[HN Gopher] NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and mol...
___________________________________________________________________
NASA study finds life-sparking energy source and molecule at
Enceladus
Author : wglb
Score : 378 points
Date : 2023-12-16 05:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| ianai wrote:
| yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38652897
|
| Hydrogen cyanide, acetylene, propylene, ethane, propene. There's
| bacteria that live off acetylene (though surely abiotic processes
| too). I suspect this indicates plenty of energy and complex
| chemistry on Enceladus. Some of those compounds are energetic
| while others (I think?) are combustion bi-products. Otherwise, I
| wonder when/if we'll ever see oxygen (O2) confirmed in a study
| like this? I realize it's highly/easily bound up in reactions,
| but what a finding that'd be. They list a probability of 0.64
| (aka 64%) chance of O2 here. Imagining a surface of water ice and
| near vacuum atmosphere, I suspect any free oxygen would be very
| difficult to detect. But they also see co2 so maybe any oxygen is
| quickly used up? source:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-02160-0.epdf
| passwordoops wrote:
| Hydrogen cyanide, acetylene, propylene, ethane, propene would
| all react very quickly with oxygen, if it is being produced.
|
| I imagine like early earth, if there are organisms they are
| following an anoxic pathway
| ianai wrote:
| So is it because the life signals so far suggest simple life
| that money isn't really pouring into an expedition? That's my
| inkling anyway. Turns out us apes are still far more
| interested in everyday stuff than even life outside our
| sphere.
|
| i.e. I would expect "enthusiasm" to look like discussions on
| building the infrastructure for multiple missions out there.
| Communications way points, some basic resource stuff, etc.
| Stuff to make getting things in that system more robust and
| timely.
|
| Edit: Maybe experiment/do the laser propulsion tech.
| "Lighthouses" at critical points.
| staplers wrote:
| The discovery of even the most base simple lifeform outside
| Earth would be forever world-changing.
|
| Society, religion, mass institutions would be forced to
| reconcile with this fact.
|
| I don't think it's necessarily about money.
| NateEag wrote:
| What do you think would change about religions?
|
| The only one I know well is evangelical Christianity,
| having been raised in it.
|
| I've read through the Protestant Bible several times, and
| I'm not aware of anything in it that changes meaningfully
| if there's other life forms in the universe.
| martin-t wrote:
| You overestimate people. Most wouldn't care at all, a few
| would say that's cool and move on. Religious people would
| just say their favorite god created those too. Unless the
| aliens were more advanced than us, nothing would change.
| cwillu wrote:
| The struggle with the religious types is forever that
| they can't be pinned down in the details: it's not that
| new information can't be assimilated because it conflicts
| with doctrine, it's that doctrine, aside from a few very
| core concepts, is extremely fluid and will seamlessly
| flow and change to admit the conflicting information
| without affecting anything of importance.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I'd be very surprised if we saw oxygen. Photosynthesis took
| much longer to evolve on Earth than life did in the first
| place, and on Enceladus you have both a thick layer of ice
| preventing sunlight from reaching liquid water and also a much
| dimmer Sun in the first place due to how far away Jupiter is.
| Sharlin wrote:
| *Saturn, but yes. If there's life, free oxygen would likely
| be incredibly toxic to it, just like it was to early life on
| Earth (and still is to some chemosynthesis-based ocean floor
| life).
| intrasight wrote:
| I don't much like the spark and fire analogy with life. Not sure
| what analogy works. We don't yet really understand life well
| enough to have a good one.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| What oxygen-breathing cells do is pretty much nanoscale
| combustion, so the analogy seems apt.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The proton gradients are quite different from combustion
| though...
| anticensor wrote:
| The proton gradient serves to regulate the combustion, one
| molecule at a time...
| superposeur wrote:
| This is intriguing and I'm very happy this exploration is being
| done.
|
| But, for decades, I've been reading reports of the discovery of
| evidence for the _trappings_ of life elsewhere: water and
| organics and "habitable" exoplanets. These are valuable
| discoveries, but the tone of the reports suggest they imply life
| is about to turn up.
|
| It's worth remembering that there is not one single shred of
| evidence that life has ever existed anywhere in the observable
| universe but Earth. Moreover, no one has succeeded in hatching
| living matter from non living matter and we must honestly say we
| do not know how this process came about or the faintest estimate
| of how likely it is to occur (despite much speculation, some of
| which may turn out to be correct but equally may turn out to be
| dead wrong). The oft cited fact that life arose "quickly" after
| the formation of Earth has no bearing on the question.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > It's worth remembering that there is not one single shred of
| evidence that life has ever existed anywhere in the observable
| universe but Earth.
|
| I'm curious how your epistemology is working here. It seems to
| me that this will also be true in the future if we have found
| life on a hundred other planets. There still won't be a shred
| of evidence of life _anywhere else_ , and we still won't have
| the faintest estimate of how likely it is to occur, right?
| ianai wrote:
| idk, I think if we see even simple life at multiple points in
| our own system that we can increase our expectations for the
| prevalence of life very significantly.
|
| And of course given how vast and indifferent to life the
| universe is, life would still be vanishingly rare in the
| universe. It's going to be always precious and a gem.
| superposeur wrote:
| I agree, _if_ -- that's an enormous "if".
| ianai wrote:
| But it's actually possible to explore our solar system!
| We've been at it since the 70s!
| superposeur wrote:
| Yes and I'm glad we're doing it! No life or fossilized
| remains of life of any kind has yet been found.
| peyton wrote:
| Have we sent up any archeological tools for sample prep
| and whatnot? Can't find what we don't look for, no?
| itishappy wrote:
| Yup! We've sampled the Moon a number of times, and we're
| currently trying to figure out how to get one back from
| Mars...
|
| https://mars.nasa.gov/msr/
| edgyquant wrote:
| Why? That could just mean our solar gave rise to life and
| not earth alone. Still don't see why that increases the
| odds outside of our solar system
| itishappy wrote:
| If it can spread between planets, it could conceivably
| spread between stars.
| superposeur wrote:
| If, in a volume of space, there are N exoplanets and 100
| spontaneously created life, then I'd crudely estimate the
| probability of life at 100/N for a given exoplanet.
|
| Currently, we have only an _upper limit_ on the probability
| and barely even that. All observations are consistent with a
| probability less that 10^-40, meaning it certainly wouldn't
| happen a second time in the observable universe.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| How many exoplanets would you say we have _proven_ have no
| life? You imply 10^40 exoplanets are known to harbor no
| life. That is probably vastly more than the number of
| planets in the observable universe (something in the wide
| region of 10^20 to 10^25).
|
| Something like 5,000 exoplanets have even been discovered.
| We can't cross off many of those as _certainly_ lacking
| life.
| superposeur wrote:
| I'm certainly not claiming the actual probability is
| 10^-40 , only using this as an example consistent with an
| upper limit, which probability would imply life has not
| arisen a second time in the observable universe. Actually
| this is way overkill -- as you say, even if the
| probability is as high as 10^-25, life on Earth is still
| probably the only instance in observable universe. The
| point is that we have _no idea_ what this all important
| parameter is.
