OT: How life came to Earth...

[Martin Brown]

On 15/02/2022 13:43, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 09:51:29 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 13/02/2022 17:31, David Brown wrote:
On 13/02/2022 17:51, Martin Brown wrote:

You can haggle about whether or not they are truly alive because they
need to hijack a cell to replicate (at least all the ones I know of do).

There are some viruses that are so simple that they can\'t hijack a
cell\'s replication systems - they hijack another virus\'s hijacking! In
a sense, they are small viruses that infect other large viruses. Fun stuff.

And little fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bite \'em.

Eventually in a quantised world they get too small to be viable.

Viral phages that attack bacteria are also quite interesting and some of
them may yet have therapeutic value. Progress in this field is slow but
steady as the various pieces are found and understood.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01880-6

The viruses that we see today have co-evolved with their hosts for many
billions of years. The earliest ones would have been much much simpler.

Is there evidence for that?

Synthetic RNA in the lab is getting close to understanding what the very
first self replicating RNA systems might have looked like. They have
made working examples that are capable of most of the required steps.

This article in Nature might clear up some of your misconceptions iff
you can be bothered to read it (free access).

https://www.nature.com/articles/35053176

Most of this detailed stuff is behind a paywall unless you have
university credentials or a subscription to nature:

https://www.nature.com/articles/321089a0

The first self replicating molecule only really has to occur once to
take over a lot of territory if the raw materials are present. After
that competition for resources and the inaccuracy of RNA copying allows
it to evolve to respond to environmental constraints.

There are also surprisingly a few examples of likely throwbacks from the
late RNA world stage that include some extremely large complicated RNA
only viruses that mostly parasitise amoeba now but which were
misclassified for a long time as unculturable bacteria because they
couldn\'t get them to multiply in the lab (and they were \"obviously\" too
big to be viruses). Pithoviruses and Pandoravirus being examples:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/140716-giant-viruses-science-life-evolution-origins

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/130718-viruses-pandoraviruses-science-biology-evolution

They still have most of the bits present that would be needed in a fully
functioning RNA based cell independent of a host.

There may well be some more smoking guns for RNA world lying around.

Biologists have really only just begin to recognise them. They were only
noticed as something very unusual when a virus specialist looked at an
electron micrograph of an infected amoeba!


--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[server]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 09:18:25 +1100, Clifford Heath
<no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 14/2/22 2:36 am, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 16:25:29 +1100, Clifford Heath
no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 13/2/22 2:54 pm, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 01:29:38 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
Nobody thinks the first lifeforms on earth were DNA-based.
Than someone should find or make a non-DNA life form.

I posted here just a couple of months ago about complex self-replicating
molecules (that self-align to form something very like *cell walls*)
recently found in the edges of geothermal springs. Once a bubble like
this can form a boundary between inside and outside, it can isolate
other processes from the outside world, providing a framework that could
(conceptually) easily evolve into a self-reproducing organism. That
seems to be the most likely way that life got started, to my mind.

Cartoons of living cells aren\'t life.

But it didn\'t fit your mindset so you ignored it, just as you ignore all
the other science that discredits your fantasies. Just as you\'ll
probably ignore it again now, or scoff at it. I\'m not even going to
repost the URL, because you don\'t care. You can find it in my recent
post anyhow.

What people here are ignoring is the information content of a living,
replicating DNA-based cell. They substitute faith.

On the contrary. The discussion here is wrongly fixated on the
information content of DNA, and where that information could have come from.

Wrongly? The information is precisely what makes a cell work.

Before there can be any physical mechanism that self-replicates using
*whatever* coding scheme, the mechanism itself must be enclosed away
from the environment. A \"self/non-self\" distinction must be drawn, and
these bubbles do exactly that. Any chemical environment (such as these
thermal pools) which can spontaneously generate such enclosures allows
the encapsulation of *anything* that aids in the generation of more such
enclosures. The *tiniest* advantage related to the increase in any ionic
or chemical element that enhances the process leads to a proliferation
of that variant.

Such non-coded replication requires no majick injection of encoded
information to start the slow climb up to coded self-replication.

I\'m glad your daughter is polite to you, even though she must be aware
you\'re a lost cause.

