(//http://s2.postimg.org/y229se4cp/1371174929819.png)
I think the above image says all that needs to be said.
Did life originate elsewhere, and then come to be delivered to Earth via asteroid(s)? The genome size of all life on Earth says yes, apparently. Discuss.
Excuse me. But, I think the above post needs edited before we can discuss it.
How so, praytell?
QuoteError (403)
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Bah, faulty damn Dropbox...I'll try a public image hosting server. Apparently only I can see it.
Edit: Should work now.
I can see the image. I can say it doesn't say it all. Not to me anyway. First off, why is it a straight line?
That would be the average genome size based on the points on the graph.
Quote from: "Voskhod"That would be the average genome size based on the points on the graph.
Let me guess, you think everything left of that line originated off the planet?
Oh, and you left out a few extinctions.
Quote from: "Gawdzilla Sama"Quote from: "Voskhod"That would be the average genome size based on the points on the graph.
Let me guess, you think everything left of that line originated off the planet?
Well, I honestly can't see any other explanation for how the most primitive and basic of life-forms on Earth, the early Prokaryotes, somehow started off with a (comparatively) extremely developed genome, rather than building it from the ground-up - something that, when based on the progressive development of the most advanced life form's genome size at the time, would have taken much longer than 3.8 billion years to develop.
Quote from: "Voskhod"Quote from: "Gawdzilla Sama"Quote from: "Voskhod"That would be the average genome size based on the points on the graph.
Let me guess, you think everything left of that line originated off the planet?
Well, I honestly can't see any other explanation for how the most primitive and basic of life-forms on Earth, the early Prokaryotes, somehow started off with a (comparatively) extremely developed genome, rather than building it from the ground-up - something that, when based on the progressive development of the most advanced life form's genome size at the time, would have taken much longer than 3.8 billion years to develop.
How developed do you think a singled-celled organism is?
In terms of their genome size, quite a lot.
And, honestly, on a physical scale they could be even more simple. They're rather complex with their channel proteins and pili, ribosomes, flagellum in use for locomotion, primitive immune systems that use digestive enzymes to ward off viruses, cell walls, plasma membranes, etc etc...
There's a lot of ways you could simplify even the most already-simplified Prokaryotes and Archaeobacteria, from what I can tell. You can see this clearly in form of, say, viruses - which themselves can be further simplified through various means.
Quote from: "Voskhod"[ Image (//http://s2.postimg.org/y229se4cp/1371174929819.png) ]
I think the above image says all that needs to be said.
Did life originate elsewhere, and then come to be delivered to Earth via asteroid(s)? The genome size of all life on Earth says yes, apparently. Discuss.
Yes and no.
The INDIVIDUAL atoms that make up DNA can be found in other material that, when separate, are as plentiful as any other atom in the universe. But no, there was certainly no intelligent master playing a game of cosmic billiards planting life here.
Life manifested here because of multiple input, like snow starts and piles up not because it is snow, but conditions based on multiple factors. We are an outcome of multiple factors, not a cognition or little green men.
Quote from: "Brian37"Quote from: "Voskhod"[ Image (//http://s2.postimg.org/y229se4cp/1371174929819.png) ]
I think the above image says all that needs to be said.
Did life originate elsewhere, and then come to be delivered to Earth via asteroid(s)? The genome size of all life on Earth says yes, apparently. Discuss.
Yes and no.
The INDIVIDUAL atoms that make up DNA can be found in other material that, when separate, are as plentiful as any other atom in the universe. But no, there was certainly no intelligent master playing a game of cosmic billiards planting life here.
Life manifested here because of multiple input, like snow starts and piles up not because it is snow, but conditions based on multiple factors. We are an outcome of multiple factors, not a cognition or little green men.
Never said anything about little green men, intelligent design, cognition, or any of that.
I'm just saying that this evidence appears to support the idea of Exogenesis/Panspermia.
(Would also explain why the first life was Extremophiles - since only they'd be able to survive the vacuum of space during the asteroid hitchhiking ride to get here.)