| spenczar5 wrote:
| Our upper limit is something like 10^-1. After all, there
| is life on earth! Our lower limit is 10^-25 or so.
|
| Why pick the lower limit? Existence of life on earth is
| extremely powerful evidence.
| superposeur wrote:
| Ah, but in my opinion we can't call 10^-25 a lower limit
| since, if life didn't occur in this collection of
| planets, we wouldn't be here asking the question in the
| first place!
| jahewson wrote:
| You've not accounted for the tiny number of observations
| that we've made nor the limited power of our observations.
| We're not even sure if life existed on the planet literally
| next to us, let alone these exoplanets. Otherwise I could
| argue that all observations are consistent with a
| probability less than 10^-10 or 10^-20 or any other number
| I feel like.
|
| Ask yourself this, from how many planets in the universe
| would you be able to observe life on Earth?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| the epistemology rests on how you construct the question, and
| the underlying logic.
|
| "Does life exist anywhere besides earth" is a very different
| question than "does life exist outside these 100 planets".
| Because they are different questions, the relevancy of data
| and hypotheses are different.
| notjoemama wrote:
| Using this same logic (in an ad absurdum context) we could
| also say you will never die because no one anywhere has any
| evidence that you have. That doesn't falsify your statement,
| but using ad absurdum shows a statement is not true in every
| context. I tend to think that shows less conclusion and more
| investigation may be warranted. That's how I think of it, but
| I could be off base and I'm open to being mostly if not
| entirely wrong.
| tshaddox wrote:
| We have pretty good explanations for why people die and why
| we expect everyone alive today to die unless we acquire new
| knowledge that enables us to prevent it.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| The God of the gaps.
| FL33TW00D wrote:
| The lack of interest in abiogenesis in most circles is truly
| outstanding.
| ianai wrote:
| And here's another thing. With how difficult it is to probe
| new physics, we stand to do a lot more research by simply
| inspecting all the observable universe than trying to build
| colliders.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Finding a new particle doesn't necessarily threaten
| strictly up held religious beliefs like finding life
| somewhere other than this rock
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Catholics officially believe in aliens, and that we
| should save them (if they weren't visited by Jesus)
|
| Jews wouldn't care either. Don't know about Muslims, but
| it's not threatening to the other Abrahamic religions
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Catholics officially believe in aliens,
|
| A definitive position on the existence of aliens is not
| part of the Catholic faith.
|
| But, the church admits the possibility and church
| institutions have done some explorations about what the
| implications of such contact might be, and how Catholic
| doctrine might apply to different possibilities.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| Apparently you are correct!
|
| https://www.catholic.com/qa/whats-the-catholic-position-
| on-t...
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _Catholics officially believe in aliens, and that we
| should save them (if they weren't visited by Jesus)_
|
| Reminds me of the punch line to an amusing first-contact
| cartoon, one that makes the (unstated) previous line easy
| enough to guess: "Yeah, he comes by every couple of
| years. We gave him a nice box of chocolates when he first
| visited. What'd you guys do?"
| edgyquant wrote:
| Muslims recite that Allah is "lord of all the worlds"
| every day. Think they'll be fine. This is true of every
| religion I think, it's only the non religious projecting
| that state it would "upend widely held beliefs"
| itishappy wrote:
| Inspecting the universe can be a lot harder than building
| colliders. Observing some of the short-lived high-energy
| particles would require shipping detectors to a high-energy
| location like the sun, then pulling a signal from all that
| noise.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| There's quite a bit of interest; e.g. ex-colleagues of mine
| have spent lots of effort on refining the 'chemoton' model. I
| think it's a fascinating subject.
|
| "The basic assumption of the model is that life should
| fundamentally and essentially have three properties:
| metabolism, self-replication, and a bilipid membrane.[3] The
| metabolic and replication functions together form an
| autocatalytic subsystem necessary for the basic functions of
| life, and a membrane encloses this subsystem to separate it
| from the surrounding environment. Therefore, any system
| having such properties may be regarded as alive, and it will
| be subjected to natural selection and contain a self-
| sustaining cellular information."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemoton
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/he-may-
| ha...
| borissk wrote:
| Bilipid membrane is not necessary for life - life may have
| evolved inside naturally occurring bacteria sized pores
| inside inorganic material.
| scythe wrote:
| It's like saying that mathematicians are uninterested in the
| Collatz conjecture. Scientists usually work on problems where
| they have a reasonable expectation of making progress.
| Attempts to replicate abiogenesis so far have been largely
| haphazard, with ill-defined criteria of what progress means.
| idlewords wrote:
| I would turn your logic around and say, everywhere we are able
| to look, we find evidence that life is more likely than
| expected. Until the 1990's it was an open question whether any
| other star had planets; as soon as we got the tools to test
| that, we found they were ubiquitous. As soon as we got the
| right instruments to Mars, we found signs of moving water,
| methane sources, and complex organic molecules in what is
| basically an Earth-like old lake bed. The moment PCR technology
| made it possible to do the search, we found a massive 'dark
| biome' extending many kilometers into the Earth's crust.
|
| When you immediately find strong pieces of circumstantial
| evidence the moment you acquire the tools to start looking for
| something, the correct conclusion to draw is not "we have yet
| to find a shred of evidence", but that further searching is
| likely to be highly worthwhile.
| superposeur wrote:
| These factors are what I call the "trappings of life". It is
| a completely open question (and I mean _completely_ ) how
| likely life is to arise spontaneously when these factors are
| present. One single instance of life elsewhere or successful
| abiogenesis in the lab would change that, but we have
| neither.
| malfist wrote:
| We've barely started looking. It's like picking up one
| piece of hay, not finding a needle and declaring there's no
| needle in the haystack.
| superposeur wrote:
| No is declaring that there is no needle in the haystack.
| Please actually read my post.
| stouset wrote:
| "I just want to be clear that we've definitely not
| actually found life. We've found likely precursors
| everywhere, habitable bodies everywhere, have plausible
| theories on how to go from precursors to bootstrapping,
| and see life in every corner of the planet we have
| explored. But just to be clear we haven't actually found
| life anywhere else yet."
|
| Yeah, we know. So what then was the _point_ of your post?
| superposeur wrote:
| Well, perhaps you know that none of the recent findings
| are evidence of life, but in my conversations with others
| I have perceived a great deal of confusion on this point,
| even among scientifically literate colleagues. Also, the
| fact that we have zero understanding of the probability
| of abiogenesis is, in my experience, a greatly under-
| appreciated fact. I speculate that the way findings are
| reported contributes to this confusion.
