arise independently on Earth (see Msg #33 for details, heh), even while remaining open to the panspermia alternative, since it quite simply can enormously multiply the total amount of biomass that could have been involved in the chemical interactions that resulted in Life.Edited by FutureIncoming, : left stuff out

Yes, I essentially said that in #144 (not quoted). The first part of #144 was written after I assumed that in #143 the word "how" involved significantly different rules of chemistry, not a mere difference in interacting molecules. Because "different" molecules is somewhat unlikely. The Sun is an early "third generation" star in this approx-12-billion-year-old Galaxy, which means the materials that coalesed into the Solar System 4.5 billion years ago had up to 8 billion years of "preprocessing" (random interactions in interstellar gas/dust clouds). If abiogenesis had occurred in some other earlier star system (and then panspermia-ed to Earth), that system would have formed from gas/dust clouds that had less preprocessing/interaction time --and fewer variety of molecules going into the cauldron that yielded Life.Edited by FutureIncoming, : typo

Well, I've waited a couple days for a response to that, and not seeing any, I'm thinking I might be able to go ahead and post a few things without being too badly out-of-line. Of course, there's only one way to find out....First, to Brad_McFall, I did see your Msgs #52 and #53, but I don't know enough advanced biology to be able to properly reply. Sorry. Well, mere bouncings is not the only thing that can happen. Sometimes they stick/combine. Sometimes both collidants break apart. Sometimes the pieces recombine in different ways than before. And one thing that is known to happen occasionally is Spontaneous Combustion, when certain conditions are met. Next, while the phrase "chain reaction" is most often used with respect to nuclear reactors, the phrase is also applicable to such things as campfires (the fire burns one fresh piece of wood at a time) and chain-smoking. Well, a living organism encompasses a chain of chemical reactions, also, and merely "burns" slower than a fire. Certainly SOME of those reactions could have started spontaneously, simply because we know that Spontaneous Combustion is possible. There are several things wrong with that. First, Q.M. makes very accurate probability predictions. When it says that the result of an interaction is a certain thing 21.628% of the time, you can trust it. But that does not mean that motion in a particular direction is guaranteed to happen, because in general whole ranges of directions are assigned probabilities of being among the possible paths. Second, physicists know exactly why Uncertainty plays a part in the results of Q.M., and this is the simple fact that the act of making a measurent affects the measurement. For example when you apply a pressure gauge to a tire, you do not actually measure the pressure in the volume of the tire, you measure the pressure in both the volume of the tire and inside the pressure gauge --and the tire has lost a bit of pressure to make that possible. And even Einstein tried and failed to find a flaw in this measurement-affecting phenomenon, as it applies to Quantum Mechanics. Finally, while the fundamental Uncertainty yields usually-ignorable consequences at the macroscopic level, that is only a short-term thing. Over the long term, the fundamental error associated with all measurements becomes a relevant factor. The net result, in modern parlance, is "chaos". Chaos is a description of our inability to make accurate long-term predictions, due to the inaccuracy of the measurements behind the predictions. Since the Uncertainty Principle guarantees inaccuracy of all measurements used to determine long-term events, the Universe is in fact not deterministic. All we have are probabilites. Chemistry is actually a branch of Physics. Quantum Mechanics was devised to explain the innards of atoms, and some of those details explain almost all chemical reactions. (There are still some mysteries; nobody knows why the cyanide ion is so attracted to gold, for example.) I saw this several times, but the limits themeselves were never mentioned. However: Are you saying that while spontaneous rapid combustion (fire) is possible, and spontaneous slow combustion is possible (rusting iron), it is impossible for low-speed combustion (Life) to occur spontaneously? I must say I haven't seen very many Laws or Constants that apply to both extremes but not the middle!
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After that, there seems to be much repetitiveness and little new material in many posts. I'd like to add some new material now.
