Have we just discovered aliens?

[SteyrAUG]

That's the whole thing though. One "super ingredient" means nothing in the grand scheme of things. What was accomplished more than 50 years ago that caused the whole Abiogenesis theory to boom was actually nothing at all. They made more complex organic molecules that would be necessary for Abiogenesis from simpler organic precursors. That's it. Just building blocks. Nothing more has been accomplished since then. There are so many specific processes and precise temperature requirements. That experiment is still so far away from actual life it isn't funny.

There is chicken or the egg problem also. First it was theorized that cells came first then enzymes, then genes. Now we understand that Genes require enzymes to function, but you need genes to produce enzymes. Along with a whole bunch of other requirements like ribosomes, and a crapload of other proteins to say the least.

In other words, it isn't a specific condition and poof there is life. No there is a complex support structure to support it that would need to be there before but because enzymes are so specific, the enzyme needs to be created by the genes that require the support. If you want a crazy number to look at, think of the odds that would put all these specific substances, some specifically designed for a specific purpose to be in place and appear at the same time.

You are playing multiple lotteries that need to be won in a specific order and not lose any of them or you start over.

ALL THAT and then some.

Problem is most of us learn biology and evolution from the 6th to 8th grade so we have a middle school understanding of the concept that is never really increased because most of us are not biologists. But when you advance your understanding of the subject, you really just get additional questions and problems with fewer and fewer answers unless you are willing to be blindly dogmatic about concepts and accept that we can't explain it but it must have happened like that.

And that seems to be true across almost all of the sciences, which is our best ability to answer all these questions. But it's hard for most people to study something that is the "path to the answer" when it still doesn't completely get you to the actual answer. In some ways we are making amazing discoveries and figuring out complex problems, but the solution to the really simple questions still seem to elude us.

[georgeib]

Again as been repeated many times. It is only absurd if Abiogenesis actually can happen. If it can't, all those planets and space out there mean absolutely nothing at all. Zero multiplied by any number is still zero.

Succinctly put! Gonna borrow that.

And abiogenesis is a statistical impossibility. Just the formation of a single protein, let alone the mindbogglingly more complex ability to self-replicate.

[georgeib]

How many "Alien" threads do we need? I get that it is incredibly fascinating for some people; 15 years ago I would have been one of them. These days it comes off as nothing but gaslighting for the inevitable "disclosure" that "aliens" exist, and we need to do X, Y, and Z because of that. Best case scenario, it'll be a ploy by human overlords that seek more power. More than likely, far darker forces will be involved.

I'm pretty sure you nailed it.

[SteyrAUG]

Succinctly put! Gonna borrow that.

And abiogenesis is a statistical impossibility. Just the formation of a single protein, let alone the mindbogglingly more complex ability to self-replicate.

Absolutes combined with huge knowledge gaps are always a problem. Disproving a negative is even more problematic than proving a belief.

[georgeib]

Absolutes combined with huge knowledge gaps are always a problem. Disproving a negative is even more problematic than proving a belief.

I hear ya. Looking at the math when it comes to the chemistry and eventually biology, is REALLY convincing, however. I'm not going to try and bore you with it, but the probabilities are well beyond absurdities. 1x10 to the -180th power (or something similar) for the formation of a sufficiently long amino, which then has to fold itself PERFECTLY in order to be a protein. Which then has to find a BUNCH of other proteins, that just so happen to be there , at the exact same time.

And all of that eventually has to form proteins, that contain INFORMATION. Which is really the big thing. Information that leads for self replication, metabolism, and on and on. The idea of Irreducible complexity comes up. Multiple functional systems have to all pop into existence simultaneously, and all actually function.

The numbers are truly difficult to imagine. And although not strictly impossible, they are as close to impossible, as being practically so.

Sorry, if this all sounds a bit disjointed. Just waking up, and trying to respond before taking off.

[tn1911]

Lot of folks are stuck on the concept of life as we know it…

[georgeib]

Lot of folks are stuck on the concept of life as we know it…

All life has certain things in common, for it to be considered "life." According to NASA, those things are: Cellular organization, the ability to reproduce, growth & development, energy use, homeostasis, response to their environment, and the ability to adapt.

For those things to come into existence abiogenically, they have to overcome all the same obstacles, and here's the absolutely critical part: they have to do so simultaneously! Obstacles that are, for all practical purpose, statistically insurmountable. And for that to happen, not just once, but "thousands or millions" of times is simply fantasy.

[ChattanoogaPhil]

I've read some estimates of 70 quintillion planets in the universe. In that context, intelligent life on millions or billions of planets over the last 13 billion years sounds reasonable. So, where is everybody? One thing seems certain... bs artists casting clickbait on YouTube haven't a clue.