She has ideas too. Must run in the family.




--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[server]

DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote in
news:sugs38$1t33$4@gioia.aioe.org:

jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in
news:up9n0ht43732eccf8v3mfhc02p2l83b4rj@4ax.com:

The biggest change in human history was electrification.


I would say \"fire\" was and is to this day bigger.

Just ask those frozen Texans... oh wait... you can\'t becasue

Cruz and Abbott let them die.

Because fire led to the bronze age and the iron age and the
industrial age and is even essential to the electrical and
electronics age.

Y\'all do not know how to debate.

Larkin spouts off and you respond to him.

Here is my choice but I get only crickets.

 

[Clifford Heath]

On 14/2/22 10:54 am, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 09:18:25 +1100, Clifford Heath
no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 14/2/22 2:36 am, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 16:25:29 +1100, Clifford Heath
no.spam@please.net> wrote:

On 13/2/22 2:54 pm, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 01:29:38 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
Nobody thinks the first lifeforms on earth were DNA-based.
Than someone should find or make a non-DNA life form.

I posted here just a couple of months ago about complex self-replicating
molecules (that self-align to form something very like *cell walls*)
recently found in the edges of geothermal springs. Once a bubble like
this can form a boundary between inside and outside, it can isolate
other processes from the outside world, providing a framework that could
(conceptually) easily evolve into a self-reproducing organism. That
seems to be the most likely way that life got started, to my mind.

Cartoons of living cells aren\'t life.

But it didn\'t fit your mindset so you ignored it, just as you ignore all
the other science that discredits your fantasies. Just as you\'ll
probably ignore it again now, or scoff at it. I\'m not even going to
repost the URL, because you don\'t care. You can find it in my recent
post anyhow.

What people here are ignoring is the information content of a living,
replicating DNA-based cell. They substitute faith.

On the contrary. The discussion here is wrongly fixated on the
information content of DNA, and where that information could have come from.

Wrongly? The information is precisely what makes a cell work.

You worked hard to misinterpret me there. Of course the information is
important. But it\'s also utterly irrelevant until some containment can
be postulated. Fixating on the information while ignoring the need to
contain it, is what is wrong.

What I mentioned is the best candidate for containment. Within that
context, we can discuss the chemistry and information theory required to
enhance the generation of such cells. That enhancement doesn\'t have to
start with either DNA, with RNA, or with any a-priori information. It
only needs something that enhances the probability of generation of a
cell similar to itself.

And that\'s important.

CH

Before there can be any physical mechanism that self-replicates using
*whatever* coding scheme, the mechanism itself must be enclosed away
from the environment. A \"self/non-self\" distinction must be drawn, and
these bubbles do exactly that. Any chemical environment (such as these
thermal pools) which can spontaneously generate such enclosures allows
the encapsulation of *anything* that aids in the generation of more such
enclosures. The *tiniest* advantage related to the increase in any ionic
or chemical element that enhances the process leads to a proliferation
of that variant.

Such non-coded replication requires no majick injection of encoded
information to start the slow climb up to coded self-replication.

I\'m glad your daughter is polite to you, even though she must be aware
you\'re a lost cause.

She has ideas too. Must run in the family.

 

[David Brown]

On 16/02/2022 10:07, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 15/02/22 18:01, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 15 Feb 2022 13:10:26 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:


Of maybe \"great minds think alike\"?


The \"no\" team.

Er, no. That\'s tinfoil hat territory

We don\'t act as a team and correct/argue with each other
when we disagree. It just so happens that we (mostly) agree
on this topic.

Yes, we are all individuals (except me).

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QereR0CViMY>

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 13/02/22 23:54, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 09:18:25 +1100, Clifford Heath
I\'m glad your daughter is polite to you, even though she must be aware
you\'re a lost cause.

She has ideas too. Must run in the family.

Ideas are easy and cheap.

Even my daughter\'s /dog/ has ideas! Mostly they are
repetitive, but he shows imagination about ways to
encourage you to throw his ball or other toys.

You know your life\'s out of kilter when you are having
a nice hot bath, there\'s a plop, and you open your eyes
to see a Jack Russell looking at you and the ball he\'s
dropped in the water.