=====================1. The Primordial Soup, wherever it happened to exist (off-Earth if we accept Panspermia), existed in an energy-rich environment. There was volcanic heat, lightning, and ultraviolet sunlight, to name just three things that could affect simple molecules.2. The ancient atmosphere has to be considered "one with the Soup", since it is thought to have contained large amounts of methane and ammonia (and water vapor and carbon dioxide, of course) -- and when a flash of energy (say by lightning) is added to some of those molecules, they can break apart and recombine in quite a few different ways. Big-enough molecules would have fallen out of the atmosphere and ended up in the Soup, of course.3. If we are talking about the Earth and the Sun, then we should take note of the fact that astrophysicists, modeling how stars live, say that the Sun's total radiance has increased by something like 30% since it first started shining. Levels of ultraviolet light would have been considerably less in the early days, than today. (Meanwhile, the Earth stayed warm because methane is a tremendously effective greenhouse gas.)4. Like lightning, UV can break apart molecules. However, if UV is low-level, then a broken molecule here is not necessarily going to encounter pieces of a broken molecule here. I venture to guess that most of the molecular action in the atmosphere was lightning-caused, because lots of molecules are affected, and they are in close proximity. Meanwhile, if UV is low-level, newly-built molecules can more easily survive while falling toward the main body of the Primordial Soup.5. It is an interesting point that after a molecule falls into Soup it receives a kind of protection; ultraviolet light is far less effective at breaking up underwater molecules. So, in the Soup, molecules more complicated than methane and ammonia can accumulate to significant levels (depending on solubility).6. Note that the Primordial Soup contained a lot of different compounds that could persist for quite a while -- but which today on Earth wouldn't last five minutes. That's because existing Life eats those compounds. But since Life didn't orginally exist, those molecules could persist.7. An enzyme can be a fairly simple molecule, and it works as a catalyst. If it encounters some Molecule A that it can affect, it will latch onto it for a while. If, while latched onto A, some appropriate Molecule B is encountered in the Soup, then the enzyme can do work of encouraging A and B to combine to make a more-complicated molecule. And the enzyme drifts away to do this same mindless non-animated thing over and over and over again. Note that this Scenario only requires some sort of enzyme molecule to be randomly constructed from simpler molecules, and of course Molecules A and B are also random. Note also that the work an enzyme does is not a violation of Physical Law. Molecules A and B must be a pair that can unite, first. This usually means that some energy (not necessarily a lot, but something greater than zero) will be released when they combine. A catalyst like an enzyme merely facilitates the reaction.8. Much of the Chemistry of Life is managed by enzymes. They steadily cause molecules to combine in ways that release energy, which is why I called Life "low-speed combustion".Well, I've got more to say, but have to quit for now. Besides, the length of this post is probably going to be complained about. But what can I do? One thing leads to another. That's how abiogenesis did its thing!Edited by FutureIncoming, : Changed 8 numeral-words to digits, for consistency with later posts

Well, since I didn't get lambasted for all that stuff I posted in Msg #147, I guess it might be safe to continue where I left off. Please refresh your memory of the eight items described toward the end of #147; think of them as "background material" relevant to this stuff here.9. When I stated in Item 1 that the Primordial Soup existed in an energy-rich environment, I forgot to mention the emanations from radioactive materials, which was much more significant then than nowadays. For example Uranium-235 has a half-life of something like 700 million years, so on Earth 4.2 billion years ago was 6 half-lives ago, and the amount of U-235 back then would have been 6 doublings of the current amount (64 times the current amount in the world). Potassium-40 has a 1-billion-year half-life (and today's atmosphere is 1% Argon-40 because of the decay of K-40), so that early age was 4 half-lives ago, meaning 4 doublings or 16 times the current world supply of K-40 existed back then. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4 billion years, so that long ago it was twice as abundant as today. And so on. It is almost laughable how worried some scientists are about the effects of radiation upon Life, when Life evolved in that ancient radiation-rich environment. Well, they do have a point, because Life these days has adapted to much lower background-radiation levels. Still, the biologists have expressed surprise at how well Life is coping these days in the vicinity of Chernobyl. We should not take that as a rationale to have a nuclear war, of course. But we can have more hope of surviving one....10. In an energy-rich environment, water flows uphill. I'll explain that in a moment, and am deliberately phrasing it that way to show opponents of abiogenesis one of the key mistakes they make. They use the fact of Entropy (everything runs down, like water going downhill) to claim that it is therefore impossible for such complexity as Life to happen spontaneously. However, they are forgetting the equally valid fact that in an energy-rich environment, water does flow uphill...by evaporation/rising-as-vapor. Technically, there is no difference between evaporated water and boiled water; energy must be acquired by water molecules to shift from the liquid to the gaseous state -- and this easily happens in an energy-rich environment. Likewise, when