[glocktogo]

All life has certain things in common, for it to be considered "life." According to NASA, those things are: Cellular organization, the ability to reproduce, growth & development, energy use, homeostasis, response to their environment, and the ability to adapt.

For those things to come into existence abiogenically, they have to overcome all the same obstacles, and here's the absolutely critical part: they have to do so simultaneously! Obstacles that are, for all practical purpose, statistically insurmountable. And for that to happen, not just once, but "thousands or millions" of times is simply fantasy.

And yet somehow, life finds a way. Tardigrades shouldn't be able to exist in the vacuum of space, but they do. Nematodes shouldn't be able to survive being frozen for 45,000 years, but they do. It's possible extremophiles exist on asteroids, so any number of planets in the "goldilocks zone" probably harbor nanobes, prokaryotes and even eukaryotes. Once you've made that leap into life, the possibilities for more complex forms of life increase exponentially.

Another thing to consider is the function of time. Excluding black holes, time exists throughout the universe in a fairly linear fashion. There's little reason to believe time, space and the elements are radically different in other star systems, much less other galaxies. So the function of life and how far it evolves is probably a function of where the orbital masses are when the conditions to support life exist. That "when" is finite and that includes this marble. It's likely that in a couple billion years, the conditions on earth will no longer support eukaryotic life. That won't mean it doesn't or didn't exist, it just means anything examining the earth in that timeline will have missed the goldilocks zone timeline.

I'd say we're a long way from being able to even evaluate whether a particular mass in space meets the criteria for supporting life at that time, yet the likelihood that a mass supported life at some point in its timeline is significant. Given the near infinite possibilities within the known universe, the odds that intelligent life exists on some other planet is pretty high. The real question is whether we'll find any before life on earth ceases to exist, and whether we'd even be able to reach it with more than just a message in a bottle from a long extinct species.

[georgeib]

I've read some estimates of 70 quintillion planets in the universe. In that context, intelligent life on millions or billions of planets over the last 13 billion years sounds reasonable. So, where is everybody? One thing seems certain... bs artists casting clickbait on YouTube haven't a clue.

And yet somehow, life finds a way. Tardigrades shouldn't be able to exist in the vacuum of space, but they do. Nematodes shouldn't be able to survive being frozen for 45,000 years, but they do. It's possible extremophiles exist on asteroids, so any number of planets in the "goldilocks zone" probably harbor nanobes, prokaryotes and even eukaryotes. Once you've made that leap into life, the possibilities for more complex forms of life increase exponentially.

Another thing to consider is the function of time. Excluding black holes, time exists throughout the universe in a fairly linear fashion. There's little reason to believe time, space and the elements are radically different in other star systems, much less other galaxies. So the function of life and how far it evolves is probably a function of where the orbital masses are when the conditions to support life exist. That "when" is finite and that includes this marble. It's likely that in a couple billion years, the conditions on earth will no longer support eukaryotic life. That won't mean it doesn't or didn't exist, it just means anything examining the earth in that timeline will have missed the goldilocks zone timeline.

I'd say we're a long way from being able to even evaluate whether a particular mass in space meets the criteria for supporting life at that time, yet the likelihood that a mass supported life at some point in its timeline is significant. Given the near infinite possibilities within the known universe, the odds that intelligent life exists on some other planet is pretty high. The real question is whether we'll find any before life on earth ceases to exist, and whether we'd even be able to reach it with more than just a message in a bottle from a long extinct species.

I'm not talking about the ability of life to survive extreme conditions; I'm talking about abiogenesis. The ability of life to form from non-life in the first place. The numbers of potentially life supporting planets and age of the universe sound pretty compelling until you look at the numbers I was referencing. 70 quintillion is as an absolutely astronomical, and pretty much unimaginable number. Surely life would have formed somewhere among that 70 quintillion, right?

Well, the numbers I'm talking about dwarf 70 quintillion in the same way that a single person on this planet is dwarfed by the universe, but many many times over. 70 quintillion has 19 zeros. A lot of zeros. The numbers I'm talking about, for the formation of a single protein have 180 zeros. Yeah. Numbers that will fit 70 quintillion so many times, we probably don't even have a name for them. But suffice it to say that number has approximately 167 zeros behind it.

For a little perspective, the number of atoms in the entire universe is speculated to be between 1x10^78 and 1x10^82. For a bit of reference, the number of atoms in the human body is around 7x10^27. As you can see, the difference in the number of atoms in a human compared to the number in the entire universe is many times closer in comparison.

Not saying it is categorically impossible, rather that "implausible" is the greatest understatement I can think of at the moment.

ETA: I don't remember where now, but I do remember seeing calculations based on strict probability of single celled organism forming, and if memory serves, those numbers were less than 1 in 1x10^10^100. (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 zeroes.)