 

[server]

On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:17:54 +0000, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 13/02/22 23:54, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 09:18:25 +1100, Clifford Heath
I\'m glad your daughter is polite to you, even though she must be aware
you\'re a lost cause.

She has ideas too. Must run in the family.

Ideas are easy and cheap.

Then why do so few people have them?

Even my daughter\'s /dog/ has ideas! Mostly they are
repetitive, but he shows imagination about ways to
encourage you to throw his ball or other toys.

You know your life\'s out of kilter when you are having
a nice hot bath, there\'s a plop, and you open your eyes
to see a Jack Russell looking at you and the ball he\'s
dropped in the water.

Sounds OK to me.




--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[David Brown]

On 15/02/2022 16:58, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 15 Feb 2022 16:08:43 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 15/02/2022 14:40, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 16:51:40 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:





Is there any RNA life around now, independent of DNA? Where did it go?

Yes. It didn\'t go away. Plenty of common viruses are RNA based.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_virus

No. RNA viruses are manufactured by DNA.

Retroviruses insert their genes into the cell\'s DNA, and thus use DNA as
an intermediary. Other RNA viruses do not - the RNA is copied directly
using RNA enzymes supplied by the virus itself. The animo acids,
lipids, RNA bases, etc., that are used as raw material are created by
the DNA-based host, but that doesn\'t matter. The virus doesn\'t care if
they were made by a DNA-based host, an RNA-based host, or an alien robot.

We have not found any organisms alive today that are not DNA-based. RNA
viruses are the nearest we have (and there are lots of them), but
viruses have no metabolism. (Some biologists classify viruses as
\"living organisms\", but most do not - it\'s a matter of your choice of
definition.)

It is reasonable to hypothesise that RNA-based lifeforms existed in the
past.

I don\'t call your unproven and unlikely conjectures stupid or
ignorant. So why do you call mine stupid and ignorant?

If I write something clearly stupid, I expect others to call it stupid.
If I write something demonstrating ignorance, I expect people to
correct me. If I disagree with them, then it is up to me to justify my
claims. I might do that, or I might accept the correction and thank
people, or I might try to sneak away quietly and hope people forget I
have been stupid.

Fortunately for me, there are decent, helpful and knowledgable people in
this group who are willing to provide such corrections and information
when someone gets things wrong, and not just people like you who prefer
mistakes to stand unchallenged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_panspermia

That not much crazier than the primordial soup thing.

And that is your opinion based on, what, gut feeling? Your advanced
scientific knowledge gathered over a lunch?

Did you read the article? Would you like to give a summary of it here
to prove that, and show how it is appropriate to compare it to \"the
primordial soup thing\" like this?

 

[Rick C]

On Friday, February 11, 2022 at 1:54:57 AM UTC-5, Jan Panteltje wrote:

How life came to Earth ?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220210125828.htm
quantum tunneling?

Not really \"life\" as such, but the most important and fundamental building blocks of life. People think life is all about DNA or RNA, but the reality is they are pointless without proteins. Peptides are short proteins, or it is more common to consider proteins to be made of multiple peptides, hence the term polypeptide. Proteins are the functioning units of life. Virtually everything that happens in living organisms involves proteins in some way. It is conceivable that life started with proteins, without any nucleic acids. It is not conceivable that life started with nucleic acids without proteins. In fact, the purpose of nucleic acids is as a blueprint to allow proteins to make other proteins.

So they are suggesting that the basic units of life, may have come from space rather than for them to have been created on earth initially. They are at least, leaving the door open for these units to have been created in space.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 14/02/22 00:24, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:17:54 +0000, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 13/02/22 23:54, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 09:18:25 +1100, Clifford Heath
I\'m glad your daughter is polite to you, even though she must be aware
you\'re a lost cause.

She has ideas too. Must run in the family.

Ideas are easy and cheap.

Then why do so few people have them?

Most people /do/ have ideas.

Few people have ideas that it is worth /other/
people following up.

Even my daughter\'s /dog/ has ideas! Mostly they are
repetitive, but he shows imagination about ways to
encourage you to throw his ball or other toys.