plenty of energy is available, some of that energy can become trapped into increased molecular complexity. I described a piece of that, involving lightning, in points 2 and 4.11. A crucial chemical concept here is "equilbrium". Yes, complex molecules can naturally break down into simpler molecules, in accordance with Entropy. And more can be built in an energy-rich environment. A state of equilibrium exists when both things happen at the same rate -- and the total quantity of a particular complex molecule, that will exist in equlibrium, depends on just what its natural breakdown rate is. The more stable the molecule, the more of it can exist. So molecules like water and ammonia and methane and carbon dioxide are very stable and very common....12. It is possible that radioactive K-40 was the most influential of the background-radiation group. Most natural inorganic compounds that contain potassium are soluable in water. So any molecule anywhere in the Primordial Soup had a chance of being zapped randomly, as a result of the decay of some nearby K-40 atom. Depending on the molecule and just how it got zapped, two different significant outcomes are possible. One is for the molecule to be destroyed into smaller pieces. Another is for one small piece, perhaps a single atom, to be snipped off in a way that leaves the rest of the molcule "hungry" to attach to something. "Free Radicals", these kinds of molecules are called. It is truthful to say that a Free Radical is an "energized" molecule, and from the standpoint of it being zapped by radiation, that description is perfectly understandable. Well, if it manages to attach to some other somewhat-complicated molecule, then the total result, of course, is more-complex still.13. In Item 7 it was mentioned how an enzyme works. However, what an enzyme is able to do is actually somewhat more versatile than what was described there. It is more accurate to think of Molecule A and Molecule B as possessing Tab A and Slot B. Perhaps they would naturally encounter each other and unite without the help of an enzyme, but an enzyme still qualifies as a "facilitator" of that reaction. Anyway, the thing being pointed out here is that Tab A and Slot B might exist on more different kinds of molecules than Molecule A and Molecule B. So if Molecule Q has a Tab A and our enzyme latches onto it, that enzyme won't care if it encounters Molecule B or Molecule K; if it has an accessible Slot B, then the enzyme can facilitate the joining of the two molecules. The first randomly-formed enzyme, therefore, is not going to do only one thing in the midst of the Primordial Soup. It is going to help a lot of different more-complex molecules come into existence.14. What if one of the those more-complex molecules that our first enzyme happens to help make is another and different enzyme? This one might connect Tab C with Slot D. Or it might connect Tab A with Slot D. Or it might even be one of those enzymes that can unplug Tab A from Slot B, if first it gets energized somehow. And that shouldn't be uncommon in an energy-rich environment. The net result, if we step back and take a longish view, is that there will exist a kind of "competition" between enzymes for Tabs and Slots. And Competition is a driving force for Evolution, even at the molecular level.Well, that's enough for now; more later.

And now to attempt to continue what I started toward the end of Msg #147, and continued in #150, hopefully without sticking my foot down my throat.15. It turns out that I got ahead of myself by mentioning enzymes too soon. So let's look at "amino acids" for a bit. An amino acid is a particular type of generic molecule. It has two required subcomponents (an amino or NH2 group, and a carboxylic acid or COOH group), plus any of a variety of other subcomponents. All of the 20 best-known amino acids are fairly simple organic molecules, ranging from 10 atoms to 27 atoms in composition (including the 7 atoms of the required subcomponents). They also happen to be fairly easily created in a Primordial Soup environment. But more than 100 others are known to naturally exist, so that word I used, "generic", is applicable. Next, any two amino acids (even two of the same type) can chemically react with each other, simply because the reaction involves only the two required subcomponents: COOH + NH2 -> CO-OH + NH-H -> CONH (peptide bond between the two original molecules) + OHH (or H2O, water produced-by/ejected from the reaction). Note that if the amino group of Amino Acid 1 (AA1) reacts with the acid group of AA2, then the Combined Molecule still has a left-over acid group (from AA1) and a left-over amino group (from AA2). It is therefore possible for a third and a fourth and a fifth (and so on) amino acid to connect to either end of the Combined Molecule. The result is generically called a "polypeptide chain".16. Polypeptide chains are fairly tough molecules; they don't fall apart for no reason. This means, in the Primordial Soup, they could randomly grow quite long. Biochemists generally start using the word "protein" when a polypeptide chain has connected from 50 to 100 amino acids together, and its weight is about 10,000 times that of a single hydrogen atom. (Nevertheless, there are exceptions; the "aspartame" molecule is made from just two amino acids and yet sometimes is called "a sweet protein" --it's used as a low-calorie sweetener.) I goofed earlier when I wrote in Item 7 that an enzyme can be a fairly simple molecule; actually an enzyme is often a fairly simple protein. Complicated proteins can easily weigh more than 1,000,000 times a hydrogen atom.17. One of the things that polypeptide chains and proteins do is 'fold up". Chains of molecular bonds are naturally kinked, and when lots of bonds exist, involving different molecules like amino acids, you can have lots of kinks aiming every-which-way in 3 dimensions, and following such a chain is kind of like taking a "drunkard's