# Chances of life appearing **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 8, 2009, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737 "2009-05-08T10:40:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/61 "2009-05-10T19:03:13Z")
> [@JohnClay](#): > > I think it’s better to ask ITR champion about more recent advances e.g. > > The second video at 2:24 responds to the objection “The 1953 Miller-Urey experiment did not create life”. It goes on to say “this is like claiming it’s impossible to fly to the moon simply because the Wright brothers didn’t” I’ve watched the second video, and it makes several claims that contradict things I’ve already posted. Firstly, it goes the route of making a big deal out of “organic molecules” in early earth and in space as fore-runners of life. That, any of my 10th graders could shoot down, as I already mentioned, but it’s not really relevant to the main argument. The video claims that we know that the prebiotic environment on earth contained nucleic acids, but suggests they may have been different from the DNA and RNA we have today. Well, it’s true that other versions of DNA are known to exist. But where would the ribose come from? The paper by Larralde, Robertson, and miller, which I cited in post 18, demonstrates that ribose would have been difficult to form, and unstable and short-lived if it did form, under a wide variety of conditions. “These results suggest that the backbone of the first genetic material could not have contained ribose or other sugars because of their instability.” All DNA (and RNA) contains a sugar of some sort. (Heck, that’s why it’s called deoxyribonucleic acid.) Now if the people who made that video have a real source to back up their claim that the prebiotic environment had nucleic acid, I’d be happy to read it. Until that time, I’m sticking with Larralde et. al. Second, even if the prebiotic environment had the ribose, there’s also the problem of whether nucleotides would form. See the second paper I cited in post 18, which says, “It appears likely that nucleic acids were not formed by prebiotic routes, but are later products of evolution.” So we’d need to address that problem as well. Third, even if nucleotides exist, there’s the question of whether they would form long chains (aka polymers) automatically. Recall the research from Joyce and Orgel that I cited earlier. “They note that nucleotides do not link unless there is some type of activation of the phosphate group.” This contradicts what the video claims. Fourth, the video also claims that the prebioitc environment had long chains of fatty acids, which would naturally form into lipid vesicles. I’ve never seen any research to back this up. All in all, this video seems to be pushing the same basic theory as a 2007 Scientific American article, “Did This Molecule Start Life”, but the authors of that article were much more straightforward about the lack of experimental evidence to back their claims up. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/62 "2009-05-10T20:24:53Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > You ask about “the Miller-Urey experiment evidence for life arising on its own.” The Miller-Urey experiment offers no such evidence, nor did Stanley Miller ever believe that it did. As I’ve already gone over in earlier posts in this thread: And your points have already been shot down, but lets have another look. > [@](#): > > (1) The Miller-Urey experiment was famous for producing amino acids, often incorrectly described as ‘building blocks of life’. In reality amino acids are building blocks pf proteins, but other components are necessary for life. A pointless nitpick, as your 10th grade chemistry could point out. How do you get proteins with amino acid chains to transcribe them? > [@](#): > > (2) The Miller-Urey experiment used an artificial cold trap to separate amino acids from permanent gases. Without the cold trap, no amino acids form. Hmm, so the cold trap was used to filter amino acids, and not produce them? Alright then. You’ve made your, er my, er _a_ point, that the cold trap was just present to enable examination of the amino acids, and not necessary for the formation. > [@](#): > > (3) The mixture of gases that went into the Miller-Urey experiment was not the mixture present on early earth. The mixture present in the early earth atmosphere does not produce amino acids. You’ve made an assertion, now prove it. Of course, you’ll have to prove the part of the assertion where you know exactly what the composition of the early earth atmosphere was. And of course that amino acid formation had something to do with the composition of the atmosphere, at didn’t happen say, in ice or clay or in a deep ocean vent. > [@](#): > > So that experiment does not provide any evidence for life arising on its own. In the journal _Earth_, in a 1998 article, Stanley Miller was quoted agreeing with this assessment. (Now, before anyone leaps on me for not responding to more recent research, I intend to respond to that in a later post.) Sigh, once again, the experiment does need to provide absolute proof of life arising, and no one has said that. Once again, it starts the groundwork