You know your life\'s out of kilter when you are having
a nice hot bath, there\'s a plop, and you open your eyes
to see a Jack Russell looking at you and the ball he\'s
dropped in the water.

Sounds OK to me.

It is to me, too. If it wasn\'t I\'d simply shut the door.
He\'s a fun animal to have around.

 

[server]

On Fri, 11 Feb 2022 06:54:29 GMT, Jan Panteltje
<pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

How life came to Earth ?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220210125828.htm
quantum tunneling?

The problem of life isn\'t coming up with small molecular building
blocks, it\'s the astoundingly complex mechanism by which DNA works in
a cell and reproduces itself. It\'s not so much a chemistry problem as
a programming problem.

Our form of life was almost certainly designed and planted on earth.
And yes, it\'s quantum mechanical.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[server]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2022 11:03:10 +0000, Martin Brown
<\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 14/02/2022 16:05, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 14:53:43 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

..........

Established church tended to be into burning heretics and their books.
New knowledge conflicting with scripture was viewed as very dangerous by
the authorities. US YEC\'s still haven\'t got out of those Dark Ages.

But modern science and technology developed mainly in Christian
countries. The Jesuits have been great scientists and mathematicians.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Jesuit_scientists

The real point is that, as the Enlightenment and modern science
advanced, the church stepped aside.

They were indeed and had full access to the heretical knowledge that
they deprived the rest form seeing. We know a remarkable amount about
medeival engineering and technology through one Jesuit Father Verbeist
who helped convert a Chinese Emperor to Christianity (and arguably built
the worlds first steam powered car). The Chinese documented just about
everything he did in meticulous detail in wood block prints and some
prints and some wood blocks survive to this day. A cannon with \"Verbiest
Fecit\" came to light in a wreck off the coast of Japan when I lived
there. I knew the guy who did the research on these prints. He led a
very interesting life and suffered a fair amount during his initial
fight with the resident Chinese astronomers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Verbiest

https://mhs.web.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/hsm-catalogue-14977

...........

Le Sage doesn\'t really work, but there is no point in arguing with you
about this since you don\'t actually understand relativity at all. That
seems to be a big failing in many electrical engineering courses.

I think that all EEs take a couple of physics courses. I took two, but
they didn\'t get to QM and relativity. That\'s not a \"failing\", as
relativity is not used much in electronic design.

The ones I knew got thrown a couple of relativistic transform formulae
and told to apply them. I never saw the relevance myself either. It
explains why the electronics engineers on early GPS birds insisted on
having a defeat switch on the relativistically corrected orbital clocks!

The big failing in modern EE courses is too much easily-forgotten
mathematical rigor and too little development of electrical instincts.

I\'m not convinced that at least some of the mathematical rigour isn\'t
necessary if you are going to design things that will work well. I think
much more important is knowing when and how to make approximations that
will be good enough for engineering purposes. I have a small collection
of very cute ones that make otherwise intractable problems into
something you can solve approximately with at most a cubic equation.

I think that the math should be immediately connected to lab
experiments. Kids should solve the differential equations and
immediately see the solutions on oscilloscopes, from circuits that
they build themselves.

Nobody that I know actually solves differential equations or computes
Fourier series. The interesting de\'s are nonlinear anyhow. We should
*feel* the equations. You can feel the solution to a nonlinear de a
lot faster than you can solve it.

We actually simulate everything. The design methodology becomes
instinct and simulation, and the kids aren\'t getting much instinct
these days.

But then many kids are getting EE degrees these days.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[server]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2022 12:50:45 +0000, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 16/02/22 11:03, Martin Brown wrote:
On 14/02/2022 16:05, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

The big failing in modern EE courses is too much easily-forgotten
mathematical rigor and too little development of electrical instincts.

I\'m not convinced that at least some of the mathematical rigour isn\'t necessary
if you are going to design things that will work well. I think much more
important is knowing when and how to make approximations that will be good
enough for engineering purposes. I have a small collection of very cute ones
that make otherwise intractable problems into something you can solve
approximately with at most a cubic equation.

You need sufficient rigour to understand the presumptions and
limitations. After that, the old saying applies: the best
result of mathematics is that you don\'t need to use it.

