Where's the evidence that life needed to start and didn't always exist?

originally posted by: TerraLiga

Of course, but the first billion years or so there were only four elements in the universe - all gasses. My thought experiment was to ask how many supernovae would it have taken to create enough mass to form rocky planets in order for other complex life to evolve. My research says a LOT and from truly enormous stars.

We are talking truly massive stars that could have had a life of less than a million years before they went supernova. It is estimated it took the first 5 billion years to get to about what we see today as our universe.

a reply to: Xtrozero

More or less, yes. It looks like he first generations of supermassive stars are the very same supermassive black holes we see at the heart of every galaxy. The resultant ejecta makes up the mass of the surrounding galaxy. Solid or rocky planets didn’t exist in any size for at least 3 billion years.

Less than 1% of the mass of these first generation stars would have been converted to metals (by metals I mean heavier elements) and would slowly increase their metal conversion proportions over time to a little less than 5% in what we estimate today.

originally posted by: TerraLiga

originally posted by: Box of Rain

originally posted by: TerraLiga
What you’ve mentioned above is exactly what I was working on for a friend a couple years ago.

You have to ask yourselves how many supernova would it take to create all the non-gaseous material in the universe. Just earth alone is 13 billion trillion tons. How many supernova would it take to build just earth? Perhaps we are the only complex multi-cellular life in the universe because there was not enough material before earth?

Adding to what Barcs said in his post above, here is the elemental makeup of all regular matter in the galaxy in descending order of abundance:

Hydrogen = 74%
Helium = 24%
Oxygen = 1%
Carbon = 0.5%
Neon = 0.1%
Iron = 0.1%
Nitrogen = 0.1%
Silicon = 0.07%
Magnesium = 0.06%
All other elements < 0.05%

You’re supporting my argument, not Barcs. The bulk of the first two are in the stars, so that doesn’t leave many metals to build the mass.

I don't understand what you are getting at. Those abundances are what they are, and we certainly do have rocky planets. How can you say the abundances of those metals are not enough to build rocky planets when you are living on one?

As Barcs pointed out, there's not a lot of rocky material in our solar system. The sun makes up 99% of the mass of the solar system, and the sun itself consists of 99% hydrogen, helium, and oxygen.

So 99% of the thing that contains 99% of the stuff in our solar system is hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. The other 1 or 2% of the stuff in the solar system is enough to provide the metals and minerals for the rocky planets.

I’m not sure you’ve followed my narrative from the beginning. It was suggested life has always been in existence from the birth of the universe. I’m saying it hasn’t.

You either believe in a creator who created everything from nothing.

Or you believe nothing created everything.

originally posted by: TerraLiga
I’m not sure you’ve followed my narrative from the beginning. It was suggested life has always been in existence from the birth of the universe. I’m saying it hasn’t.

I agree. As I mentioned n an earlier post, at the beginning of the universe the only elements that existed were Hydrogen, Helium, a little Lithium, and trace amounts of Beryllium, the first four elements on the periodic table. The heavier elements (the elements that seem to be required for life processes, such as nutrient exchange, to work) did not exist until the first stars existed, which was at least 100 million years after the Big Bang.

Until someone can show that life processes can exist on just hydrogen, helium, lithium, and beryllium, then it seems highly unlikely that life began at the very start of the universe during the Big Bang.

However, those first stars lived for an extremely short time -- maybe only 10 million years at the most -- and were large and prone to die as a supernova. After several 100s of million years of the hydrogen gas in the early universe going through this life cycle of becoming a huge star and dying as a supernova, we can end up with a relatively metal-rich universe -- maybe as early as 12.5 billion years ago, about 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

So there could have been metal-rich rocky planets out there LONG before our sun even existed, which means there was a decent chance there was life in the universe long before our sun existed.

But I agree with you that's not the same as what the OP is proposing, which is that life "always existed" and came into existence along with the universe, and thus didn't ever need to start -- it just was. That idea is highly unlikely since the very early universe does not seem to be a place that life could exist.

The OP needs to show us a definition of life that can exist using just those first 4 elements before making the claim that it did.

originally posted by: jjkenobi

You either believe in a creator who created everything from nothing.

Or you believe nothing created everything.

The Big Bang Theory does not really say the universe came from nothing. The standard Big Bang Theory only attempts to explain how the universe expanded from what seems to be a singularity.

For the most part, it does not attempt to say where that singularity came from, what it was, or what (if anything) might have existed before the Big Bang.