My view on this, only going by the minimal bit I know about the beginning of life, is:
It was most likely origionated by the primordial ooze formed by the basic elements earth started with....
as seen in the experiment that is crudely illustrated (but not really explained) by this picture(//http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/Pmilurey.gif), but is a bit explained in the site that it came fromhere (//http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/miller.html).
As for coming from a different planet? I guess that would be possible, being that the life / the makings of life survived the entry of the atmosphere / there was no atmosphere to burn up in. I know that scientists discovered bacteria that can survive in space, so why not?
Ah, yes. But the problem with the Miller/Urey Experiment, not that I disagree with its implications/conclusions, is that it only resulted in the creation of amino acids - not cellular life itself, which would have also required the creation of the already extremely complicated DNA sequences of early lifeforms.
No, look, evolution certainly should be capable elsewhere in such a gigantic universe. I only think it exists, not because of established life forms piggybacking. But because the separate atoms that by themselves are plentiful.
Much like cultures in human evolution can make up flood stories without ever meeting each other ever. CONDITIONS, not life. Conditions of life are not a result of a "first life". Conditions of life are the same as a hurricane or tornado happening. Many parts, not a prior hurricane or smaller hurricane leading to another hurricane.
Now it also, even cosmically locally, that simple life forms like bacteria could exist on other planets in our solar system. But, travel to me would be local and the odds of us being a plant, even at that low level are highly unlikely.
I think it is more likely and conceivable that multiple non life ingredients that made up atoms simply over long periods of time managed to hit the same target over long periods of time under the right weather conditions.
Are those modern prokaryotes and eukaryotes? If so, why should the size of their genomes have any relevance to how long it takes for DNA to acquire base length, given that they have been evolving too alongside with us?
You do know that prokaryotes and eukaryotes didn't just put on the evolutionary brakes when they evolved, right?
Quote from: "Voskhod"Ah, yes. But the problem with the Miller/Urey Experiment, not that I disagree with its implications/conclusions, is that it only resulted in the creation of amino acids - not cellular life itself, which would have also required the creation of the already extremely complicated DNA sequences of early lifeforms.
Very true. The thing is though. If it started on another planet, it still origionated from very basic ooze type building blocks. Be it that that particular experiment was the first step or not... it started somewhere. And unless Ancient Aliens is right, which is a hilarous show by the way (it's basically a whole other theology the way I see it), the only way life could have traveled here was by some sort of falling mass of rock.
If it fell from space on a rock, life probably would have burned up in the layers of the atmosphere. Given that it could survive without any sort of air in the first place.
Basically it is much more likely that it started here on earth. Not totally out of the question that it came from another planet, or even origionated in the depths of space its self as basic space bacteria, but that seems a lot less likely.
Quote from: "PickelledEggs"Quote from: "Voskhod"Ah, yes. But the problem with the Miller/Urey Experiment, not that I disagree with its implications/conclusions, is that it only resulted in the creation of amino acids - not cellular life itself, which would have also required the creation of the already extremely complicated DNA sequences of early lifeforms.
Very true. The thing is though. If it started on another planet, it still origionated from very basic ooze type building blocks. Be it that that particular experiment was the first step or not... it started somewhere. And unless Ancient Aliens is right, which is a hilarous show by the way (it's basically a whole other theology the way I see it), the only way life could have traveled here was by some sort of falling mass of rock.
If it fell from space on a rock, life probably would have burned up in the layers of the atmosphere. Given that it could survive without any sort of air in the first place.
Basically it is much more likely that it started here on earth. Not totally out of the question that it came from another planet, or even origionated in the depths of space its self as basic space bacteria, but that seems a lot less likely.
Yes thank you. Atoms are not complex structures compared to fossils.
I think there should be life, even simple life that is abundant in the universe. But, I think it is all local and subject to the same science.
It would piss me off if there was a God or some "cosmic programer" doing all this. I don't want to think about "all this" as being grand or being lab rats. We are, and as a species, to a lesser or greater degree, have it better or worse, but our ride always ends out the same. Knowing that you are not special in "all this" frees you up to enjoy the ride while it lasts and and takes you off your narcissistic perch.
