Abiogenesis not probable but inevitable, says physicist

Astyanax
A 31-year-old physicist and biochemist, Jeremy England by name, appears to have shown, in a recently-published paper, that the emergence of life from non-living matter is not just statistically probable, but more or less inevitable.

'You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,' England said, calling the emergence of life from inanimate matter 'as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.' News Article

In a twist that will surprise those who claim that life 'violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics', England's proposed theory is actually based on thermodynamics. In a nutshell, he shows that nature favours arrangements of matter that are good at dissipating heat. Living things are, it seems, especially good at this.

His theory does not supersede or discredit Darwinian evolution, but is complementary to it. 'I am certainly not saying that Darwinian ideas are wrong,' he said. 'On the contrary, I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics, you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more general phenomenon.'

Although England's ideas are new and still being debated by scientists in his field, those who have examined his work say his theoretical results are valid. The next step is to devise experiments that will test them under lab conditions. That work is, apparently, about to begin.

Well, then. How will creationists respond if abiogenesis is shown to be an inevitable result of the nature of matter itself?

edit on 23/1/14 by Astyanax because: of typos.

Well, then. How will creationists respond if abiogenesis is shown to be an inevitable result of the nature of matter itself?

unfortunately or fortunately depending on how one looks at it, this one too will die with a whimper and thrown into the dustbin of discarded history.

Just like the ancient Egyptians who believed that beetles spontaneously arose from mudbanks of the river Nile. This one too will prove nothing but that Life can only come from existing life.

In addition, this experiment will ONLY confirm what we already know, that it takes Great INTELLIGENCE not blind chance or LUCK in order to create life.

Good luck though.

So the rule is a universe over time will dissipate and spread out its energies through a process of entropy, barring external inputs of energy. This we already believed. So it appears England says life is very efficient at dissipating energy at its most basic level and therefore it's probably part of the natural process of entropy. Life processes correspond with nature processes, so it's natural!

But couldn't life just have this trait of being good at spreading out energy and not necessarily be a natural process? Don't we still need to prove life was created by natural processes? This is like saying because somebody shares many traits with somebody else then they must be their child or a close relative?

I remember reading something different in another study. I can't recall teh specifics of the study, but it had to do with patterns shown in human behavior. The study highlighted how the patterns in human behavior corresponded with patterns in nature. This similarly ties life to a natural process by association. But I argue similarities in traits does not mean one followed from the other.

SO because we have things in common with nature we came from nature?

reply to post by Astyanax


Interesting post. To explain why this happens we need to entertain the idea that galaxies recreate themselves through recycling and forcful nature.

To help better explain the idea. There is always a limit to compression and a limit to expansion. All matter and energy follows these laws and together negate each other, Some faster that others. Not all atoms such as hydrogen and oxygen react the same when clumped up into its maximum capacity. One element will visually be larger and possibly less dense or smaller and more dense or any of the variations because atoms have certain weaknesses and strengths attractions and repulsion.

Knowing all this, When mass reaches its critical point, When gravity becomes to great it implodes and explodes. Some things react differently than others but the information, the makeup of the atoms and matter is never destroyed only misplaced.

We may not have all the proper equiment to measure all the *missing* energy but it is transfered into one form or another.
Even when a meteor hits the earth, the heat transfers into the rocks and forms new elements such as glass.

All things physical undergo chemical composition and enviromental compositional change. Atoms bond and form and so forth. But All matter returns to the source, Through the filtering process that contains excess pooling mass.

Its the same process that disallows stars to grow past its sustainable weight from gravity, without it the universe would be mostely radiation, space would just be one solar flare and the suface of the stars would be the surface of space and time.

Lucky for us stars die, and mass follows the laws of containment and extraction.

When you take these things into consideration. It opens up the possibility that all non-organic mass was once organic in this physical cycle or the last. That means that every particle, With the favorable odds of infinity. Should have existed as life in some form or another.

That leaves wide areas for elemental programming. Mass itself should contain everything it needs to create life, Ideally. Since all mass is consiousness governed by physical and elemental rules.
The 4 elements liquid solid kenetic-protons and gas molecules make up the base of the physical universe with contained mass making up the rest of the majority from different froms of energy.

Something comes from nothing during these processes tho truely it is not nothing. Imagine if you you clumped a bunch of atoms together and shrunk them to a size smaller than an atom. And try to imagine that for some reason. All mass contained in this manner all looks relatively the same. If you were to remove an object and just have the particles that are smaller than atoms exist, and the ones the most abaudant just happen to be black. What if light and mass could move through it without reacting chemically or enviromentally, Neither attracts nore repells. When you would try to view this * background* it would become invisible once there was stimulation as in light. It would still be there, But is uneffected by light nore does it block light.