Having said that, there are cosmologists who propose hypotheses using the Big Bang to try to explain "what banged" or what existing before. However, those hypotheses range form "nothing existed before the Big bang" to "an infinite series of universe existed before the Big bang" to "our Big Bang occurred in a multiverse along side other Big Bangs/other universes" and everything else in between.

So a person can believe in the idea of the Big Bang theory and still NOT think everything came from nothing. The Big Bang Theory allows other things (such as other universe) to have existed existed before the creation of our universe, and those other things may have been a factor in the creation of our universe.


That is to say, there might have been nothing of our universe before the Big Bang, but that doesn't mean our universe/the Big Bang came from nothing.

originally posted by: jjkenobi
You either believe in a creator who created everything from nothing.

Or you believe nothing created everything.

False. Many people think that "everything" or the source materials for it always existed. False dilemma fallacy.

originally posted by: TerraLiga

originally posted by: Barcs

originally posted by: TerraLiga
What you’ve mentioned above is exactly what I was working on for a friend a couple years ago.

You have to ask yourselves how many supernova would it take to create all the non-gaseous material in the universe. Just earth alone is 13 billion trillion tons. How many supernova would it take to build just earth? Perhaps we are the only complex multi-cellular life in the universe because there was not enough material before earth?

Earth isn't built completely from super novae and neither is all non gaseous material in the universe. Only the heavier elements like Iron and gold form from super novae and the earth is tiny compared to a star.

Of course, but the first billion years or so there were only four elements in the universe - all gasses. My thought experiment was to ask how many supernovae would it have taken to create enough mass to form rocky planets in order for other complex life to evolve. My research says a LOT and from truly enormous stars.

The solar system was born 8 billion years after the big bang. When you think of the sheer massive size of a star, and how small earth is in comparison, the molten iron core of earth could easily come from one single supernova. The sun has no binary partner like most stars, which suggests it likely went supernova or became a brown dwarf.

Remember the earth is only 31% iron. Generally what causes supernovae is when the star uses up its hydrogen and can no longer fuse it into helium. At that point it begins producing iron and heavier elements as it goes red giant. Eventually the iron makes up most of the star composition and it blows. That would mean a single supernova could be enough to create an entire solar system of iron core planets and then some.

What is the origin of iron?

You’re supporting my argument, not Barcs. The bulk of the first two are in the stars, so that doesn’t leave many metals to build the mass.

Yeah but that's irrelevant because high iron content is often the cause of supernovas. By the time a star explodes, the majority of it is iron. You referenced super massive stars from 9-10 billion years ago, but our solar system is less than 5 million years old, thus there would be plenty of time for a star to be born and go supernova.

if something must always "exist". Clearly it is the thing that now "exist". The universe exist and life exist.
Do they need a "maker". To answer that , the fundamental question is does a maker exist.

The evidence of something is the something's evidence.

originally posted by: Barcs
You fail to grasp burden of proof, yet again. If you claim life always existed, you need to prove that instead of dishonestly flipping the burden of proof to the negative position. How many times do I have to tell you, "You can't prove it's not X" is not a valid argument for anything. You prove the positive not the negative.

This is just wrong!

You have to prove that life has to start. Where's the evidence that life started?

All you can say is, there was a time life didn't exist on earth. You can't extrapolate that to the entire universe. So all you can talk about scientifically is the origins of life on earth.

You can't say because life began on earth that it had to have a beginning. That's just egocentric, non scientific nonsense.

You have no evidence to support anything you're saying but there's evidence that life is quantum in nature therefore life has always existed and classical biology is just an expression of quantum information which needs no beginning.

A Quantum Origin of Life?

Although there is no agreed definition of life, all living organisms are information processors: they store a genetic database and replicate it, with occasional errors, thus providing the basis for natural selection. The direction of information flow is bottom up: the form of the organism and its selective qualities can be traced back to molecular processes. The question then arises of whether, since this information flows from the quantum realm, any vestige of its quantum nature, other than its inherent randomness, is manifested. Biological molecules serve the role of both specialized chemicals and informational molecules, mirroring the underlying dualism of phenotype/genotype. In computer terminology, chemistry is akin to hardware, information to software. A complete understanding of the origin of life demands an explanation for both hardware and software. Most research in biogenesis focuses on the hardware aspect, by seeking a plausible chemical pathway from non-life to life. Though this work has provided important insights into how and where the basic building blocks of life might have formed, it has made little progress in the much bigger problem of how those building blocks were assembled into the specific and immensely elaborate organization associated with even the simplest autonomous organism [Davies (2003)].

pdfs.semanticscholar.org...