As for approximations, yes they are extremely valuable. You
can get considerable practical insight from them, even if
you resort to number crunching for detailed analysis.

That\'s another version of the old quip:
- when I was a schoolkid/undergrad I used a 12\" slide rule
- when I was a graduate I used a helical 13m slide rule
- when I was a professor I used a 6\" slide rule

Sloppy slide ruling slinging was great for plotting \"lab\" results with
a nice scatter of experimental error.

We went to afternoon EE lab.

Dr Seto, the lab instructor, left after 5 minutes

We left after 6 minutes

The night before all the lab results were due, we faked them.

We and only we got all A\'s.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Fri, 11 Feb 2022 05:12:01 -0800) it happened
jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in
<lonc0h1l5k6a9tbn00ib4u9fle8gd7nbvj@4ax.com>:

On Fri, 11 Feb 2022 06:54:29 GMT, Jan Panteltje
pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

How life came to Earth ?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220210125828.htm
quantum tunneling?

The problem of life isn\'t coming up with small molecular building
blocks, it\'s the astoundingly complex mechanism by which DNA works in
a cell and reproduces itself. It\'s not so much a chemistry problem as
a programming problem.

Our form of life was almost certainly designed and planted on earth.
And yes, it\'s quantum mechanical.

The article describes how the basic chemicals needed for RNA an DNA could form in space.

If you say \'was designed\' you get into a loop,
start:
\'who or what designed it, and who or what designed that...
goto start

It seems likely that in the trillions of reactions somehow
some \'executable\' part was formed that was strong enough to maintain itself.
Polymerase chain reaction only needs some temperature cycling to make
copies of say DNA, and temperature cycling happens due to for example the day night changes on planets.

I do not think we are very special at all.

 

[server]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2022 10:04:03 +0000, Martin Brown
<\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 15/02/2022 13:43, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2022 09:51:29 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:

On 13/02/2022 17:31, David Brown wrote:
On 13/02/2022 17:51, Martin Brown wrote:

You can haggle about whether or not they are truly alive because they
need to hijack a cell to replicate (at least all the ones I know of do).

There are some viruses that are so simple that they can\'t hijack a
cell\'s replication systems - they hijack another virus\'s hijacking! In
a sense, they are small viruses that infect other large viruses. Fun stuff.

And little fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bite \'em.

Eventually in a quantised world they get too small to be viable.

Viral phages that attack bacteria are also quite interesting and some of
them may yet have therapeutic value. Progress in this field is slow but
steady as the various pieces are found and understood.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01880-6

The viruses that we see today have co-evolved with their hosts for many
billions of years. The earliest ones would have been much much simpler.

Is there evidence for that?

Synthetic RNA in the lab is getting close to understanding what the very
first self replicating RNA systems might have looked like. They have
made working examples that are capable of most of the required steps.

This article in Nature might clear up some of your misconceptions iff
you can be bothered to read it (free access).

All you want to do is insult. Jerk.





--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[David Brown]

On 11/02/2022 08:53, Rick C wrote:

On Friday, February 11, 2022 at 1:54:57 AM UTC-5, Jan Panteltje
wrote:
How life came to Earth ?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220210125828.htm
quantum tunneling?

Not really \"life\" as such, but the most important and fundamental
building blocks of life. People think life is all about DNA or RNA,
but the reality is they are pointless without proteins. Peptides are
short proteins, or it is more common to consider proteins to be made
of multiple peptides, hence the term polypeptide. Proteins are the
functioning units of life. Virtually everything that happens in
living organisms involves proteins in some way. It is conceivable
that life started with proteins, without any nucleic acids. It is
not conceivable that life started with nucleic acids without
proteins. In fact, the purpose of nucleic acids is as a blueprint to
allow proteins to make other proteins.

That last bit is not accurate. While acting as a blueprint for proteins
is a major purpose of DNA, it is not the only purpose. For humans, only
about 1.5% of our DNA codes directly for proteins as \"blueprints\".
Other purposes include epigenetic control and structural support, but
there\'s a lot we simply do not yet understand. RNA also comes in many
types, with many purposes. In particular, several key jobs done by
proteins as enzymes and catalysts can be done by RNA molecules.

