Has there been life for 1/4 of the age of the Universe?

Ringo, re: Boy, that's a relief! Because we do indeed know a great deal about chemistry. Now, with regards to abiogenic principles, could you bother to mention a few? I'm most inetersted in the homological ones”you know, the ones that taught DNA molecules how to communicate from one generation to the next using a coded language of three-letter words with a 4^3 geometry that neatly comprises a genetic dictionary. That was amighty slick trick for chemicals!”Hoot Mon

We've been through that before, in this thread or another. Where is your evidence that there is a "language" above and beyond the normal bump and grind of chemical interactions?

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Yes, it was slick indeed, but so what? Once there is replication with variation, no matter how simple the system, selection can rachet up the complexity.You seem to be misleading yourself with your anthropomorphic phrasing. With the right start, even a very simple one,the process can look after itself. No teaching is needed and the process need not start with complex components.

Ringo, re: You are not going to succeed with the geneticists with an attitude like that, and they have something important to say. They freely speak of a
genetic language and look for ways to write new scripts and make changes in genes and alleles. But I know you're a stickler about words, like "probably" vs. "maybe" vs. "perhaps." What about this "bump and grind" business? Should I not likewise challenge the clattering metaphores of your mechanics? And what makes you say that chemistry is mechanical, anyway? I thought it was chemical. Oh well, just words and metaphors.”Hoot Mon

Woodsy, re: Demonstration please. It it were this simple then life would be just an gadget and abiogensis would be a self-starting manufacturing "process that can look after itself." Could you be more specific with "the right start"? How about "the right stuff"?”Hoot Mon

That is how I see it. Why not? The "right stuff" would be a self-replicating molecule that could form in the conditions of the early earth. I understand that there are chemists busy looking for such molecules. One should not expect the search to be easy, though. Organic chemistry is complicated stuff and the earth was early a long time ago.

It's one thing to use a language to describe what is happening. You seem to be insisting that the language prescribes what is happening - i.e. the events can not happen without the magic of language. Chemistry is "chemical" on the level of buckets and beakers. On the molecular level, it's decidedly mechanical. Tab A fits into slot B and it don't need no instruction book to tell it so. It's just *bump* and yer hooked up.Just curious, do you know anything about chemistry at all? Because you seem to look at it from a Brothers Grimm viewpoint.

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Ahh, but we will be the computers and the computers will be us. Nano-infested human cyborgs complete with the entire world's knowledge and a 'soul' I can share with anyone I so desire. My bones will be wrapped in carbon composites. My synthetic heart will be forever powered by ATP produced from my diet of fried chicken and chocolate ice cream while my synthetic digestive tract takes only what I need, ditches the fat and the cholesterol in little pellets that I poop, while my synthetic blood collects what little oxygen there may be left on the planet to power me all day long in one breath while I peruse the GlobalNet with my thoughts. Imagine all the spam?Speaking of the "Game of Life," have you tried using rule 245/24? Makes some purrty pictures. Start with a 5x5 block. The symmetry is amazing. Then do the same with some asymmetrical form. You still get a discernible “eye” in the center. Now try 2 symmetries on the same page and see what happens to the eyes as they merge. Then 2 asymmetries. Then the biggie: try one of each. Interesting stuff. Proof that simple deterministic rules can yield . what? Randomness? At least something very close.Your contention that a ”language’ of abiogenesis is needed may be correct, but, if so these same simple rules would apply equally well anywhere, including earth? Yes? Edited by AZPaul3, : well, let me see. Hmmm, I fixed a boo-boo, then I fixed another boo-boo, then I added something.

Woodsy, re: I agree with all you say here. I'm just hooting over the fact that scientists don't yet know the origin of those "self-replicating molecules" (which happen to hold the genes). It seems obvious to me that they were not here when Earth accreted. Those molecules and their precious messages came about a billion years later. Something that we fail to grasp allowed them to get a foothold. Was it chemical? (The chemists seem to thing so.) I badly want to know what that is, or was, and I'll put up with any kind of ridicule to get there.”Hoot Mon

Ringo asks: I am probably vastly inferior to you on a scale of chemistry acuity (but I'm ready to go one-on-one with you and your molecules over a beer or two sometime.) And, yes, the Grimm Brothers and the woo-woos are helpful and comforting to me, especially now when the chemists can't explain those chemical bump and grinds of abiogenesis.”Hoot Mon

Not necessarily. The last time I studied chemistry, there were only four elements in the periodic table. But I do get the impression that I'm a page ahead of you in the textbook. It's a good thing you weren't around a few hundred years ago when they couldn't even explain something like 2H₂ + O₂ --> 2H₂O.Give them a chance. The science of chemistry is a lot less than 1/4 the age of the Universe. Edited by Ringo, : Spellin.

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AZPaul3, you wrote: I'm hoping for an eternity of digital Martinis and virtual shuffleboard...where chickens don't have to be fried and ice cream never melts. Thanks. I'll be going over to Conway's site soon to check it out. (Too bad Ringo didn't take the bait.) Oh, yes!”Hoot Mon

Ringo, re: Wow! That's wet and heavy! Enough with the excuses! I want those principles, and I want them now!”Hoot Mon

Ringo wrote, regarding the chemists' search for principles of abiogeneis: So, bravely, I’ll make a stab at answering my own challenge to specify the physicochemical principles of abiogenesis. I have to agree with Ringo that whatever happened to originate life (either on Earth or elsewhere) certainly must have involved chemistry and thermodynamics, and very possibly nothing more than that. My issue has been that those kinds of principles alone do not provide the answers I’m looking for”genes don’t have thermodynamic principles because they are merely digital information. But then I’m forced back to what I learned in P-Chem and Biophysics, namely those remarkable principles of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the maximization of order.Indeed more complex arrangements of chemicals can come about as the comprising system advances into non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Prigigone’s dissipative structures have been clearly modeled and demonstrated. Before that, Harold Morowitz et al. added much to what Schrdinger had said earlier about energy flow in biological life. Morowitz (1968, Energy Flow In Biology) writes lucidly about the ordering function L as a biosystem advances toward non-equilibrium (A ) at some kinetic temerature (T’):L = A(T’)/kT’,where k is Boltzmann’s constant. For this relationship Morowitz specifies four properties:1. It has a zero value for equilibrium systems.2. It associates order with distance from equilibrium.3. It is dimensionless.4. It can be represented using probability theory and information theory.Now, Morowitz shows that L’ (L multiplied by Planck’s constant h) represents a ratio of energy to rate:L’ = A/(kT/h).He goes on to argue that this ordering principle applies to chain-extending bonds in carbon chemistry: “The existence of chain-extending bonds increases L for another reason. The function has a S (change of entropy) as well as a U (change in internal energy) part, and the S is, in general, lowered by chain formation leading to a positive value of -TS and an increase in L. In ordinary biological systems, order as thermodynamically defined corresponds to macromolecular complexity.”Without knowing much about the chemical conditions attending abiogenesis, we might already have physicochemical principles that favor the storage of linear information on macromolecules (i.e., genes). So there are well-reason principles concerning chemical bonding that seem to support the incipient ordering of nucleotides on DNA that eventually lock in as digital instructions for mechanical operations. The only thing these principles don’t explain to me is how such a maximization of ordered nucleotides can result in a non-stereochemical "language" (at least from a geneticist's woo-woo POV).”Hoot Mon

Huh? Genes are "stored" on DNA molecules, are they not? Arrangements of atoms in DNA molecules, are they not? How do they not "have" thermodynamic principles?Edited by Ringo, : Spelling.

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