In follow-up work to Miller and Urey’s groundbreaking study look at the synthesis of organic compounds in a primordial environment, it was shown that RNA monomeric bases could form under conditions similar to those of a prehistoric Earth. More recent work has shown how such individual bases, floating in a water environment, could link together into chains. […] A critical question that remained unanswered, though, was how the ancient RNA enzymes could survive.
Now researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the United Kingdom think they have cracked that puzzle. By placing RNA inside liquid pockets of water encased inside cooling ice, they found that RNA enzymes could function and at the same time escape degradation.
[…]
Thus the origin of life on Earth might not have been in a deep-sea vent or open ocean, but in a cold muddy puddle in the icy north or south, which contained a mix of water and organic byproducts of freed carbon from the Earth’s crust.
[…]
Over time this life form could have built up an arsenal of useful chemicals — evolution at its most basic microscopic form. The most critical developments would have been the creation of a protective phospholipid bilayer, the creation of protein enzymes to offer faster catalysis, and last, but not least, the switch to the more chemically stable DNA. Once a self-replicating RNA-lifeform gained these adaptations, it would at last have been ready to venture into warmer climates and begin to survive and reproduce, capturing the sun’s power to fix energy in carbon-based molecules.From there a long evolutionary road lay ahead, eventually reaching man and our zoological peers in the modern world.
Looks like no ‘creator’ needed after all. Just chemical reactions, evolution and vast, hard for humans to comprehend stretches of time. Parallels Stephen Hawking’s book that shows one wasn’t needed to have created the universe either.
“Looks like no ‘creator’ needed after all. Just chemical reactions, evolution and vast, hard for humans to comprehend stretches of time. Parallels Stephen Hawking’s book that shows one wasn’t need to have created the universe either.”
that’s why anybody can “create life” using these same processes, easily proven……..oh wait, no that can’t….bummer
Who placed the RNA there to begin with?
A mystical person who sits in the clouds above you. He watches every move you make. Actually if you write bad stuff on the internet or masturbate or He’s generally in a bad mood… he will send you to a place called Hell.
So scientist think they can prove evolution by “creating” life in the lab?
Amazing. Now if only they could figure out how to grow brains for republicans so they can become intelligent life. Of course, then they’d be democrats. Hm.
I would agree that Alfred’s space god model provides for better movies, story telling and Charlton Heston would be nothing if not for the Ten Commandments.
The scientific model is too boring except for maybe the Discovery Channel.
@ #1 Actually, they have created life in the lab. Craig Ventner created an entirely new lifeform. So even if there is a god that is one area he no longer has exclusivity.
@ #2 Really? The article is right there and your gonna ask that? Really?
#11 Actually Alfred, my response to this whole creation issue is “I don’t know”. You like to subscribe to the space god model either by choice or by default.
As you know, I celebrate all sorts of interesting theories!
I’m of the opinion that mother nature doesn’t owe us humans an explanation.
“Who placed the RNA there to begin with?”
Who placed that which placed the RNA there to begin with?
@ #12 You are correct that it would prove nothing about whether a human builder was required. You would however be taking a huge step towards proving that the building wasn’t poofed into existence by a magical skydaddy who was the only creature capable of such things.
Further, the empire state building is a huge evolution in building design over what were originally used as dwellings like caves and even though a cave couldn’t pop up on it’s…… hey,,,, wait a minute. haha
Uncle Dave, do you post these just to rile up the fundies?
@ #17
Mutations are observed in the lab and in fact are almost impossible to avoid anywhere you look. And mutations, as you must know, are the basis of evolutionary development. As for not seeing evolution in nature,
http://www.americanscientist.org/science/pub/-1054
OOps, there goes another one.
I think your main stumbling block to understanding seems to be that you believe there is an intense movement to disprove god, when there is in fact, merely a natural tendency to dismiss ridiculous theory.
#7 “It won’t. That would violate a fundamental law of physics, entropy.”
No it wouldn’t. The law you’re talking about assumes a closed system — if the system isn’t closed, it does not apply. As it happens, Earth is not a closed system.
#7 says “It won’t. That would violate a fundamental law of physics, entropy.”
Garbage. The second law of thermodynamics only applies in a closed system. The earth isn’t a closed system. Hint: try to exercise your brain cell to think of an energy source outside the earth that might allow entropy to be reversed. Second hint: it’s large, hot and yellow.
Why is this tagged “religion”?