|
| Also, at risk of incurring a flame, I'll gently point out
| that you are folding into this confusion and reinforcing
| it with your language: "likely precursors everywhere,
| habitable bodies" ... we absolutely do not know that
| these conditions are "likely" precursors, which is a
| statement about a probability we know nothing about and
| as for "habitable" we do not actually know anything about
| whether or not a body is habitable in the sense of likely
| to spontaneously form life.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
|
| sorry your life has created this crusade of rhetorically
| reminding people about the absence is evidence
| superposeur wrote:
| Not in general, just on this particular point. Because,
| in my opinion, we as a scientific community are currently
| flush with the (very cool) unexpected discovery of so
| many exoplanets and it is somewhat distorting our
| collective thinking about life and its origins.
| creer wrote:
| We SHOULD (be flush and distorted). We can be realistic
| AND enthusiastic about it. Some technically challenging
| work was done and achieved results FAR FAR beyond
| expectations. That is a result worthy of changing
| outlook. Before, the outlook was on statistical grounds
| (the universe is so vast that there has to be). Now this
| outlook has been justified a billion billion times over.
| It's certainly time to be far more ambitious and inverse
| the presumptions that we had before.
|
| I.e. before, "there had to be - some, somewhere" and now,
| "there is most likely all over the place".
| idlewords wrote:
| You can make the less charged argument that expanding the
| search for life has in every case so far led to extremely
| interesting scientific discoveries. So as a pragmatic
| strategy, it has legs regardless of where you stand on
| the question of life origins.
| hesk wrote:
| Provided you're actively and systematically looking for
| evidence, then absence of evidence is evidence of
| absence.
| malfist wrote:
| But we've not even started doing that yet. None of the
| mars rovers have landed anywhere close to where we think
| is must likely to currently harbor life due to fear of
| contamination.
|
| We've just now learned how to analyze atmospheres of
| exoplants.
|
| 5 years ago, we couldn't see exoplanets smaller than
| jupiter.
|
| A decade ago, we couldn't see exoplanets at all.
| Shekelphile wrote:
| We still can't see the atmosphere of the majority of
| exoplanets. Can't get around it unless we build a
| telescope thousands of times bigger than anything else or
| we make some incomprehensible breakthrough in optics. If
| we could we would detect life on another planet within a
| matter of a few hours of telescope time most likely.
|
| I find the entire idea that life could only exist on
| earth farcical. A lot of people in this thread don't seem
| to understand that we can't directly image many
| exoplanets to begin with and that we haven't even been
| trying to find life on other planets and moons in our own
| solar system, it has in fact been suppressed every time
| credible circumstantial evidence of life is found (Viking
| lander experiments and methane on mars both come to mind)
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I agree it's an open question, but I think it's highly
| likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is an
| evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material
| reactions create life. We already know that's the case in
| highly controlled environments. We don't yet have
| confidence about the exact mechanism on Earth but based on
| those experiments it's likely (& generally currently
| accepted as the most likely mechanism AFAIK) that the
| boundary layer of volcanoes (probably underwater) + some
| crucial initial elements being available causes life to
| form "spontaneously". Given the elements required and their
| overall availability in the universe, it's also highly
| likely these conditions reproduce quite readily & life is
| generally quite abundant. Similarly, significant levels of
| intelligence within animals seems like quite a common
| occurrence as well (great and lesser apes, elephants,
| octopuses, dolphins, wolves etc). Whether or not
| intelligence + physiological evolution + social evolution
| to take advantage of that intelligence to build things
| cooperatively is a huge unknown of course although I think
| it's inevitable. On the other hand, how long life sticks
| around on a planet once it forms is an open question - it's
| not clear if a life ecosystem that's stable for billions of
| years is likely and I suspect there's probably a small
| amount of filtering that happens where planets become
| inhospitable rather "quickly" and can't support life for
| multiple billions of years (e.g. there were probably
| several events in our history where it could have
| collapsed).
|
| Our type of society is probably much much rarer because you
| need access to mineral and energy deposits to go through
| each technological phase. For example, because of all the
| mining we've done, if humanity were to disappear it's
| highly likely the Earth would not sustain another
| technological society because all the "easy to get to"
| deposits of crucial metals & things like oil are gone and
| there's no way to bootstrap a technological society (it's
| possible other kinds of resources could be developed to
| build other kinds of technology so who knows).
|
| I think based on our existing body of knowledge, life is
| likely extremely plentiful throughout the universe at one
| point in time or another. Some form of intelligent life is
| highly likely wherever we find any life that manages to
| stick around through bilions of years. A highly
| technological adept species of life though is highly likely
| an extreme rarity and a planet gets one shot at developing
| it. Whether any manages to escape their home planet remains
| an open question that likely only we will manage to answer
| over the next thousands of years if we make it that far.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Our type of society is probably much much rarer because
| you need access to mineral and energy deposits to go
| through each technological phase. For example, because of
| all the mining we've done, if humanity were to disappear
| it's highly likely the Earth would not sustain another
| technological society because all the "easy to get to"
| deposits of crucial metals & things like oil are gone and
| there's no way to bootstrap a technological society (it's
| possible other kinds of resources could be developed to
| build other kinds of technology so who knows).
|
| As I recall-though it's been many years-this was
| something of a premise in Farmer's Riverworld series.
| Once you've taken the first pass though historical
| mineral etc. resources, you don't really get a second
| pass.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| Readily obtainable hydrocarbons are lost for the
| forseeable future. However, haven't we made it easier for
| future civilizations to obtain minerals and metals? We
| have extracted, refined and placed them all in
| concentrated surface areas all over the planet (i.e. city
| limits)
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Except a huge amount of it is alloys. You'd have to
| reprocess it to extract out the raw materials which is
| much harder than mining ore and requires a lot more tech.
| Like things may be bronze plated but you're not going to
| find a whole lot of bronze in 1 spot.
| scythe wrote:
| Wouldn't the next civilization just find itself mining
| the remains of human cities? IIRC, the majority of the
| copper ever extracted is _still in use_.
| adolph wrote:
| Cue Indiana Jones voice: you can't just mine that--it
| belongs in a museum!
| throwaway0b1 wrote:
| > I think it's highly likely with lots of circumstantial
| evidence that life is an evolutionary emergent phenomenon
| where inorganic material reactions create life
|
| Out of curiosity, if you reject religion, what other
| possibilities are there?
| seszett wrote:
| Just inorganic material combining at random and
| eventually, over about 10 billion years, randomly
| creating something that self replicates in some way,
| beginning the process of evolution through natural
| selection and inevitably progressing to life as we know
| it.
|
| I don't think religion is needed at all for this. I also
| don't think this has to be a common thing (after all,
| here on Earth it only happened once, but it's also
| possible that once life is widespread it makes it very
| difficult for emergent new forms of life to take off).
| wingspar wrote:
| Where did you get 10 billion years of random chemistry?
|
| The articles I read assert that life began just 500
| million to 1 billion years after formation of earth.
| 3.5-4.1 billion years ago with an earth age of 4.5
| billion.
| seszett wrote:
| The universe is about 15 billion years old, and chemistry
| didn't start with the formation of Earth.
| wingspar wrote:
| Chemistry in earth certainly started with the formation
| of earth.
