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Fuck yeah, Science!

DistrictDeacon said:
You're claiming cosmic imperative is scientific theory, and not just a hypothesis? Bold.
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I don't believe there is much of a difference. The Theory of Relativity was called a theory before it was ever proven with any rigorous testing showing "a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature" (def from Wiki). Same with evolution. I think people spend way too much time trying to parse/label ideas as "X" or "Y" that in reality exists along a continuum and subject to lots of "beliefs". Science is not the same as math.

As a chemist, if amino acids exist outside the planet, then there is no doubt that given the same timeframe and conditions, the same life will appear. The process has to be amino acid coupling to form some kind of rudimentary protein that can help with self-replication. Biological Skynet. Hypothesis/Theory/whatever you want to call it.
 
This is off topic.
I just listened to the oldest known recorded melody(3400 years).

Thought came to me.
Did Zeppelin copy that too?
 
And I'll add....in practice we talk about concepts as "theories" all the time, concepts that you guys seem to think should be called something else. For example, some people have a theory that highly potent, selective compounds do not make good drugs so they favor weak, non-selective compounds. Others develop drugs under the theory that potent and selective candidates are the best. Neither is a "well confirmed type of explanation of nature" and fundamentally they contradict each other, but both are broad concepts that have evidence in support. We don't talk about them in terms of "hypothesis" or anything else, we use "theory".

In practice, "hypothesis" is used when we are building an experiment...and is usually more specific. It's the specific concept being tested. We might say "Our hypothesis is positive allosteric modulators of the serotonin 2A receptor will be therapeutically better than orthosteric serotonin 2A agonists because they will limit psychoactive side effects (hallucinations) while imparting the beneficial anti-depressant affects of activating the frontal cortex".
 
Seems like a self-professed scientist would be more precise in his language. And would not make statements like "there is no doubt" without a lot of supporting evidence.
 
DistrictDeacon said:
Seems like a self-professed scientist would be more precise in his language. And would not make statements like "there is no doubt" without a lot of supporting evidence.
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Hint: We all died a couple of years ago from Pourdeac's Ebola pandemic.
 
Junebug said:
See, you're doing it too. "As a chemist" adds nothing to the above statement of faith, other than to attempt to imbue it with the imprimatur of science.
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"As a chemist" means I/we know specific reactions are going to occur because that has been demonstrated. If the starting materials are there (and they are), then there is no doubt the same chemistry will occur....and the presumption is that if we weren't created by a divine entity...then the same process would happen here to create life. If by "statement of faith" you mean "we came out of the primoridal goo" then I guess that's what it is. There's assumption/faith in just about everything scientific at some point or another.
 
A new perspective of Jupiter:

pia21030_main_2_north_polar_full-disk_a.png


https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/jupiter-s-north-pole-unlike-anything-encountered-in-solar-system
 
question: are scientists actively trying to replicate the original chemical reactions that caused life to happen on earth?
 
DeacDiggler said:
question: are scientists actively trying to replicate the original chemical reactions that caused life to happen on earth?
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I believe they've gotten most of it done. They've found no way to kickstart replication though last I knew.
 
dot com said:
I believe they've gotten most of it done. They've found no way to kickstart replication though last I knew.
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At some point, you've gotta suck up your pride and hook electrical cables to the clock tower.
 
DeacDiggler said:
So what have they accomplished? Serious inquiry.
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Plausible syntheses of all of the basic building blocks of life have pretty much been found under early earth conditions...so amino acids (proteins), sugars and nucleic acids (DNA/RNA), etc. A lot of them are turning up on comets and asteroids...and now outerspace demonstrating the chemistry is not just earthly.

What we don't know very well is how that all came together....the chirality, the timing, what was the key functional peptide/protein, how did RNA/DNA start...that kind of thing. A lot of people believe there were probably other chemical systems in early life which transmitted information like DNA, prions being one possibility. The likely abundance of amino acids and the ease of synthesis points to functional peptides forming first so peptides may have been used to build complex systems as we know it, plus transmit information for replication.
 
Junebug said:
Given all the uncertainty, how can you possibly say that you have "no doubt" that we've hit upon the right hypothesis?
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LOL...bugs you that bad does it?

Life either evolved from what was here, plopped/transferred here from somewhere else, or was created out of thin air. There's no evidence of spontaneous creation and even if life was plopped/transferred here from somewhere else, it likely originally evolved from the cosmic goo. That leaves life at some point evolving from what existed.

We have shown that all of the elements existed. We have found that lots of simple organic compounds existed in ample amounts and the chemistry for how they appeared has been worked out. Complex molecules have been synthesized in early earth conditions (primordial/cosmic) and the chemistry for those have been pretty much worked out. So with all the chemistry worked out to reasonable and repeatable processes, it's really just a matter of the sequence of events of how we went from pure chemistry and that pool of complex molecules to whatever the first biological system was. If that occurs once, it will repeat over and over again and the transformation will likely evolve. Once biology occurs, as evolution shows, the biology and chemistry gets increasingly more complex..often incorporating newer chemical technology along the way.

It comes down to that jump. Given the stunning complexity and amazing chemical transformations that comprise living systems...and how those systems change chemically....believing that a jump occurred from pure chemistry to what one would call a biological system isn't exactly much of a reach. And without any other real scientific explanation for life, it had to have happened.

Maybe you have another explanation?
 
Pretty cool paper looking at 7 residue peptides which act as catalytic subunits with Zn+2 to form esterases...in other words complexes which do chemistry compared to what would have naturally occurred. Short peptides like these forming in a sea of amino acids over a billion years is certain. If esterases formed then complexes that catalyze amide reactions and peptide synthesis had to have occurred promoting the synthesis of peptides. Likewise if these esterases formed, redox complexes likely also formed and that would be considered something "new" as far as the chemistry of the primordial goo and would have introduced new amino acids. All of that would have led to more complex peptides doing an increasing array of chemistry over time.

http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v6/n4/full/nchem.1894.html
 
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