Quantum origin of life: methodological, epistemological and ontological issues

The aim of this essay is to analyze the role of quantum mechanics as an inherent characteristic of life. During the last ten years the problem of the origin of life has become an innovative research subject approached by many authors. The essay is divided in to three parts: the first deals with the problem of life from a philosophical and biological perspective. The second presents the conceptual and methodological basis of the essay which is founded on the Information Theory and the Quantum Theory. This basis is then used, in the third part, to discuss the different arguments and conjectures of a quantum origin of life. There are many philosophical views on the problem of life, two of which are especially important at the moment: reductive physicalism and biosystemic emergentism. From a scientific perspective, all the theories and experimental evidences put forward by Biology can be summed up in to two main research themes: the RNA world and the vesicular theory. The RNA world, from a physicalist point of view, maintains that replication is the essence of life while the vesicular theory, founded on biosystemic grounds, believes the essence of life can be found in cellular metabolism. This essay uses the Information Theory to discard the idea of a spontaneous emergency of life through replication. Understanding the nature and basis of quantum mechanics is fundamental in order to be able to comprehend the advantages of using quantum computation to be able increase the probabilities of existence of auto replicative structures. Different arguments are set forth such as the inherence of quantum mechanics to the origin of life. Finally, in order to try to resolve the question of auto replication, three scientific propositions are put forward: Q-life, the quantum combinatory library and the role of algorithms in the origin of genetic language.

arxiv.org...

The Quantum of Life?

A biocentric “theory of everything” could take life’s origins all the way back to the beginning of the universe

blogs.scientificamerican.com...

Here's more about quantum entanglement and DNA

Experimental evidence supportive of the quantum DNA model

dc.uthsc.edu...

Quantum Entanglement Holds DNA Together, Say Physicists

www.kurzweilai.net...

Quantum entanglement between the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA

arxiv.org...

Life is quantum information and biology is an expression of this information.

Life has always existed and there's no evidence that it needed to start.

originally posted by: jjkenobi
You either believe in a creator who created everything from nothing.

Or you believe nothing created everything.

Unfortunately don't remember, so: can't help much with that.
Sorry.

originally posted by: jjkenobi
You either believe in a creator who created everything from nothing.
Or you believe nothing created everything.

Unfortunately not accurate enough to be clever.

a reply to: neoholographic

"Statements about the past cannot in general be made in quantum mechanical language...as a general rule, knowledge about the past can only be expressed in classical terms". - Freeman Dyson, known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.

That''s a reality those speculating about quantum physics will not bring up. It especially undermines the efforts of those who have built a career out of using quantum mechanical language in discussions about the past, such as the origin of life or the origin of the universe (Hawking). Often selling useless speculative books to make some profit by tickling people's ears.

Adding "quantum" in front of things doesn't make it more interesting. It's beguiling though, especially for those who don't understand the subject or the related behaviour concerning "self-indulgent woo"; a term I saw someone use on the philosophy&metaphysics forum concerning an idea about the matrix and people creating their own reality (matrix), often quite appropiate in the field of quantum physics too.

a reply to: Box of Rain
What if reality/life is actually singular?
The vedas say that it is One Without a Second.

The illusion of more than one starts with the idea that you are a separate thing.

Is there really any things?
Or is there only ever what appears to be occuring??

originally posted by: Box of Rain

But I agree with you that's not the same as what the OP is proposing, which is that life "always existed" and came into existence along with the universe, and thus didn't ever need to start -- it just was.

The phrase "always existed" is incompatible with "came into existence", it's a contradiction in terms. If something has "always existed" it did not, and cannot have 'come into existence', and if something has 'come into existence', then it didn't always exist. Come on people, this isn't that hard. I guess that's what you get when you indoctrinate people with the unverified philosophy that time had a beginning; and confuse people some more by introducing misleading terms such as "space-time", which is neither time nor space (only relates to those concepts). I guess you can blame Einstein and his merry band of devotees for that one.

So there could have been metal-rich rocky planets out there LONG before our sun even existed, which means there was a decent chance there was life in the universe long before our sun existed.