I believe the background we describe as *black* is all folded matter, as the smaller than an atom but so spread out it makes up the background. Light degrades because of half lifes and transfering energy. but particles without any bonding agents like protons and electrons which i am theorizing what these compressed sub-atomic particles. There would be rules in place for any expanded mass to be under the influences of gravity. Obviously it would need to be a very long time before contained mass fully expands, but maybe the consious energy is released through the shadowbiosphere. Because many types of atoms would be contained in the mass, it should have the possibility of life inside because of all the programmed energy.

reply to post by jonnywhite

It appears England says life is very efficient at dissipating energy at its most basic level and therefore it's probably part of the natural process of entropy. Life processes correspond with nature processes, so it's natural!

Not exactly. What he says is that 'natural selection' operates on arrangements of inanimate matter just as it does on living things, and what is selected for is the property of increasing entropy. Self-replicating arrangements of matter are particularly good at doing this, and so are likely to emerge from such a process of selection. We call these arrangements 'life'.

iRoyalty
reply to post by Astyanax

 

Good find.

I have always believed that life and intelligent life isn't an 'accident' as creationist call those of us who support Darwin. It was always inevitable, the life-span of a species is just a day in the life of our planet, when you see different forms of life coming and going, intelligent life was bound to happen. It's like rolling a dice and waiting for a ten sixes in a row, it may be random, but you eventually get a perfect result.

Especially if you're rolling a huge number of dice at once, as in the entire habitable region of the earth, and for such a long period of time, hundreds of millions of years. At least when it comes to life in general. I'm not so sure about the certainty of intelligent life.

I hope his research comes up with something more solid, answers to questions like these help us find reason to existence.

Frankly, I think our fate is to invent our own reasons to exist. But that's another topic.

reply to post by Astyanax

This subject can really capture the imagination eh? I've often tried to imagine what abiogenesis would look like under the microscope as something inanimate suddenly twitched and became animate. In our own history, would that *twitch* have had a first individual or was it, perhaps, a spontaneous *twitch* across a specifically suitable range of matter? A glorious Mexican Wave of inanimate particles becoming cells?

Unfortunately for us, whilst we only have a single example that life exists and no immediate opportunity to capture a moment of abiogenesis, smart speculation is only that; speculation. Nevertheless, it seems intuitive that abiogenesis would be 'inevitable.' For example, if it was found on a local moon or planet, we'd have two examples and that argument of inevitability would gain strength over speculation.

Tangentially, I've often wondered about our motivations to explore our world and our dreams of space exploration. It's characterised as economic, political and sometimes even noble. Maybe it's all of those things, but more simply, it could be the biological imperative of Life itself pulling us into new environments.

Always good to see you Asty

reply to post by Kandinsky

I've often tried to imagine what abiogenesis would look like under the microscope as something inanimate suddenly twitched and became animate. In our own history, would that *twitch* have had a first individual or was it, perhaps, a spontaneous *twitch* across a specifically suitable range of matter? A glorious Mexican Wave of inanimate particles becoming cells?

I imagine the beginning would be something very subtle: a change in the colour or temperature of a body of liquid, or the appearance of a film, stain or scum on its surface. It would still be a very long way from anything we could call a cell, with all its complex structure; just a molecule that could manufacture copies of itself, with potential for copying errors.

It would have been a very long time, I think, before living things evolved the ability to move under their own power, or to do anything other than utilise matter and energy in their immediate environment to create copies of themselves.

edmc^2


In addition, this experiment will ONLY confirm what we already know, that it takes Great INTELLIGENCE not blind chance or LUCK in order to create life.

Good luck though.

I am pretty sure that an "inevitability" has nothing to do with luck.

Also pretty sure, if this is found to be truth, that it takes nothing away from the idea of an "intelligent creator" … just deciphers another page in it's operators manual ...

Anyway, thanks for posting Astyanax … I loved reading the article as I have long felt that "life" is one of the fundamental process in our universe. If it can happen, it will

Well, then. How will atheists respond if this form of abiogenesis is shown to be an inevitable failure of the nature of matter itself?

Another theory after this one and more time and some more gloating

Dont get your hopes up, just gives those nasty Christians more rocks to throw if it fails

Horza

Also pretty sure, if this is found to be truth, that it takes nothing away from the idea of an "intelligent creator" … just deciphers another page in it's operators manual ...

I have to agree, if anything the fact that abiogenesis was inevitable is a point in the "intelligent design" column. As though the universe was designed so that life would arise. I'm not religious, but I don't see how this discovery would hurt religion in any way, not if science to this point hasn't broken their faith.

borntowatch
Well, then. How will atheists respond if this form of abiogenesis is shown to be an inevitable failure of the nature of matter itself?

Well atheists, who generally use science to explain things, will turn to another hypothesis and try to see if that explains how life started.

Another theory after this one and more time and some more gloating

Abiogenesis is a hypothesis, not a theory. If it were a theory, it would be considered mostly true, like evolution.

Dont get your hopes up, just gives those nasty Christians more rocks to throw if it fails

Part of how science works, is figuring out the wrong answers to your questions as well as the right answers. Hypotheses (and yes even theories) that turn out to be untrue are replaced or altered as new information come to light. I don't know why you think that abiogenesis possibly being wrong can somehow be used as ammunition from gloating Christians to say that they are right (which isn't exactly a very Christian thing to do anyways). Just because Christianity has trouble admitting when it is wrong, doesn't mean that science has the same problems.