|
| Are you suggesting that abiogenesis didn't start on
| earth, but self-replicating molecules started evolving in
| earths protoplanetary disc?
|
| Serious question, haven't encountered that theory before.
| It's kinda panspermia-lite.
| lovemenot wrote:
| I believe you may discussing at cross-purposes.
|
| Presumably like your parent, I believed this was a
| discussion about the probability that life has originated
| elsewhere in the galaxy / universe, independently of life
| on Earth.
| mongoosled wrote:
| Kurzgesagt did a video on this recently
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JOiGEI9pQBs
| throwaway0b1 wrote:
| Sorry, I meant possibilities other than "an evolutionary
| emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions
| create life"
| furyofantares wrote:
| Commenter is referring to the case where life is a common
| occurrence as an "an evolutionary emergent phenomenon
| where inorganic material reactions create life" in
| contrast to the case where life has only happened once,
| which would be more like an extremely lucky fluke where
| inorganic material reactions create life.
| brians wrote:
| Simulation hypothesis: all this may be much younger than
| we expect.
|
| Nonuniform physics--call it colliding universes or
| whatever, but the processes that gave rise to life on
| Earth may not be possible anywhere in this universe now.
| Including labs on Earth!
| wingspar wrote:
| >>>I agree it's an open question, but I think it's highly
| likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is
| an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic
| material reactions create life. We already know that's
| the case in highly controlled environments.
|
| Did I miss some big announcements? Where has anyone
| created life from inorganic material reactions in a
| highly controlled environment?
|
| Serious question, not trolling.
|
| Seems to me that would be an insta-Nobel.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I overstated that life from inorganic in a controlled
| laboratory environment is what we have evidence for. What
| we do have evidence for is organic compounds forming from
| inorganic environments and we've shown certain kinds of
| RNA can self-replicate.
|
| Unless life originated directly at the formation of the
| universe and panspermia is how life got to this planet,
| the only logical explanation is that life somehow emerges
| from "nothing". We don't know the exact mechanism and it
| seems much more likely that life originates on a planet
| rather than in space & arriving at a planet. The
| "intelligent" panspermia explanation (i.e. aliens seeding
| life throughout the universe to preserve it) would still
| require an inorganic origin for life.
| superposeur wrote:
| This is what I referred to as "speculation" in the
| literature for life's origins on Earth. This speculation
| is a good first theoretical stab... or it might not be.
| Until life is created from inorganic matter in a
| laboratory (enabling us subsequently to estimate how rare
| or not it might be elsewhere in the observable universe),
| we should substantially dial back our confidence from
| "life is likely extremely plentiful throughout the
| universe at one point in time or another".
| brokeAstronomer wrote:
| I agree that we are limited to "speculating" due to n=1.
| However, personally my sense is that simple life is more
| likely to be ubiquitous than not. This is informed by the
| fact that currently there is no evidence that conditions
| on early Earth were particularly unique in comparison to
| first principles modelling of rocky planet atmospheres**.
| This coupled with the relative speed with which simple
| life emerged points to it being a relatively probably
| event, though we can't be certain. I expect that with
| missions such as PLATO and the upcoming HWOs we'll have a
| better sense of the conditions on mature Earth like
| planets in the habitable zone. Though studying a large
| sample of early Earth's shortly after formation may be
| out of our reach for a while yet, depending on which
| particularly mission gets chosen.
|
| **Not my sub-field. Extremely complex models. Much is
| still unknown.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| To me the simpler question is "if life didn't originate
| from inorganic conditions somehow, what other explanation
| is there? Life came into being with the creation of the
| universe?". It's possible the latter explanation is what
| happened, it just feels extremely unlikely. So the more
| likely explanation is that life originates from inorganic
| conditions. Then the question is where? Is it on a planet
| or in space? Panspermia doesn't have a lot of traction
| because the mechanism of action seems too complex to have
| a good probability of success unless intentional (but
| then you have a question of how did life that started
| panspermia intentionally begin & you're back to needing
| it forming spontaneously out of nothing).
|
| And if "out of nothing" is the baseline condition, the
| most likely explanation is that it happens where there's
| a lot of energy to sustain it while not enough to kill
| it, which means planets at the boundary of thermal
| activity (since we need something more direct than
| photosynthesis which is a relatively complex capability
| that came late in Earth's cycle as far as we know).
| ANewFormation wrote:
| Taking a slight sidetrack to relativity, consider just
| how absurd our universe is. To maintain the consistency
| of the speed of light from all reference frames, time
| (and 'real' distance) are instead the variables, and
| there is every reason to believe this is correct. If you
| didn't know this to be the actual case, it'd feel absurd
| to even consider it.
|
| Trying to intuitively and logically reason about
| something with no answer in sight, all while assuming the
| truths of our era, may ultimately be pointless.
|
| Our universe, logical though it may be, plays by its own
| rules, and many things will be simply irreconcilable
| until those rules are further elaborated on.
|
| As an aside the big bang also does not really answer the
| prerequisite question of where the initial inorganic
| matter/energy came from. The idea there being some sort
| of a quantum fluctuation, which then begs the question of
| its origin. I suppose it's just turtles all the way down.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > To me the simpler question is "if life didn't originate
| from inorganic conditions somehow, what other explanation
| is there? Life came into being with the creation of the
| universe?".
|
| OK let's pretend to forget for a moment that we have no
| definition for "life". Here is what we know:
| - tons of examples of life turning into non-life
| - zero examples of non-life turning into life - a
| crapton of non-life around us
|
| Based purely on that evidence what do you think is more
| likely: that non-life magically converts to life or, idk,
| how about it started with life and all that non-life you
| see is formerly life?
| gls2ro wrote:
| Hm what if you add a forth known:
|
| - a lot of examples where life exists where we were
| thinking it should not be possible
|
| I think it raises a bit the idea that life is in a way
| special and fragile at individual level but not that
| fragile as a whole.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I think you are taking the wrong tack in your approach to
| this. You keep saying life must arise at the end of an
| experiment. The thing we can do is work through to dna
| base pairs arise. If you are then in the right
| environment for random mixing of these base pairs for
| millions of years, I do think you'll get microbes.
|
| It's a big mistake to say we have to run an experiment
| that produces living organisms from nothing to say we
| know how it works. And that likely took millions of
| years. That feels like an excuse to argue that it can't
| happen without some external power (not the sun, ha).
| fastball wrote:
| I don't think inorganic material reactions can be
| described as an evolutionary phenomenon.
| SenHeng wrote:
| It is evolutionary in the sense that the various
| reactions slowly changes the make up of the environment
| until the conditions necessary for life emerges.
| idlewords wrote:
| The other part of the open question is how easily life is
| able to spread across worlds. This is why it's so vital to
| go look at Mars without contaminating the search. If life
| spreads easily (whether within the solar system or more
| widely), then we'll likely find traces of life there that
| look a lot like our own. If life arises easily, but doesn't
| spread easily, we may find traces of very un-earthlike
| biochemistry. And if life is rare, we'd expect to find
| nothing.