walk" (a classic mathematical problem; look it up). Each kink represents a partial fold in the chain, and a long chain can can accumulate (or cancel out) those partial folds. Next, the subsections of amino acids that can differ from each other also can have various amounts of attraction for each other, which almost always add-to or contort or otherwise-affect the folds. A common result is that a well-folded chain tends to crumple into a ball (although plenty of exceptions exist to that simplistic statement). And a ball-shaped protein is one in which a significant fraction of the length of the chain has become covered up within its center. This is important because it "counters" one of the main arguments against Abiogensis. Let's consider a 70-unit chain randomly built from the 25 most common amino acids. Since any AA can occupy any place in the chain, a two-unit chain could exist 25x25=625 different ways, a three-unit chain could exist 25x25x25=15,625 different ways, and a 70-unit chain has 25-to-the-70th-power possibilities (a 7 followed by 97 zeros). There aren't enough atoms in the Universe for Nature to have expressed all those possibilities at once ("in parallel"), and not enough Age of the Universe for all those possibilities to be tried in sequence ("in series"), and even an optimal series/parallel approach might (or might not) only have just recently found it -- so if one particular 70-unit protein appears to us to be an enzyme required for a particular task, how did Nature find that enzyme billions of years ago, to say nothing of also finding thousands of other equally-special molecules?18. Part of the answer relates to the "active site" on the outer surface of our folded protein (which in an enzyme would be the part that encourages Tab A to go into Slot B). It doesn't matter much what the complete composition of the protein is, so long as when folded it exhibits the relevant active site, a consequence of adjacent amino acid subcomponents. And how many ways are there to do that, eh? Remember that the pharmaceutical industry has put a lot of effort into finding alternatives to existing proteins, with equivalent active sites, and almost all of that work has been done blindly, not knowing all the rules by which proteins naturally fold up. And awkward side effects are typical, as you know (due to other active sites on that same alternative molecule). You can expect that as soon as those rules are thoroughly understood, then using computers we will be able to crank out alternative protein designs, with desired active sites, by the billion. Perhaps some will even be found that have no side-effects, but that is not so important here, because....19. The other part of the answer is "evolution" -- and not particularly evolution of the protein molecule, but evolution of the dynamic system that happened to incorporate a particular protein molecule that happened to have an effective active site! This is an important point that I will try to explain more clearly. In the Primordial Soup, the first enzyme to come along to do something that later got incorporated into Life could indeed have had awkward side-effects. Well, Life has had billions of years to accommodate and even make use of those side-effects. But replace that protein with some new and different constructed drug, and even if it does the main thing as that Original Enzyme, it can be expected to have different side-effects for which there haven't been billions of years of accommodation. Thus the answer to the anti-abiogenesis problem in Item 17 is simply that the first random protein to come along that could work in a certain way is the one that nowadays seems to be a perfect fit in a complicated dynamic system, simply because the system grew around that molecule -- and around the first-encountered of many other proteins that also worked in certain ways. (The details of that, of course, mostly remain to be worked out.)20. Note that the preceding is not a denial that molecular modifications take place. They do. In an energy rich environment, especially with random radiation zaps, it is a certainty that a molecule that does a certain task well is going to occasionally get randomly assembled differently from usual. A living system will either accommodate it or eject it or dismantle it and construct another, or perish. In the Primordial Soup, however, before there were any living systems, it is a moot point, partly because there was no Life-based manufacturing line for particular molecules, that could become fouled up. An Original Enzyme that did some particular thing was not going to be frequently replaced by a similar-acting but different protein.To be continued.Edited by FutureIncoming, : fixed typo

Since "abiogenesis" means "non-biological genesis", the logic is pretty simple. If biological Life ever did not exist, then because it exists now, a non-biological origin of Life is logically indisputable. Of course, the exact type of non-biological genesis for Life can be disputed a great deal, and we've already seen some evidence of that dispute here.Next, consider the cliche` "Nothing lasts forever." The logical corollary is, "Nothing has ever lasted forever." Thus, if the cliche` is a Truth, then it is inescapable that at one time biological Life did not exist (else it must have lasted forever). And the consequences of that Truth is that abiogensis would have to be a fact. So, why not continue to have fun posting about those other things in this Thread? I certainly have more I'd like to add to the random-chemical-origin notion, but I'm not quite ready to do it now, and I wouldn't enjoy seeing this Thread closed first.

If some aspect of the Universe is considered to be too complex to exist without requiring a Designer, then how or why is that Designer not too complex to exist without having been Designed? If the Designer can exist without having been Designed, then why not the Universe and various things in it, like Life?