Thus there is the hypothesis called \"RNA world\" which supposes that RNA
was central to the earliest lifeforms, and came before the biological
use of proteins. It\'s a hypothesis - nothing is proven. But there\'s
enough justification and support for it that it is a serious research
topic. Certainly there is not enough supporting evidence to claim that
it is inconceivable that life started with nucleic acids without
proteins - abiogenesis researchers very actively conceive that idea.
(Equally, of course, they also consider proteins first, or combinations
of nucleic acids and proteins at a similar time, or other possibilities
- it\'s an open area of science.)

So they are suggesting that the basic units of life, may have come
from space rather than for them to have been created on earth
initially. They are at least, leaving the door open for these units
to have been created in space.

Whether such \"basic units of life\" (including amino acids, peptides,
fatty acids, nucleic acids, organic molecules, complex carbohydrates,
etc.) first arrived from space or first came together on earth, is
unlikely ever to be fully established. However, the fact that we have
found many of them in space makes it clear that they can be produced by
relatively simple natural forces, breaking the chicken-and-egg cycle of
requiring lifeforms to make the building blocks of life.

It can also help to answer some of the /why/ questions - such as why all
known lifeforms use mostly the same chemical parts. Those are the parts
that were found lying around when the lifeforms first formed.

 

[server]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2022 15:20:14 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 15/02/2022 16:58, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 15 Feb 2022 16:08:43 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 15/02/2022 14:40, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 16:51:40 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:





Is there any RNA life around now, independent of DNA? Where did it go?

Yes. It didn\'t go away. Plenty of common viruses are RNA based.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_virus

No. RNA viruses are manufactured by DNA.

Retroviruses insert their genes into the cell\'s DNA, and thus use DNA as
an intermediary. Other RNA viruses do not - the RNA is copied directly
using RNA enzymes supplied by the virus itself. The animo acids,
lipids, RNA bases, etc., that are used as raw material are created by
the DNA-based host, but that doesn\'t matter. The virus doesn\'t care if
they were made by a DNA-based host, an RNA-based host, or an alien robot.

We have not found any organisms alive today that are not DNA-based. RNA
viruses are the nearest we have (and there are lots of them), but
viruses have no metabolism. (Some biologists classify viruses as
\"living organisms\", but most do not - it\'s a matter of your choice of
definition.)

It is reasonable to hypothesise that RNA-based lifeforms existed in the
past.

I don\'t call your unproven and unlikely conjectures stupid or
ignorant. So why do you call mine stupid and ignorant?

If I write something clearly stupid, I expect others to call it stupid.
If I write something demonstrating ignorance, I expect people to
correct me. If I disagree with them, then it is up to me to justify my
claims. I might do that, or I might accept the correction and thank
people, or I might try to sneak away quietly and hope people forget I
have been stupid.

So you know everything (including electronic design and biology) and
you\'re always right and you have no tolerance for non-standard ideas.
You supress your own ideas, if any, for fear of being shown to be
wrong.

Great, I can compete with that.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[David Brown]

On 11/02/2022 14:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 11 Feb 2022 06:54:29 GMT, Jan Panteltje
pNaonStpealmtje@yahoo.com> wrote:

How life came to Earth ?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220210125828.htm
quantum tunneling?

The problem of life isn\'t coming up with small molecular building
blocks, it\'s the astoundingly complex mechanism by which DNA works in
a cell and reproduces itself. It\'s not so much a chemistry problem as
a programming problem.

Our form of life was almost certainly designed and planted on earth.
And yes, it\'s quantum mechanical.

Oh dear. Somebody needs to read up a bit on what a load of twaddle the
\"intelligent design\" idea is. It\'s an irrational, inconsistent straw
man argument made by religious fanatics who can\'t or won\'t understand
science, and who think it makes their arguments more powerful if they
pick a fight with reality and invent stuff - instead of just saying \"I
don\'t know\".

Waving magic words like \"quantum\" will not convince anyone here, nor
will carefully omitting any direct mention of your pet god. At least
have the decency to be honest and say you think \"God\" made life on earth
but you don\'t know how.