#fail
#9 says “Considering the intense desire of so many wanting to prove evolution, the fact fact no experiment has documented evolution does occur naturally, is becoming an overwhelming mass of irrefutable evidence evolution does not happen.”
More garbage. Google “Lenski e coli experiment” and learn how e coli has been observed to evolve the capability to metabolise citrate in the laboratory. Google “evolution in Lake Malawi cichlids” and learn how speciation has been observed to occur in isolated species of fish in this large freshwater lake.
Of course you won’t do this. You have fundie brainlock.
“Building a house, and then pointing that as proof the Empire State Building could arise without a human builder, is non sequitur. You actually proved the opposite, that a builder was required for building to occur.”
So please identify the “builder” who constructed the laughably limited god you presumably worship. Oh of course, the blinkers come down on that one. God gets a free pass as not needing a creator, right?
There’s no point arguing with Alfred1. He keeps spouting the same crap even though he’s been refuted over and over.
RNA would be fairly stable in an ancient world. Today, there are RNAases (RNA degrading enzymes) everywhere… Not sure why stability was such an issue back then, as pointed out in the article…
#29
“In an open system gravity may propel rather than attract…”
“In an open system you might be able to live without eating or breathing”
Do you have any proof for this claim?
The fact remains: the tendency towards increasing entropy only holds true for closed systems, so you can’t use that particular law an argument against decreased entropy in open systems.
Don’t argue with Alfred. Reason and the scientific method has no effect on him. He is a troll. Don’t feed him.
If you don’t believe in evolution, then don’t evolve.
I guess all of those fossils of trilobites were just put there to fuck with us.
# 33 faxon said,
“I guess all of those fossils of trilobites were just put there to fuck with us.”
Oh not this tired argument. Creationist do believe trilobites existed. No one really believes that fossils were planted.
Anyway the point missed in the article was that the scientist had to prepare the conditions and the ingredients for the RNA to form. That sounds like creation by an intelligence to me.
Alfred Persson
While your statement is disproved by my replies
Nope, never has anyone on dvorak.org/blog disproved alfred1’s creationist crap:
http://google.com/search?q=alfred1+evolution+site%3Advorak.org
Mutation is not evolution, its alteration.
Then what do you think evolution is if it isn’t change?
randomized adaption..
Many forms are born each day. In all species.
IF a creature:
Feeds and procreates, it Survives. NO MATTER the handicap.
In nature, Severe handicaps kill the creature. In Humans, we force them to LIVE.
Man, I love good quotes (wish I’d-a said these things):
“Did God have a mother? Children, when told that God made the heavens and the earth, innocently ask whether God had a mother. This deceptively simple question has stumped the elders of the church and embarrassed the finest theologians, precipitating some of the thorniest theological debates over the centuries. All the great religions have elaborate mythologies surrounding the divine act of Creation, but none of them adequately confronts the logical paradoxes inherent in the question that even children ask.”
– Michio Kaku, physicist
“We are _AS_ gods, and we may as well get good at it”
– Stewart Brand
All this confusion and humans can only conceptualize 4 dimensions. There are 7 left !
Prove that nature owes us an explanation.
Caught two old shows on Discovery this week. One was the development of the thumb, unique to homo sapiens. Interesting to see researchers isolate the human genetic sequence that produces the thumb and place those marked by light emitting markers into a mouse embryo and watch those genes become active in the mouses “thumb area” if he had a thumb area. Then also that this action is not really specific “genes” but rather “switches” that only regulate when other genes express themselves.
Similarly, another show about how brain case size was only allowed to grow as human predecessors “devolved” a weak jaw. Strong jaws for chewing require big muscles that anchor onto skulls that have to stop growing to support the muscle activity.
Fascinating stuff. Mystical even how it all works in our “finely tuned universe.”
Science==its all one cloth made of many weaves, demonstrating itself even to those who wish to disbelieve.
Does a mountain have a mother? A star? A sun? /// Yes in the only sense you can mean: the Big Bang and the natural universe that evolves thereafter. Stardust and gravity.
#38 The Mormons think God had parents. I don’t subscribe to a belief in Mormonism though.
Your quote indicated to me a misunderstanding of the nature of God. “All the great religions have elaborate mythologies surrounding the divine act of Creation, but none of them adequately confronts the logical paradoxes inherent in the question that even children ask.””
Do you believe that God who created all things, including time and space, is bound by those things which he created? God is not bound by time and space, but he is separate and above those concepts.