|
| Any of the three results would have huge implications. And
| then rinse and repeat on Enceladus, Ganymede, Europa, and
| so on. And find a way to look at exoplanet atmospheres and
| chase stuff that comes in from outside the solar system.
| Even negative results will add enormously to our
| understanding.
| addicted wrote:
| At this point isn't Mars already contaminated?
| idlewords wrote:
| No, almost certainly not. There are individual living
| microbes and spores on the various landers, but unlike
| the microbiome that would travel with a human mission,
| they're not viable and have no mechanism to get to
| somewhere where they'd be viable.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I mean, you say that, but also this story was a thing
| that happened:
|
| https://www.cnet.com/science/sea-plankton-found-on-the-
| outer...
| vel0city wrote:
| The leading theory is air currents from the planet slowly
| contaminated the station over the decades, not
| contamination before launch. It's also then still pretty
| protected by radiation still being so close to Eath. Our
| probes go through pretty tight clean room packaging, shed
| almost all their outside layers before leaving Earth
| orbit while still being very toasty, and then get blasted
| by intense radiation for months and are finally separated
| by some pretty massive distances on the planet.
| creer wrote:
| idlewords was specifically mentioning that we have (found
| life elsewhere).
|
| It was pretty clear to people that there would be no life
| 750 metres inside the earth crust below another 700m of
| ocean: too hot, no light, pressure, bla, bla. - And plenty
| was found. Of course it's an easy counter "Still Earth,
| haha! Doesn't count". So yes, it's back to the point that
| whenever we have developped tech to go look, we have found
| "whatever the tech could find". Except - for now - TV
| serials radio waves. That's true. And bacteria on Mars. Yes
| it's a glib way to put it but it's not an unfair answer to
| that criticism.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I went to a biology/astronomy talk where there was a
| researcher working on the sequence of chemical changes on
| the early earth without much water or atmosphere would need
| to create dna base pairs. It was stunning because they
| basically had a sequence of things and geological
| discoveries point toward the precursor chemicals being
| available. It's not that dna was just there.
|
| This is not "life arising spontaneously". This is chemicals
| in an environment where they eventually build dna base
| pairs. Then after millions of years, perhaps you get
| microbes and go from there. Meanwhile we are getting water
| on earth from comets crashing down.
| superposeur wrote:
| The "eventually build dna base pairs" (that continue self
| replicating) is the uncertain and possibly ludicrously
| improbable step. See for instance
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58060-0 which
| argues for a probability per exoplanet small enough that
| it hasn't happened a second time in the observable
| universe. On the other hand, one of the self-organizing
| proposals cited elsewhere in this thread may turn out to
| be correct and the probability may be much higher.
|
| The point is that, while there are some cool ideas on the
| table, everything hinges on the particular value of this
| probability (not just a qualitative story of how life
| might have arisen) and we don't know what it is. Still
| relevant: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-
| check/pssst-dont-...
| njoubert wrote:
| Great comment! Indeed there is a recent Nature paper that's
| causing a lot of discussion that is investigating that
| missing link between the physics of matter and the emergence
| of the natural selection and evolution processes that give
| rise to life. this is a really fascinating area!
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9
| creer wrote:
| That link (going from basic chemical to bootstrapped
| evolution) is an entire field of research. Not one paper
| now and then. Labs, money, researchers building on each
| other's work... Just want to point out.
| dayjaby wrote:
| Any good (starter) books on this?
| creer wrote:
| I have passed on the request to one of the scientists.
| fastball wrote:
| You call these factors "circumstantial evidence", but they
| are only circumstantial evidence if our ideas about what
| allows/causes/etc life are correct, which we have not
| validated at all.
|
| If we can't promote abiogenesis in a lab our understanding is
| clearly limited, which is itself surprising. How many other
| processes in nature have we observed and _not_ been able to
| replicate ourselves (or at least make progress towards
| replicating)?
| donny2018 wrote:
| "England has developed a hypothesis of the physics of the
| origins of life, that he calls "dissipation-driven
| adaptation."[3][5] The hypothesis holds that random groups of
| molecules can self-organize to more efficiently absorb and
| dissipate heat from the environment. His hypothesis states
| that such self-organizing systems are an inherent part of the
| physical world.[7]"
|
| If Jeremy England's hypothesis is true, then life shouldn't
| be unique but rather inevitable, as life in general would be
| the way for matter to better dissipate heat, and better turn
| low entropy into high entropy.
|
| In fact, if you watch what life is doing in terms of physics,
| then it's obvious that all it does is consume low entropy
| (stored chemical energy, heat from heat baths), and
| dissipates it around very efficiently.
|
| Even we, humans are more and more good at it: we take
| hydrocarbons chemical energy and turn it into work and heat.
| It's not enough for us, we now consume energy stored in
| atomic bonds, and turn it into work and heat. We capture
| concentrated sunlight and also turn it into work and heat,
| etc.
|
| Essentially, we are doing what we are supposed to do as a
| function of physical matter: we produce more entropy.
| xorbax wrote:
| I don't think that's Jeremy England's idea.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life
|
| Henry Adams first put it to print in the 1910s, and
| Schrodinger did a fine turn on it and wrote a whole book in
| the 40s.
|
| The idea that life exists as the most efficient method to
| facilitate thermodynamic equilibrium is older than the
| neutron.
| subroutine wrote:
| It seems like a more fundamental phenomenon would be the
| ability to self replicate. I imagine some organic compounds
| forming a primitive vesicle in a relatively calm lagoon. As
| the vesicle collects more organics it gets too large and
| eventually blebs off a small vesicle (primordial fission).
| The heartiest vesicles that can replicate fastest tend to
| survive the longest and produce the most copies. Evolution
| takes it from there.
| noduerme wrote:
| >> better turn low entropy into high entropy.
|
| I took a double take and thought you'd made a typo, because
| I've never heard that assessment before.
|
| I see what you're saying about dissipating heat and work...
| but life _organizes_. Most of that wasted heat from any
| organism is the result of its processing, consolidating and
| transmitting _information_. Which is probably the only
| counter-entropic (extropic) process we can observe in the
| universe. My view has always been that life _fights
| against_ entropy.
| donny2018 wrote:
| >but life organizes
|
| Yes, and that's the interesting part. In the right
| circumstances, more entropy doesn't mean less complexity.
| Matter can become more complex and less entropy locally
| if that results in increase of total entropy in the
| system. This can occur, for example, if we have constant
| flow of concentrated energy on some local areas of the
| environment that continuously wants to spread out.
| Because the system as a whole "wants" to maximize its
| entropy as fast as it can, and it statistically
| "searches" for the shortest paths possible. This may
| result in natural occurrence of more and more complex
| molecules that dissipate heat more and more efficiently.
|
| It's like the planet's atmospheric processes, for
| example. Where differences in heat concentration don't
| just spread out in linear gradients but can form complex
| structures like vortexes, hurricanes or even stable
| geometric hexagons (like the famous hexagon storm on
| Saturn), etc.