Okay, help me out. A rock from Mars took about a million years to reach Earth. If life started in some other solar system and drifted here, how long would that take? And what are the odds?
Very much longer, easily billions of years, which wouldn't leave much time for evolving and getting more advanced.
And Voskhod still hasn't answered my questions about whether the organisms compared are modern organisms or their ancient counterparts. If they're modern, then they have gone through a fair amount of evolution themselves — modern prokaryotes are evolutionary heavyweights. It's the evolutionary ladder myth all over again. If they are the ancient counterparts, how was their genomes estimated for the comparison to be made?
Quote from: "Brian37"Knowing that you are not special in "all this" frees you up to enjoy the ride while it lasts and and takes you off your narcissistic perch.
QFT
Quote from: "Hakurei Reimu"Very much longer, easily billions of years, which wouldn't leave much time for evolving and getting more advanced.
And Voskhod still hasn't answered my questions about whether the organisms compared are modern organisms or their ancient counterparts. If they're modern, then they have gone through a fair amount of evolution themselves — modern prokaryotes are evolutionary heavyweights. It's the evolutionary ladder myth all over again. If they are the ancient counterparts, how was their genomes estimated for the comparison to be made?
Sadly I can't seem to find any clarification on the part of the graph-maker on whether he used the genome-size of modern Prokaryotes or used some sort of artificial method of estimating their supposed genome-size 3.8 BYA.
We live on an active planet, which makes life more likely to start here.
We live on an active planet, and so it's likely life started here, or been seeded from life somewhere else. Using Ockham's razor it would seem more likely it started here because all the planets nearby are not active. Evolution doesn't always take a lot of time, and we have had most of life forms here go extinct many times in the past. Solitary
it
The genome of the flower paris japonica has 149 billion base pairs. I guess it has been evolving since before the Big Bang. :wink:
The thing that graph ignores is all the non-life build up before that first organism and possible first primitive life that left no traces. Complexity of organic material and combinations of amino acids almost certainly didn't begin with the first living organism. There was just a minimal level of complexity that could be considered life.
Panspermia never really impressed me as a concept. All it does is add an additional level of improbability and pushes the origin of life, which we already know life is here, to some unknown hypothetical planet somewhere else and needing to get here somehow.
QuoteThe thing that graph ignores is all the non-life build up before that first organism and possible first primitive life that left no traces. Complexity of organic material and combinations of amino acids almost certainly didn't begin with the first living organism. There was just a minimal level of complexity that could be considered life.
This would be my first guess as well. Life is built from the perfect building blocks for more life. Which means it gets recycled all the time. There wouldn't be much left in the ways of fossils that we could use to determine the genome make-up of really old bacteria, and modern bacteria are very complex things.
Quote from: "Voskhod"Sadly I can't seem to find any clarification on the part of the graph-maker on whether he used the genome-size of modern Prokaryotes or used some sort of artificial method of estimating their supposed genome-size 3.8 BYA.
Sadly, I cannot know who originally posted the image and why, and why should I trust it? It would not be surprising that some organic molecules came to Earth through meteorites, but then life developed on Earth. After all, we live in a universe which surprises us at every step.
Quote from: "Aupmanyav"Quote from: "Voskhod"Sadly I can't seem to find any clarification on the part of the graph-maker on whether he used the genome-size of modern Prokaryotes or used some sort of artificial method of estimating their supposed genome-size 3.8 BYA.
Sadly, I cannot know who originally posted the image and why, and why should I trust it? It would not be surprising that some organic molecules came to Earth through meteorites, but then life developed on Earth. After all, we live in a universe which surprises us at every step.
Any flatline model like that is automatically suspect.
First, the earliest life probably didn't include DNA. Some kind of nucleic acid, probably, but probably not DNA. So by the time we got the simplest DNA, we already had a complex genome.
Second, there's a thread with a link to a youtube video of how life probably originated. Look for it. Purely physical (and chemical) processes could have easily created life.