So energy dissipation could be the driving factor in the theory of evolution? Well not just evolution but inanimate objects as well.

We could take this a step further....If everything is driven to dissipate energy into heat, and things are selected based on its proficiency at doing this, then natural selection would by a very unimportant bi-product of this phenomena.

Even further than that, conscious life forms who could speed this process up with intelligent engineering, all the while not realizing they're just a cog in the universes plan to dissipate energy into heat, would be the ultimate. Nothing else could be as proficient.

Mind blown.

Krazysh0t
Well atheists, who generally use science to explain things, will turn to another hypothesis and try to see if that explains how life started.

Abiogenesis is a hypothesis, not a theory. If it were a theory, it would be considered mostly true, like evolution.

Part of how science works, is figuring out the wrong answers to your questions as well as the right answers. Hypotheses (and yes even theories) that turn out to be untrue are replaced or altered as new information come to light. I don't know why you think that abiogenesis possibly being wrong can somehow be used as ammunition from gloating Christians to say that they are right (which isn't exactly a very Christian thing to do anyways). Just because Christianity has trouble admitting when it is wrong, doesn't mean that science has the same problems.

Generally, how long are hypotheses around for..? For most, it doesn't take long to test a hypothesis. The abiogenesis hypothesis has been around for ages, and still we've gotten nowhere. It very much seems to be that what you call "science" has the same trouble admitting when it's wrong. I'll have to post these again for people to wake up from their delusion of science:

Peter Lawrence on the Ills of Modern Science

And a video. Note that despite the similar titles they are completely different from one another.

reply to post by vasaga


What a load of crap!

Show us one thing in science that has been proven wrong and is not being admitted too.

ALL great human endeavors have their fare share of bad politics.
If we subscribe to your thinking the Earth would still be flat, the god's created the elements and we would still be sacrificing chickens.
Science is self correcting, if a hypothesis is proven wrong it will be tossed aside and be replaced with something that works or trashed all together.

As for abiogenesis, on a daily basis new information is being added to the vast knowledge that has already been accumulated. No one in science is claiming to know all the processes that lead up to the formation of life in this solar system.
But to claim "we've gotten nowhere" is pure bullsh#t

reply to post by addygrace


Judging by what he's quoted as saying in the OP article, the author of this study would agree with us.

If it makes the emergence of life inevitable, it seems to follow that it makes the evolution of intelligence inevitable, too.

Astyanax
reply to post by addygrace

 

Judging by what he's quoted as saying in the OP article, the author of this study would agree with us.

If it makes the emergence of life inevitable, it seems to follow that it makes the evolution of intelligence inevitable, too.

edit on 9/2/14 by Astyanax because: of bad proofreading.

One problem I have with what he's saying is this quote;
"You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant," England was quoted in Quanta Magazine.
That really seems absurd. I'm sure he meant carbon atoms, but it's still absurd.

There's also a quote where he says this doesn't go against Darwinian evolution. But if he is correct, then natural selection is not the driving factor, energy dissipation is.

So, I am going to make a prediction. He will ultimately be proved wrong, in that life doesn't adapt through energy dissipation. It wouldn't make sense for Eskimo's to adapt fat cheeks because that adaptation allowed for a more proficient energy dissipation, but it does make sense they adapt fat cheeks because their environment selected for a more fit organism in the cold climate.

Just a couple of thoughts.

reply to post by Astyanax

Another thought I had was; What would be the purpose for the universe to order itself so it could disorder itself?

One more thing then I'm done. If the 2nd law of thermodynamics is pushing these elements to emerge into order, how does it know this order will be a better way of dissipating energy?

reply to post by addygrace

One problem I have with what he's saying is this quote: "You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant," England was quoted in Quanta Magazine.

That really seems absurd. I'm sure he meant carbon atoms, but it's still absurd.

He didn't mean carbon atoms, and it isn't absurd. You might have to shine that light for a few billion years, though.

There's also a quote where he says this doesn't go against Darwinian evolution. But if he is correct, then natural selection is not the driving factor, energy dissipation is.

That does not follow. The driver of biological evolution is natural selection. But this hypothesis is not concerned with biological evolution; it is concerned with abiogenesis.

What would be the purpose for the universe to order itself so it could disorder itself?

Two problems with that: one, natural processes are not purpose-driven; two, this general increase in disorder is achieved by local increases in order.

If the 2nd law of thermodynamics is pushing these elements to emerge into order, how does it know this order will be a better way of dissipating energy?

We must not make the error of attributing purpose or intent to inanimate natural processes. Matter is so constituted that it just happens to fall into certain arrangements, that's all there is to it. The second law of thermodynamics isn't responsible. Laws have no motive power.

addygrace
One more thing then I'm done. If the 2nd law of thermodynamics is pushing these elements to emerge into order, how does it know this order will be a better way of dissipating energy?

It's not a conscious choice but an outcome. No "knowing" involved..