|
| >My view has always been that life fights against
| entropy.
|
| Yes, it "fights" against entropy to exist, but it exists
| solely by processing low entropy into high entropy. Maybe
| that's why it even exists in the first place?
|
| This part is better addressed in Jeremy England's work,
| for more basic explanations you can refer to videos like
|
| this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcfLZSL7YGw (it's a
| very good video on this topic by PBS)
| tzimo wrote:
| I would turn this argument around and say if life elsewhere
| is more likely, than it should be more likely that life from
| beyond has found us. If the likelihood of life elsewhere is
| so high that it has to be true, to me it would also be true
| that life should have found us by now
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I really don't think people are talking about intelligent
| life here.
| addicted wrote:
| We've also found water on the moon.
|
| And we know at least one Jupiter satellite has water.
|
| So that's at least 4 bodies in the solar system that have
| water and all the bodies where we have successfully landed
| more than 1 rover have or had water (earth, moon, mars).
|
| Every body where we could have discovered water, we have
| discovered water. Seems like bayes theorem indicates that
| water is also probably highly available in the universe.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "we find evidence that life is more likely than expected"
|
| But only after we really lowered our expectations in the
| first place. I have an old book, about the Viking Mars
| lander, describing the technical details, before the rover
| succesfully landed on mars. It is full of optimism and a
| strong expectation, that it will find evidence of at least
| bacteria.
|
| And before we had strong telescopes and rockets, there was a
| strong expectation, that Mars has developed life.
|
| We know, that bacteria can survive in stasis mode on
| asteroids - yet we have not found life on any other planet.
| kortilla wrote:
| Those original expectations weren't based on evidence
| though.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > we find evidence that life is more likely than expected
|
| The easy steps for abiogenesis keep getting easier and
| easier.
|
| Meanwhile, we keep having absolutely no idea of the
| difficulty of the hard steps. Yes, technically that means
| life is easier than we expected, by some completely
| insignificant margin.
| henry2023 wrote:
| The universe is 13 billion years old.
|
| Planet earth is 4.5 billion years old.
|
| Life on earth started 3.7 billion years ago.
|
| We sent our first radio wave just 125 years ago.
|
| Probably life is not than unusual and we just don't have a way
| to verify this (yet).
| edgyquant wrote:
| What is this probability based upon?
| wredue wrote:
| The probability is based on the fact that everywhere we
| look, we find building blocks of life, life started on
| earth basically as soon as it could have, life exists at
| all and is capable of asking said question, life is
| remarkably adaptable, we estimate billions of earth like
| planets just in our galaxy.
|
| I know that there is a burning desire to think we're
| special, but the truth of the matter is that we're almost
| definitely not.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| We are the universe though. I.e. the universe has at
| least one mind (yours) and it thinks that it is special
| :)
| borissk wrote:
| The three and a half facts you listed (life may have started
| earlier if it came to Earth from Mars or elsewhere) do not
| logically lead to your conclusion.
| fzeindl wrote:
| I once heard: ,,The universe is unbelievably huge and
| unbelievably old so rare events happen all the time."
|
| I think it meant that even if life started itself accidentally
| by some unbelievably slim chance, this could happen somewhere
| else as well simply because the dice are rolled that often.
|
| I think time is the factor here. When you take into account not
| only the size of the universe but also it's age, the chance
| that life started somewhere, somewhen and ended long ago could
| be larger than zero, even if we are not able to calculate it.
| grupthink wrote:
| All dimensions are a factor. Life could exist on different
| time-scales (e.g. it moves so slow we thought it was
| inanimate). It could exist on different physical-scales (be
| so large we don't realize we are a part of it). Or, it could
| exist on an entirely different plane of existence (on a
| desolate planet in a shard of silicon that is turing complete
| and quietly simulating its own recursive universe).
| onion2k wrote:
| _I think it meant that even if life started itself
| accidentally by some unbelievably slim chance, this could
| happen somewhere else as well simply because the dice are
| rolled that often._
|
| That might be true, but we have no basis the probability of
| how rare life is so we can't say it is. We may assume the
| probability is high enough that it happens often in trillions
| of chances, but if the probability is one in a quintillion
| then we're simply wrong.
|
| Humans are _incredibly_ bad at thinking about both
| probability _and_ thinking about large numbers, so when we
| combine the two we 're likely to be quite wrong.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Almost certainly there is more life out there somewhere. But
| if the level of rarity is "for every billion years, it
| happens once in every thousand galaxies" rare, then unless
| FTL travel is real humanity will probably never get to see
| it. And until we see a second example, we can't begin to
| calculate the level of rarity.
|
| But it's also not like we've looked at enough of our galaxy
| to say it's rare either. We just don't know.
| zvmaz wrote:
| > It's worth remembering that there is not one single shred of
| evidence that life has ever existed anywhere in the observable
| universe but Earth.
|
| It is hard for me to believe that in the mind boggling vastness
| of space and time, we are the sole singularity in the history
| of the universe.
| hossbeast wrote:
| Many things which are hard to believe are nevertheless true.
| zvmaz wrote:
| Sure, but in this case, we don't know.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| When Everest was first measured, it was exactly 29,000 feet.
|
| They figured no one would believe this, so they told people
| it was 29,002 feet
|
| Sometimes things just are, regardless of what we expect.
| clevergadget wrote:
| Waugh is sometimes playfully credited with being "the first
| person to put two feet on top of Mount Everest".
| chrisandchris wrote:
| The "observable" universe is very small. We can take a look
| at things that are at the "ebd" of the universe, but those
| happened multiple billion years ago. Earth itself is 2-3
| billion years old and life in terms of mammals is is a couple
| hundred million years old.
|
| So to say, there may be another earth with human-like life.
| But it's so far away, life isn't here (therefore not
| observable) and life may already be gone there (but it will
| take another billion years until we can observe it).
| TheGRS wrote:
| Sure, I don't think that's lost on anyone. The headline of
| "life found outside earth" is going to be a big deal.
|
| But I also think we are zeroing in on the inevitable outcome.
| The math of probability and the simple components to life make
| it seem pretty likely we'll get there unless there is something
| more fundamental that hasn't been seen yet.
|
| We haven't reproduced proto-life yet, but we also don't have
| millions of years and a planet sized laboratory at our
| disposal.
| superposeur wrote:
| Don't mean to pick on words, but your statement that "the
| math of probability and the simple components to life" makes
| life elsewhere an "inevitable outcome" proves my point that
| the dialogue around this topic is currently distorted. The
| probability of life arising from simple components is totally
| unknown. Equally likely, sparking life requires a
| combinatoric threading of a needle to the tune of 10^-25 even
| when all ingredients are gathered in proximity.
| sigzero wrote:
| I happen to agree with you. I am in the "we are it" crowd but
| still agree with should explore.
| local_crmdgeon wrote:
| I am too - I think it's the moon plus Jupiter that is
| extremely unique and makes complex life possible
|
| I also think it's a lot of pressure if it's only us, so it's
| easier to imagine we're one of billions.