(There\'s nothing wrong with being religious /and/ scientific - freedom
of religious beliefs is an important right. But there\'s something very
wrong with denying reality in order to make it \"fit\" a particularly odd
religious conviction.)

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Monday, February 14, 2022 at 12:55:16 AM UTC+11, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Sun, 13 Feb 2022 02:53:37 -0800 (PST)) it happened whit3rd <whi...@gmail.com> wrote in <bdeb49d4-6146-4b3c...@googlegroups.com>:
On Saturday, February 12, 2022 at 11:56:03 PM UTC-8, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Sat, 12 Feb 2022 16:16:59 -0800 (PST)) it happened whit3rd <whi...@gmail.com> wrote in <69a7cfcf-5b4f-467f...@googlegroups.com>:

<snip>

Depends what you call \'science\'
The sun orbiting the earth had a lot of mathematicians create \'epicycles\'
to describe the motion of the planets [grin a bit like string theory these days I\'d think]
until that dogma (earth at center was no longer believed - how many died on fires set by the church
being accused of witchcraft etc..]
It is ALL about social pressure and religious fanaticism.

The power of the medieval church isn\'t \'science\', but is a kind
of social pressure. Science didn\'t order those actions, wasn\'t the social
operator, but the church did, and was.

You should see that in the time frame
the mathematicians that were working on the epicycles most certainly did think of themselves as scientists.

They absolutely certainly didn\'t. William Whewell invented the term in 1833. Natural philosophy is as close as you could get to that before then.

> So did the schools in those days that taught it.

They might have taught natural philosophy, which isn\'t quite the same thing - science is about creating and improving a coherent body of knowledge as a shared literature which everybody can cite.

Natural philosophers wanted to set up a body of knowledge about the real world, but the refinements involved in getting everybody else to accept it and letting other people improve it are what makes modern science.

<snipped Jan demonstrating that he doesn\'t know what modern science is about>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[David Brown]

On 16/02/2022 17:11, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Wed, 16 Feb 2022 15:20:14 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 15/02/2022 16:58, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 15 Feb 2022 16:08:43 +0100, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 15/02/2022 14:40, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2022 16:51:40 +0000, Martin Brown
\'\'\'newspam\'\'\'@nonad.co.uk> wrote:





Is there any RNA life around now, independent of DNA? Where did it go?

Yes. It didn\'t go away. Plenty of common viruses are RNA based.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_virus

No. RNA viruses are manufactured by DNA.

Retroviruses insert their genes into the cell\'s DNA, and thus use DNA as
an intermediary. Other RNA viruses do not - the RNA is copied directly
using RNA enzymes supplied by the virus itself. The animo acids,
lipids, RNA bases, etc., that are used as raw material are created by
the DNA-based host, but that doesn\'t matter. The virus doesn\'t care if
they were made by a DNA-based host, an RNA-based host, or an alien robot.

We have not found any organisms alive today that are not DNA-based. RNA
viruses are the nearest we have (and there are lots of them), but
viruses have no metabolism. (Some biologists classify viruses as
\"living organisms\", but most do not - it\'s a matter of your choice of
definition.)

It is reasonable to hypothesise that RNA-based lifeforms existed in the
past.

I don\'t call your unproven and unlikely conjectures stupid or
ignorant. So why do you call mine stupid and ignorant?

If I write something clearly stupid, I expect others to call it stupid.
If I write something demonstrating ignorance, I expect people to
correct me. If I disagree with them, then it is up to me to justify my
claims. I might do that, or I might accept the correction and thank
people, or I might try to sneak away quietly and hope people forget I
have been stupid.

So you know everything (including electronic design and biology) and
you\'re always right and you have no tolerance for non-standard ideas.

What kind of misreading could lead you to that conclusion? Do you
bother paying any attention at all to things people write? You
apparently don\'t read posts here, nor do you read any articles on the
web (even the ones you link to yourself). I think you just skim posts
looking for trigger words or phrases so that you can tell people how
wonderful you are and how bad others are.

You supress your own ideas, if any, for fear of being shown to be
wrong.

Read again. If you are having difficulty, find a grandkid to help with
the big words.

Great, I can compete with that.

Compete at what? This is a Usenet group, not a competition.