for the idea, paving the way for other experiments, of which there have been many. You’re just picking one very old experiment, and claiming that because it didn’t cause life to spontaneously arise, it couldn’t possible happen except for an intelligent designer. False dilemma. Again. > [@](#): > > As for why I believe in an intelligent designer, blah blah blah Same old usual garbage. I noticed that you didn’t actually provide any evidence, just speculation and wishful thinking. Let us know when you get around to that evidence. > [@](#): > > As for whether the origin of life on earth results from an intelligent designer, there are two possibilities, yes and no. If no, then it must be the result of random motion of molecules. Hey, there’s that false dilemma again. Nice vague obviously wrong phrase used in the mischaracterization of abiogenesis by the way. > [@](#): > > We can do experiments to determine whether random motion of the molecules present on early earth leads to life. If the answer is no, then we need a designer, more or less by definition. And again, yet another slightly different false dilemma. What about panspermia? Something that has already been mentioned in this thread. Oh, and when we completely exhaust the experiments on earth with absolutely no positive results, we’ll get back to you. Until then, keep searching for the evidence on that intelligent designer. > [@](#): > > The necessity of a designer for the origin of life is not in any way a basis for my belief in God, so Half Man Half Wit’s spree of juvenile insults was a complete waste of time. Um, in case you hadn’t noticed, you tied your belief in an intelligent designer to, among other things: > [@](#): > > (5) Numerous people have seen, heard, and had a personal relationship with a supreme intelligence behind the universe. (6) Fulfilled prophecies. (7) Miracles. Sounds an awful lot like god to me. An awful lot. In fact, given that the whole intelligent design movement is a thinly veiled attempt to force religion into science, it looks pretty obvious that your invocation of an intelligent designer is just an invocation of god. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/63 "2009-05-10T20:46:32Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > Sigh, once again, the experiment does need to provide absolute proof of life arising, and no one has said that. Actually, **PlainJain** did say that the experiment provided “evidence for life arising on it’s own” (in post 52), so your claim that “no one has said that” is false. > [@](#): > > Um, in case you hadn’t noticed, you tied your belief in an intelligent designer to, among other things: > > Sounds an awful lot like god to me. An awful lot. In fact, given that the whole intelligent design movement is a thinly veiled attempt to force religion into science, it looks pretty obvious that your invocation of an intelligent designer is just an invocation of god. A nice attempt to rip my quotes out of context in order to misrepresent what I said. Of course, it’s not going to work on anybody who actually read my post, but I guess you’re working with limited material here. I said that “The necessity of a designer for the origin of life is not in any way a basis for my belief in God”. I of course believe that the intelligent designer is God, but I do not believe in God because of the argument from intelligent design at the origin of life. That should be clear enough, but if you want to keep misrepresenting what I say, go right ahead. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/64 "2009-05-10T20:55:01Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > What about panspermia? I’m so glad you asked. Panspermia has been ruled out by scientific experiment. According to [Survivability of Small Biomolecules During Extraterrestrial Delivery: Simulation Experiments on Amino Acid Pyrolysis](http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2000/pdf/1007.pdf), no amino acids has any chance of surviving when the temperature is above 800 degrees celsius. But according to Jeffrey Bada, director of the NASA research center at UCSD, [any meteor or dust particle that traveled through space to earth would be exposed to temperatures of 1200 degrees celsius upon impact.](http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/ucsdoriginoflife062003.htm) > [@](#): > > Bada noted that the next problem is how you get the material to earth. According to Bada, In Basick and Douda (Planetary Space Science 47:577- 584, 1999), it was found that most meteorites would simply get too hot and would destroy most amino acids and organic material during entry to the earth’s atmosphere. In this paper, the only possible way to get significant organic material to earth was through interplanetary dust particles (IDPs). > > Bada himself later heated IDP’s and found that during entry they can easily heat up to 1200 C, easily hot enough to destroy most organic material. Apparently the only amino acid that ever remained during Bada’s simulations was glycine. Bada called this “bad news.” Thus, IDP’s don’t help you either and from what I could tell, this officially leaves origins of life researchers with no way to safely get organic material from space to earth. That rules out the possibility of life arriving on earth from elsewhere. In fact, it even rules out the possibility of amino acids arriving on earth from elsewhere, with a margin of error of 400 degrees. Panspermia did not happen. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/65 "2009-05-10T21:31:40Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Still, I think the percentage of base pair combinations that lead to self replication is probably considerably higher Self-replication is a function of the basic structure of DNA (a double helix with relatively weak hydrogen bonds holding the two halves together, each half made up of paired bases that uniquely specify the other half). The specific sequence of bases is irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/66 "2009-05-10T21:38:56Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > You’re the one who claimed that amino acids can’t form in the presence of nitrogen I’ll see if I can finish this post before the nitrogen I’ve been inhaling shuts down my metabol ---
**Author:** ![PlainJain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5daacb/32.png) [@PlainJain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlainJain)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/67 "2009-05-10T21:48:14Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > You ask about “the Miller-Urey experiment evidence for life arising on its own.” The Miller-Urey experiment offers no such evidence… Thanks for addressing my questions. I pretty much agree with the above. What I was asking for in the way that I phrased it was if you could offer better proof than that. A tangible proof that we can all examine. Fulfilled prophecies and miracles don’t really count as proof, imho, unless they can be scientifically witnessed or tested. Faith is fine as it goes, it’s just not proof. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/68 "2009-05-10T22:27:15Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > That rules out the possibility of life arriving on earth from elsewhere. It doesn’t “rule out” anything. The very lines you quoted said that “ **most** meteorites would simply get too hot” and that IDPs “ **can** easily heat up to 1200 C.” And in the cited article these lines come just one paragraph after a mention of a meteorite that _was_ found to contain amino acids. ---
**Author:** ![Busy\_Scissors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@Busy\_Scissors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Busy_Scissors)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/69 "2009-05-10T22:58:05Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Yes, I do. > Let me tackle that sentence in reverse order. > > You ask about “the Miller-Urey experiment evidence for life arising on its own.” The Miller-Urey experiment offers no such evidence, nor did Stanley Miller ever believe that it did. As I’ve already gone over in earlier posts in this thread: (1) The Miller-Urey experiment was famous for producing amino acids, often incorrectly described as ‘building blocks of life’. In reality amino acids are building blocks pf proteins, but other components are necessary for life. (2) The Miller-Urey experiment used an artificial cold trap to separate amino acids from permanent gases. Without the cold trap, no amino acids form. (3) The mixture of gases that went into the Miller-Urey experiment was not the mixture present on early earth. The mixture present in the early earth atmosphere does not produce amino acids. So that experiment does not provide any evidence for life arising on its own. In the journal _Earth_, in a 1998 article, Stanley Miller was quoted agreeing with this assessment. (Now, before anyone leaps on me for not responding to more recent research, I intend to respond to that in a later post.) wrt (2), there is no cold trap used in the Miller Urey experiment. Where have you got this piece of cabbagery from? Have you even read Miller’s paper? I take it not as you have said upthread that a liquid nitrogen cooled cold trap was employed in the work - and provided a truly infantile cite for this second-hand opinion of yours. Miller used a water-cooled condenser to condense the gaseous phase of his experiment, drawing a reasonable analogy to rainfall. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/70 "2009-05-10T23:16:14Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > **Half Man Half Wit** ’s spree of juvenile insults was a complete waste of time. Same thing attempting to have a reasoned argument with you would have ended up being, so I went with what I felt like at the time. At least I already have tried to make an honest contribution to this thread. Interesting, by the way, how your reasons for believing in god are predicated on not knowing certain things and not being able to think of any alternative except god, i.e. ignorance. And you’ve probably overlooked, again, the part of my post where I said that amino acids are even today found in meteorites (and actually, the Murchison meteorite even contained nucleobases). And also, you’re right in saying that panspermia has been experimentally tested, however, results where actually [overwhelmingly](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008cosp...37..660D) [positive](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WGF-4J440B5-4&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=abebc84195e791ef59935749f325b411). ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2009, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/71 "2009-05-10T23:42:11Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Actually, **PlainJain** did say that the experiment provided “evidence for life arising on it’s own” (in post 52), so your claim that “no one has said that” is false. So are you actually reading what’s posted, or just making up things so your end of the argument looks better? I said: > [@](#): > > the experiment does need to provide absolute proof of life arising, and no one has said that. And no one has. What you must have read as ‘absolute proof’ was in fact ‘evidence’. ‘Evidence’ doesn’t mean absolute proof. Science, as a matter of fact, doesn’t deal with proof it deals with evidence. When you have enough evidence, you can start to treat something as it’s true. Preponderance of evidence, it’s called. the Miller Urey experiment didn’t provide proof all on it’s, nor did it set out it, nor does it have to. All it did was add one more piece of evidence to the pile. > [@](#): > > I said that “The necessity of a designer for the origin of life is not in any way a basis for my belief in God”. I of course believe that the intelligent designer is God, but I do not believe in God because of the argument from intelligent design at the origin of life. That should be clear enough, but if you want to keep misrepresenting what I say, go right ahead. Shrug, it doesn’t matter. You’re the one trying to force god into a place it doesn’t belong. Your argument from beginning to end is a false dilemma. It doesn’t matter if you can show every single current effort in this area to be false, and I’m pretty sure you can’t, it still doesn’t mean god did it. If you want to claim god did it, you have to show, and here’s the tricky part, that _god did it_. I’d start with providing evidence for god’s existence first, that would probably help your case. > [@](#): > > I’m so glad you asked. Panspermia has been ruled out by scientific experiment. Sigh. No, it hasn’t. > [@](#): > > According to Survivability of Small Biomolecules During Extraterrestrial Delivery: Simulation Experiments on Amino Acid Pyrolysis, no amino acids has any chance of surviving when the temperature is above 800 degrees celsius. Now all you have to do if prove that every single part of every single meteor that enters earths atmosphere reaches that temperature, because your other cite doesn’t say that. > [@](#): > > But according to Jeffrey Bada, director of the NASA research center at UCSD, any meteor or dust particle that traveled through space to earth would be exposed to temperatures of 1200 degrees celsius upon impact. Um, read the ‘paper’, it’s a summary btw, because it doesn’t say that. It says that IDPs, Interplanetary Dust Particles could get up to 1200. But what about meteorites? Well it says that; > [@](#): > > it was found that most meteorites would simply get too hot and would destroy most amino acids and organic material during entry to the earth’s atmosphere. Funny word that, ‘most’. It doesn’t mean ‘all’. > [@](#): > > That rules out the possibility of life arriving on earth from elsewhere. In fact, it even rules out the possibility of amino acids arriving on earth from elsewhere, with a margin of error of 400 degrees. Panspermia did not happen. Wrong again. Bada, the guy you think you quoted in the second ‘paper’ talked about the extra terretrial amino acids found in a meteor on earth. Read that again, _they found extraterrestial amino acids on earth in a meteor_. At least part of panspermia did happen, it’s timing was just off. So once again we have sweeping assertions based on scant or misinterpreted information. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/72 "2009-05-11T16:00:45Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > Um, read the ‘paper’, it’s a summary btw, because it doesn’t say that. It says that IDPs, Interplanetary Dust Particles could get up to 1200. But what about meteorites? Well it says that; Nice job clipping out the one sentence that appears to say what you want, while ignoring the following sentence that shoots down your argument. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ruin it by quoting the entire paragraph. > [@](#): > > Bada noted that the next problem is how you get the material to earth. According to Bada, In Basick and Douda (Planetary Space Science 47:577- 584, 1999), it was found that most meteorites would simply get too hot and would destroy most amino acids and organic material during entry to the earth’s atmosphere. _In this paper, the only possible way to get significant organic material to earth was through interplanetary dust particles_ (IDPs). (emphasis mine) So Basick and Douda rule out delivery by meteorites, and Bada rules out delivery by IDPs. > [@](#): > > Wrong again. Bada, the guy you think you quoted in the second ‘paper’ talked about the extra terretrial amino acids found in a meteor on earth. Read that again, _they found extraterrestial amino acids on earth in a meteor_. At least part of panspermia did happen, it’s timing was just off. Actually, the organic compounds in the Murchison Meteorite are in dispute. [Some scientists believe that the meteorite was contaminated by organic material from earth](http://www.astrobio.net/news/article375.html), which would invalidate the result. But in reality, haggling about the survival of organic compounds in meteorites is off topic. Panspermia would require the survival of a life form after an impact. Now the hottest temperature that a life form can survive is [130 degrees celsius](http://books.google.com/books?id=1m0_FLEjd-cC&pg=PA576&lpg=PA576&dq=highest+temperature+for+life&source=bl&ots=CVXDzswtX3&sig=v_ZlLDTpYcA013V38pzMHIJ6s4E&hl=en&ei=UUkISvSbM4TQMoC00N8E&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3) (new results may have pushed that slightly higher), so we have a margin or error of over a thousand degrees there. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/73 "2009-05-11T16:14:42Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > But in reality, haggling about the survival of organic compounds in meteorites is off topic. Panspermia would require the survival of a life form after an impact. Now the hottest temperature that a life form can survive is [130 degrees celsius](http://books.google.com/books?id=1m0_FLEjd-cC&pg=PA576&lpg=PA576&dq=highest+temperature+for+life&source=bl&ots=CVXDzswtX3&sig=v_ZlLDTpYcA013V38pzMHIJ6s4E&hl=en&ei=UUkISvSbM4TQMoC00N8E&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3) (new results may have pushed that slightly higher), so we have a margin or error of over a thousand degrees there. Actually, exogenesis is the idea that life or life forms were transferred to earth. Panspermia has to do with the ‘seeds’ of life, which could quite easily be any substance that starts the process. In any event, my point still stands. You can prove every single current effort in this area wrong, and it still wouldn’t be a reason to accept intelligent design. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/74 "2009-05-11T16:44:44Z")
Well, seems like I’ve found my way on **ITR** ’s ignore list, but I just can’t bring myself to show him and his agenda driven distortion of scientific thinking the same courtesy… so: > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Actually, the organic compounds in the Murchison Meteorite are in dispute. [Some scientists believe that the meteorite was contaminated by organic material from earth](http://www.astrobio.net/news/article375.html), which would invalidate the result. Interesting how that very same article talks about 50 amino acids that aren’t found on earth. Hard to imagine how those should be there because of terrestrial contamination, so that invalidates the ‘amino acids couldn’t survive re-entry’-claim right there, and that’s not even mentioning how the amino acids in the meteorite didn’t have the same left/right chirality distribution, or isotope signatures, as those present on earth. > [@](#): > > But in reality, haggling about the survival of organic compounds in meteorites is off topic. Panspermia would require the survival of a life form after an impact. Now the hottest temperature that a life form can survive is [130 degrees celsius](http://books.google.com/books?id=1m0_FLEjd-cC&pg=PA576&lpg=PA576&dq=highest+temperature+for+life&source=bl&ots=CVXDzswtX3&sig=v_ZlLDTpYcA013V38pzMHIJ6s4E&hl=en&ei=UUkISvSbM4TQMoC00N8E&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3) (new results may have pushed that slightly higher), so we have a margin or error of over a thousand degrees there. I’m not gonna bore everybody by merely repeating my links from above, so suffice it to say that microorganisms have actually survived re-entry and impact landing, both in a controlled experiment and in the less-than-controlled Columbia disaster. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/75 "2009-05-11T19:42:26Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Well, seems like I’ve found my way on **ITR** ’s ignore list, but I just can’t bring myself to show him and his agenda driven distortion of scientific thinking the same courtesy… so: I said that the findings from the meteorite were doubted by some scientists and that’s what the article says. Your whining about the fact that I didn’t repeat the entire article in this thread is obviously nonsense. One generally doesn’t repeat the entire articles on this board because (a) it’s not allowed and (b) it would be a waste of space. So accusing me of “agenda driven distortion” is just more pointless nastiness on your part. > [@](#): > > I’m not gonna bore everybody by merely repeating my links from above, so suffice it to say that microorganisms have actually survived re-entry and impact landing, both in a controlled experiment and in the less-than-controlled Columbia disaster. I don’t have the full text of the articles, but I don’t see much reason to buy them as evidence that life forms could travel from other planets to earth on meteors. Meteors travel at speeds