|
| Honestly, honestly think it's just us. Maybe not in the
| entire universe but in our local cluster.
| swingingFlyFish wrote:
| "It's worth remembering that there is not one single shred of
| evidence that life has ever existed anywhere in the observable
| universe but Earth"
|
| Dude considering we're barely scratching the surface of the
| scratch on the scratch of the surface, I'd say this is really
| arrogant. We haven't found anything because our universe is a
| haystack and we're looking for the quark of a needle in that
| haystack. Perspective.
| superposeur wrote:
| This is true. It is also true that we have found "not one
| single shred of evidence that life has ever existed anywhere
| in the observable universe but Earth".
| robofanatic wrote:
| But the other possibility that some intelligent super being
| created life on Earth is even bizarre. If that's what you
| believe then who created that creator? You can go on and on,
| there is no end to this question. That very first creator must
| have come out from a "non living" thing.
| DennisP wrote:
| Your parent comment isn't suggesting creationism, just
| pointing out that the beginning of life could be an
| astronomically rare event.
| mcfig wrote:
| People are reacting negatively to your comment, the reason is
| that however accurate your complaint may be about most such
| reporting (IMO you are correct), you have chosen to attach it
| to _this_ article. I find no evidence in _this_ article of
| "tone implying life is about to turn up".
|
| I think you have misread the tone. The article certainly has a
| tone of excitement throughout. But it's excitement for further
| knowledge, in general.
|
| Of the possibility of life showing up elsewhere, it says only
| this: "Scientists are still a long way from answering whether
| life could originate on Enceladus"
| superposeur wrote:
| Fair enough. On the other hand, to my ear the title "NASA
| finds life-sparking energy source and molecule" sets the
| tone, as though life was sparked, or that we even know
| _could_ be sparked by the presence of these ingredients with
| some degree of confidence.
| borissk wrote:
| Life is much more than a mix of ingredients. A dead
| bacteria cell has all the ingredients needed for life, but
| is not alive.
| mcfig wrote:
| Good point, I had glossed over the title. That is
| definitely clickbait, "life-sparking" is not the same as
| "potential life precursor". The rest of the article seems
| unusually restrained, though.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Is it actually worth remembering? I don't know, man. It kind of
| sounds not worth remembering if I'm honest. It's kind of like
| telling us that there is not one single shred of evidence that
| artificial flight has ever existed or that exoplanets have ever
| existed or anything of the sort.
|
| Sure, that's the base case. It's not "worth remembering" at
| all. It's as much worth remembering as the fact that my clothes
| are in the dryer right now.
| superposeur wrote:
| I think it's "worth remembering" precisely because it seems
| _not_ to be the base case anymore! To see this, just look at
| all the expressions of confidence in life 's ubiquity
| throughout the rest of this thread!
| seanoliver wrote:
| Life almost certainly exists elsewhere in the universe
| (particularly if you consider that which is beyond what we
| define as "observable"). As others have commented, it's too
| large for it not to exist.
|
| However, it does seem extremely rare and could be so rare that
| it doesn't exist in the observable universe (it's almost
| certainly not in our Local Bubble).
|
| It is interesting to also think about the likelihood of
| "intelligent" life. Because while basic, simple organisms are
| bound to appear somewhere else considering the universe's
| vastness, the idea that they could develop this intelligence
| and self-awareness is another big leap that doesn't seem like
| it necessarily needs to happen wherever life is happening.
| richardw wrote:
| We're looking for the shreds of evidence. What would you prefer
| people do?
| bvirb wrote:
| What a fun thread. I've always heard this as one of The Great
| Filters related to the Fermi paradox. FWIW the wikipedia for
| the Fermi paradox even mentions that:
|
| > The most commonly agreed-upon low probability event is
| abiogenesis
|
| ...which I read as saying that the most commonly agreed-upon
| reason we haven't found life anywhere else yet is because we
| _are_ special and abiogenesis is the rare event (the great
| filter).
|
| All the various great filter theories are pretty fun reading.
| qqtt wrote:
| > Moreover, no one has succeeded in hatching living matter from
| non living matter and we must honestly say we do not know how
| this process came about or the faintest estimate of how likely
| it is to occur (despite much speculation
|
| Just want to comment on this point. The research in this field
| is pretty esoteric. It doesn't really benefit us to understand
| how this process came about (ie, there is little practical gain
| here, no medical advancements or otherwise), and moreover it
| requires a simulation which can estimate behavior over hundreds
| of millions of years. The usefulness of cracking the early
| earth/life creation part of our history is really not
| immediately clear, and thus research is limited.
|
| That said, the Miller-Urey experiment
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment)
| showed animo acids organizing over conditions similar to early
| earth, and a follow up experiment dubbed Planet Simulator
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Simulator) was extended
| to show the organization of protocells as part of this early
| earth environment.
|
| It seems only a matter of time before science can connect the
| dots along the rest of the hundreds of millions of years
| regarding this process to show the line between chemical young
| earth evolving to be biological.
|
| As an aside, why do you think it is "important to remember"
| that we haven't found life or that we don't fully understand
| the process by which biology evolved from chemistry? Why
| exactly is it "important to remember" such things?
| superposeur wrote:
| It is "important to remember" precisely because these days
| people are not remembering this and speak with a sense of
| inevitability about discovering life elsewhere, which sense
| of inevitability is totally unsupported. I may gently point
| out, your own post says "it is only a matter of time before
| science can connect the dots", reflecting this (in my view)
| distorted sense. The abiogenesis research you cite is
| absolutely worthwhile, but it is not even clear if it is in
| the right direction and certainly far, far from successfully
| sparking the sustained chain reaction of life. To my eye,
| equally consistent (as some different research may suggest)
| is that a combinatorial needle must be threaded to the tune
| of p < 10^-23 per exoplanet, making it unlikely to happen
| again in our observable universe.
|
| Edit: to cite just the one "combinatorial abiogenesis"
| reference, see for instance
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58060-0
| qqtt wrote:
| > It is "important to remember" precisely because these
| days people are not remembering this and speak with a sense
| of inevitability about discovering life elsewhere
|
| Could you expand on this a bit. Whether someone speaks with
| a sense of inevitability or not, why is it important either
| way? Why is it "important" to remind people we haven't
| (yet) found life on other planets?
|
| Why are the existing gaps in abiogenesis "important" to
| point out?
|
| What is so "important" about these things?
| superposeur wrote:
| Well, first, I take it to be an axiomatic goal of science
| to believe that which is true, disbelieve that which is
| false and to be agnostic about things we have no evidence
| about; I.e to calibrate our model of world to the world
| as it is.
|
| But, further, I've seen what happens when a subfield
| reports its findings in a way that misleadingly raises
| expectations of a titanic discovery just around the
| corner. When the discovery fails to materialize, over-
| optimism curdles into its opposite, over-cynicism. Better
| to calibrate expectations accurately -- slow and steady
| wins the race.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| The math is the evidence. The math is not in your naysaying
| favor.