That argument is like saying: because mountains contained metals a couple of billion years ago, there is a decent chance that space shuttles existed billions of years ago as well. A bit of a weird jump in logic, or leap of blind faith (based on wishful thinking and fantasy in the case of life).

From single amino acids to life is less of a jump, and that's already a rather far-fetched idea without outside intervention from someone who knows what he's doing, so to speak (I described it slightly differently before when I was talking about the 5 nucleobases or nucleotides found in life).

a reply to: whereislogic

You said:

Adding "quantum" in front of things doesn't make it more interesting. It's beguiling though, especially for those who don't understand the subject or the related behaviour concerning "self-indulgent woo"; a term I saw someone use on the philosophy&metaphysics forum concerning an idea about the matrix and people creating their own reality (matrix), often quite appropiate in the field of quantum physics too.

Of course they can.

This is the typical response from pseudoskeptics. Now, nobody can use QM if it doesn't comply with their belief. Don't you see how Plato's cave that sounds.

Please, directly respond to the evidence I presented. I don't want to hear your pseudoskeptic hyperbole.

Of course they can use QM especially when it's backed by experimental data.

A number of recent scientific papers, some of which are listed in the “references” section below, have addressed the concept of a living universe. Let’s imagine for a moment that they are right. What would this mean for astrobiology’s perspective on the origin and nature of life, and for its exploration?

blogs.scientificamerican.com...

The article on Scientific American lists 17 references.

Everyone knows that DNA is connected to Quantum information. How can you not know this? Here's some papers.

The "DNA" of chemistry: Scalable quantum machine learning with "amons"

arxiv.org...

Quantum entanglement between the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA

arxiv.org...

Quantum Algorithms and the Genetic Code

Replication of DNA and synthesis of proteins are studied from the view-point of quantum database search. Identification of a base-pairing with a quantum query gives a natural (and first ever) explanation of why living organisms have 4 nucleotide bases and 20 amino acids. It is amazing that these numbers arise as solutions to an optimisation problem. Components of the DNA structure which implement Grover's algorithm are identified, and a physical scenario is presented for the execution of the quantum algorithm. It is proposed that enzymes play a crucial role in maintaining quantum coherence of the process. Experimental tests that can verify this scenario are pointed out.

arxiv.org...

Here's a recent article:

Important Quantum Algorithm May Be a Property of Nature

Today Stéphane Guillet and colleagues at the University of Toulon in France say this may be easier than anybody expected. They say they have evidence that Grover’s search algorithm is a naturally occurring phenomenon. “We provide the first evidence that under certain conditions, electrons may naturally behave like a Grover search, looking for defects in a material,” they say.

That has obvious implications for quantum computing, but its real import may be much more profound. For some time, theorists have debated whether quantum search could explain one of the greatest mysteries about the origin of life. The idea that Grover searches occur in nature could finally solve the conundrum.

www.technologynetworks.com...

This is how science works! One of the most important algorithms in quantum computing may occur in nature and specifically DNA. It goes on to say:

The work also has implications for our thinking about the genetic code and the origin of life. Every living creature on Earth uses the same code, in which DNA stores information using four nucleotide bases. The sequences of nucleotides encode information for constructing proteins from an alphabet of 20 amino acids.

But why these numbers—four and 20—and not some others? Back in 2000, just a few years after Grover published his work, Apoorva Patel at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore showed how Grover’s algorithm could explain these numbers.

Patel’s idea is related to the way DNA is assembled inside cells. In this situation, the molecular machinery inside a cell must search through the molecular soup of nucleotide bases to find the right one. If there are four choices, a classical search takes four steps on average. So the machinery would have to try four different bases during each assembly step.

But a quantum search using Grover’s algorithm is much quicker: Patel showed that when there are four choices, a quantum search can distinguish between four alternatives in a single step. Indeed, four is optimal number.

This thinking also explains why there are 20 amino acids. In DNA, each set of three nucleotides defines a single amino acid. So the sequence of triplets in DNA defines the sequence of amino acids in a protein.

But during protein assembly, each amino acid must be chosen from a soup of 20 different options. Grover’s algorithm explains these numbers: a three-step quantum search can find an object in a database containing up to 20 kinds of entry. Again, 20 is the optimal number.

In other words, if the search processes involved in assembling DNA and proteins is to be as efficient as possible, the number of bases should be four and the number of amino acids should to be 20—exactly as is found. The only caveat is that the searches must be quantum in nature.

www.technologynetworks.com...