many times higher than the space shuttle, so they’d presumably create much higher temperatures and pressures than the shuttle debris did. As for the first article, I don’t see anything in the abstract saying that they replicated the conditions of a crashing meteor. The bottom line is this. In order to get life from planet X to Earth, we’d need the following to happen. First a large impact would have to occur on planet X. That impact would certainly melt most nearby debris. Only a very small portion of the debris would be ejected into space without being melted. Once in space, any life forms riding on a meteor ejected from X would be exposed to radiation from both ambient radiation and from the sun. The only way it could survive that radiation is if it traveled to earth very quickly, and the odds of it heading for earth so quickly are very low. Further, to have any hope against radiation, it would have to be a carbonaceous meteor, as opposed to the much more common iron meteors. Lastly, even if the meteor arrived at earth in such a way that the life forms weren’t exterminated by heat and pressure, there are slim odds of it landing in a location that is hospitable for that particular life form. After all, conditions vary quite a bit from planet to planet. So this theory requires piling one improbable coincidence on top of another and top of another on top of another. Here are some links for further edification: > **[Welcome astroprofspage.com - BlueHost.com](http://astroprofspage.com/archives/204)** > > Bluehost - Top rated web hosting provider - Free 1 click installs For blogs, shopping carts, and more. Get a free domain name, real NON-outsourced 24/7 support, and superior speed. web hosting provider php hosting cheap web hosting, Web hosting,... [http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/849](http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/849) ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/76 "2009-05-11T20:14:05Z")
> [@hotflungwok](#): > > In any event, my point still stands. You can prove every single current effort in this area wrong, and it still wouldn’t be a reason to accept intelligent design. The first life form in the universe either arose from random motion of chemicals or by intelligent design. Debate about which happened has raged for a long time. For decades your side has invested quite a lot of energy promoting experiments to prove that life could arise from random chemical motion. The results of such experiments have not come out in your favor. Thus you’re trying to change the terms of the debate, so that it no longer involves any experiments at all, but only involves philosophical wrangling. Philosophical wrangling has the widely-known characteristic that it is immune to experimental evidence and is never settled, and it seems that’s the best that you can hope for right now. Lastly, for those truly interested in exploring the science related to abiogenesis, [this article](http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/73781/prebiotic_chemistry_and_the_origin_of_the_rna_world/) provides an excellent explanation of the barriers to a self-replicating RNA enzyme forming by chance. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/77 "2009-05-11T20:32:08Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Philosophical wrangling has the widely-known characteristic that it is immune to experimental evidence. That’s rich. ---
**Author:** ![hotflungwok](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/edb3f5/32.png) [@hotflungwok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hotflungwok)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/78 "2009-05-11T20:36:45Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > The first life form in the universe either arose from random motion of chemicals or by intelligent design. Prove it. Incidentally, ‘I can’t think of another way’ is a logical fallacy called Argument from Ignorance. > [@](#): > > Debate about which happened has raged for a long time. For decades your side has invested quite a lot of energy promoting experiments to prove that life could arise from random chemical motion. Actually, to my knowledge, for most of history the debate has gone ‘god did it, agree or die’. > [@](#): > > The results of such experiments have not come out in your favor. Um, no, this is not the case. Many different kinds of molecules have been shown to arise in many different kinds of circumstances, as was stated before. All you’ve done is shown that it’s not likely in a few select sets of circumstances. There are still many many things to be investigated. > [@](#): > > Thus you’re trying to change the terms of the debate, so that it no longer involves any experiments at all, but only involves philosophical wrangling. Philosophical wrangling has the widely-known characteristic that it is immune to experimental evidence and is never settled, and it seems that’s the best that you can hope for right now. Please, you’re the one who brought up intelligent design. Given that we have no evidence whatsoever for neither the idea of intelligent design nor the intelligent designer itself, I don’t need to rely on philosophical tricks the way you are. Your biggest argument so far is ‘It has to be this way or that way, and since I posted a few things and ignored the refutation my way must be right.’ Since we have no experiments at all for intelligent design, and _only_ philosophical ramblings, that’s where the argument ends up. Your argument hinges on a false dilemma. > [@](#): > > Lastly, for those truly interested in exploring the science related to abiogenesis, [this article](http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/73781/prebiotic_chemistry_and_the_origin_of_the_rna_world/) provides an excellent explanation of the barriers to a self-replicating RNA enzyme forming by chance. Actually, this is a good article, in a number of ways. First, while the conclusion is that it would be difficult, nothing has been disproven. There are difficulties, but no absolute barriers. And second, the author says that alternatives to the prebiotic soup theory, for that’s what the article is about: one specific set of circumstances, need to be examined and he lists several under current investigation. Please notice that nowhere in this list is ‘intelligent designer’. All alternatives are still in the realm of scientific investigation, and none rely on god. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2009, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/79 "2009-05-11T23:31:17Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > I said that the findings from the meteorite were doubted by some scientists and that’s what the article says. So, then you recant your previous statement that the possibility that amino acids can arrive on earth from elsewhere has been ruled out? Because the article merely talks about a possible contamination; that at least some amino acids arrived with the meteorite is born out by the left/right chirality proportions not matching terrestrial ones, isotope signatures differing from that of terrestrial amino acids, and of course the 50 amino acids present in the meteorite that aren’t naturally found on earth (of course, those probably could have been prebiotically synthesized on earth and then become contaminants). > [@](#): > > Your whining about the fact that I didn’t repeat the entire article in this thread is obviously nonsense. One generally doesn’t repeat the entire articles on this board because (a) it’s not allowed and (b) it would be a waste of space. So accusing me of “agenda driven distortion” is just more pointless nastiness on your part. You misrepresented the article in an effort to support a position that is actually contradicted by the full text of the article (namely, that amino acids can’t arrive on earth via meteorites); ‘distortion’ is a plenty polite word for that. > [@](#): > > The bottom line is this. In order to get life from planet X to Earth, we’d need the following to happen. First a large impact would have to occur on planet X. That impact would certainly melt most nearby debris. Which has similarly been [experimentally tested](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008AsBio...8...17H), and it was found that microorganisms can withstand such impact launches. So, we have three stages for lithopanspermia: 1) impact launch, 2) interplanetary travel, 3) re-entry and landing. For all three, experiments have shown strong evidence that it’s possible for microorganisms to survive these. It might not be rigid proof, but it certainly runs counter to your original assertion that panspermia had been ruled by scientific experiment. > [@](#): > > The first life form in the universe either arose from random motion of chemicals or by intelligent design. ‘Random’ in the same way that an object falling in a gravitational potential is random, i.e. not. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737/80 "2009-05-12T01:15:18Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > The bottom line is this. In order to get life from planet X to Earth, we’d need the following to happen. First a large impact would have to occur on planet X. That impact would certainly melt most nearby debris. Only a very small portion of the debris would be ejected into space without being melted. I think you are trivializing the enormous complexity of situations that can and certainly have arisen in the universe when different bodies have come together. And that’s just for the first step of your process. Can you rule out the possibility that airborne entities (like the bacteria and fungi in our upper atmosphere) could hitch a ride on the surviving portion of a glancing blow of 2 bodies? Can you rule out the possibility that within even melted material that there can be pockets of much lower temperature materials? I can think of a zillion other possibilities that may or may not be reasonable but that we probably don’t know enough to say whether it’s a reasonable possibility or not. I think about the best you can say is that there are enormous forces and temperatures to contend with, but that in itself doesn’t really tell us about the chances of organic material escaping the collision and hitching a ride out of there. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/chances-of-life-appearing/495737.md?page=5)