This is how science works! Have you ever heard of Quantum Biology?

Again, life has existed since the universe began in the form of quantum information. The only thing pseudoskeptics can talk about scientifically is about how life began on earth. Either abiogenesis(a fantasy) or panspermia. You can't say because life had a beginning on earth, this applies to the entire universe. That's just an egocentric, non scientific, materialist, pseudoskeptic fantasy!

a reply to: neoholographic

No idea what you are responding to. You quoted something I said and then responded with:

Of course they can.

In the part you quoted I did not say anything about something that cannot be done. Freeman Dyson said something about misapplying quantum mechanical language though. But you didn't respond to that.

Anyway, I can see you don't understand Quantum Physics and are quoting from articles that you do not understand because they sound intriguing to you and make you feel smart, they tickle your ears, so there's little point in discussing it with you. Dyson's reminder is still valid though.

Maybe the context can help someone else (keypoints for understanding: 0:20 - 6:02 and 20:37 - 23:56):

Take note of the point made at 21:24.

a reply to: whereislogic

LOL! You said:

Anyway, I can see you don't understand Quantum Physics and are quoting from articles that you do not understand because they sound intriguing to you and make you feel smart, they tickle your ears, so there's little point in discussing it with you. Dyson's reminder is still valid though.

This is a way of saying, I can't refute any evidence that you presented, therefore I will make some vacuous statement that doesn't refute anything because I'm so blinded by my pseudoskepticism I can't admit when I'm wrong.

It doesn't take an Einstein to know Quantum Biology deals with Quantum Information. Here's more:

Quantum Information Biology: from information interpretation of quantum mechanics to applications in molecular biology and cognitive psychology

We discuss foundational issues of quantum information biology (QIB) -- one of the most successful applications of the quantum formalism outside of physics. QIB provides a multi-scale model of information processing in bio-systems: from proteins and cells to cognitive and social systems. This theory has to be sharply distinguished from "traditional quantum biophysics". The latter is about quantum bio-physical processes, e.g., in cells or brains. QIB models the dynamics of information states of bio-systems. It is based on the quantum-like paradigm: complex bio-systems process information in accordance with the laws of quantum information and probability. This paradigm is supported by plenty of statistical bio-data collected at all scales, from molecular biology and genetics/epigenetics to cognitive psychology and behavioral economics. We argue that the information interpretation of quantum mechanics (its various forms were elaborated by Zeilinger and Brukner, Fuchs and Mermin, and D' Ariano) is the most natural interpretation of QIB. We also point out that QBIsm (Quantum Bayesianism) can serve to find a proper interpretation of bio-quantum probabilities. Biologically QIB is based on two principles: a) adaptivity; b) openness (bio-systems are fundamentally open). These principles are mathematically represented in the framework of a novel formalism -- quantum adaptive dynamics which, in particular, contains the standard theory of open quantum systems as a special case of adaptivity (to environment).

arxiv.org...

“Schrodinger’s Bacterium”: Living Organisms Observed In Quantum Entanglement For The First Time

According to a report by Scientific American, quantum physicist, Chiara Marletto, who led the Oxford study, said, “Our models show that this phenomenon being recorded is a signature of entanglement between light and certain degrees of freedom inside the bacteria.”

Green sulfur bacteria, the species that Cole’s team used, are the Earth’s natural photosynthesis-powered creatures; like the leaves on a tree, these little organisms absorb light and then convert it to energy. The scientists of this study wanted to demonstrate quantum activity in these bacteria, so the microorganisms were placed between two mirrors and fired with a photon of light.

In this experiment, some of the light interacted with parts of the bacteria in a way that indicated that entanglement had occurred. Therefore, the scientists observed that the photons did not follow the rules of classical physics. A look at the energy levels in the setup have suggested that the bacteria may have become entangled, as some individual photons seem to have simultaneously interacted with and missed the bacterium at the same time.

www.evolving-science.com...

This has NOTHING to do with people just using the word quantum because it sounds good. That's just ignorant.

Sadly, you will not admit you're wrong because you're stuck inside your pseudoskeptic belief. Like I said, you don't have to resurrect Einstein to know Quantum Biology deals with Quantum information.

Scientifically, materialist pseudoskeptics can only talk about how life originated on earth. You can't extrapolate that to the entire universe. There isn't any evidence that life had to start. On the contrary, the evidence points to life existing since the beginning of the universe in the form of Quantum Information.