| verisimi wrote:
| I can't even conceive what evidence maths could provide!
| mdavidn wrote:
| What you say is true, but thinking of ourselves as the only
| life feels like hubris. It reminds me of geocentrism.
| troyvit wrote:
| Personally I think articles like this are actually the shreds
| of evidence you say don't exist.
|
| If there isn't life on Enceladus this is still incredibly
| exciting because then it might make the perfect lab for us to
| put life and study how it evolves.
| nescioquid wrote:
| I think you enjoy the top comment for the phrase
|
| >> It's worth remembering that there is not one single shred of
| evidence that life has ever existed anywhere in the observable
| universe but Earth.
|
| There is nothing like the blunt expanse of a simple fact to
| sharpen the mind. If the consequent should be that, based on
| the evidence we are alone and therefore first, I postulate an
| obligation to seed the cult of Apollo throughout the universe
| -- the god of the one thing without which life itself would be
| a mistake.
|
| I leave it to HN to fuck up the answer.
| verisimi wrote:
| What you are touching upon, imo, is the idea that science is
| NOT actually some independent, objective means of understanding
| the world, in contrast to religious thinking. Whereas the
| reality is that science is actually a belief based system, that
| cloaks itself in a (thin) veneer of objectivity. The scientific
| method is venerated but not applied personally.
|
| So, the reality is that adherents accept a reality
| intermediated for them by priests/scientists (and journals,
| trusted sources). Adherents talk about truth/reality while
| having little or no personal experience of the matter at hand.
| It is group behaviour, evidence is paid lip service to but
| there is very little critical thought or assessment of said
| 'evidence' by any individual adherents. When the scientific
| authorities make a pronouncement, this is simply accepted.
|
| Religion. Believers.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| But we barely know anything about how life on our own works,
| much less came about. We barely know anything concrete about
| anything.
|
| We're just hairless (mostly) apes running amok having
| discovered how to trap fire inside little bits of copper and
| sand.
|
| We'll look as primitive to our descendants in 10,000 years as
| our ancestors of 10,000 years look to us.
|
| I guess I'm saying that, I think, our views on the universe and
| life are only very slightly more accurate than they were when
| those ancestors were painting what they saw in caves.
|
| I think our hubris tells us we understand far more than we do.
| I think if you take that into account, the possibility for life
| existing elsewhere in the universe is an absolute fact.
|
| I surmise, that for us to think that we're the only sentient
| life in the unimaginably vast universe is the ultimate
| manifestation of our drive for self-preservation.
|
| We want to survive and propagate our DNA above all else,
| therefor we must be vigilant against all threats, therefor if
| we consider ourselves at the center of the universe, we can be
| sure to never neglect anything that might indeed be a threat.
|
| The problem with this instinct is that it clouds our conscious
| judgement into thinking that the universe does indeed revolve
| around us and then we make conclusions according to that
| fallacy.
|
| I think life in the universe is as ubiquitous as rocks. It's
| everywhere in all manner of forms and sophistication. We just
| won't have the tools to see or hear it for maybe a couple
| hundred years or so. But once we do, we'll have a chuckle at
| how we could be so arrogant as a species to ever think we were
| alone.
| 725686 wrote:
| For anyone interested in the origin of life, and the origin of
| complex life I highly recommend Nick Lane's Books. You can start
| with "The Vital Question". There are also some fantastic videos
| of him online.
| borissk wrote:
| Yes, Nick Lane has done a great job of popularizing the
| metabolism first hypothesis of origin of life. What his books
| and videos don't address is the biggest problem of metabolism
| first - once there's a proto cell (say inside a pore within a
| white smoker) with working metabolism that turns H2 and CO2
| gases into sugars and other organic molecules - how are the
| proteins that make the metabolism work translated and encoded
| into an RNA code.
| yoble wrote:
| Seconding this, as a layman I've found his books both technical
| and fascinating. He's a great teacher, getting into the details
| but explaining in a really engaging manner.
| mekoka wrote:
| I think the title is pushing it a bit. When I see "life-sparking
| energy source", I think of an inextricable property. Get that and
| you can spark life. But we have and we couldn't. They're merely
| ingredients, building blocks, fuel to _sustain_ life as we
| understand it on Earth, as the article more sensibly admits. The
| "life-sparking" source itself remains a mystery.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Instead of something extricable, I imagine a series of
| processes that, due to specific conditions, results in some new
| process that has distinctly different characteristics from the
| originating process.
|
| E.g. snowpack melt -> mountain stream -> waterfall
|
| A waterfall is a vastly simpler system than a living organism,
| but I wouldn't be surprised if the origin of life has a flavor
| similar to waterfall formation.
|
| I like the idea that all phenomena we observe are emergent in a
| similar way.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| We don't know what causes life.
| bytearray wrote:
| I always thought Enceladus was just an icy moon, but turns out
| it's cooler than that.
| gitaarik wrote:
| Warmer you mean?
| holoduke wrote:
| The fact that there is something, just something can drive me
| crazy. Why is there something and not just nothing.
| tigerlily wrote:
| I feel the same way you do. It drives me even crazier that more
| people don't feel this way.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| The simple answer is the controversial answer. Life needs
| something to spark it from nothing to something. That's more
| evidence of a demiurge than anything else.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| What made the demiurge?
| ryanSrich wrote:
| If we're just having fun here, then I'd say it doesn't
| have a creator. Which is not a concept humans are capable
| of understanding. It could be the demiurge is eternal,
| forever and always. The concept of time may have been an
| invention by such a creator.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Sure, but time isn't necessary for a causal chain. Even
| if from the perspective of the demigurge it has always
| existed, in some causal (or anti-causal depending on the
| laws outside our reality) way it must have spontaneously
| come in to being (Or, if the demiurge was created from
| another being, eventually the chain of causation comes
| back to some being spontaneously coming into existence).
| You can't avoid the "something came from nothing"
| reality, even if what came into being first came into
| being in a way that from a human perspective seems
| timeless.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| The human perspective is not the correct/absolute
| reference frame.
|
| The Creator must not have "come from nothing". Him always
| existing as the ultimate entity - even before/outside the
| existence of time itself - is not difficult a concept for
| us to grasp.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's a beautiful question. You can reason a bit from knowing
| there is something instead of nothing, when nothing is clearly
| an option :)
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| In the end, if you go all the way back through the chain of
| causation (whatever causation even looks like outside of the
| bounds of reality we know within our universe), whatever it is
| that resulted in our universe (whether it be the big bang or a
| god or alien that created the bing bang or a higher being that
| created said god or alien)...at some point, something must have
| come from nothing. It's the only inevitable truth, and it
| drives me crazy too.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Unless the universe _always existed_. Why should there be
| nothing and not something?
|
| And don't say "entropy". For all we know, the big bang
| occurred after a previous heat death.
| 2Pacalypse- wrote:
| Isn't this only true if there is no physical infinity? I know
| it's-turtles-all-the-way-down is impossible for our brains to
| comprehend, but causality breaks down when infinities are
| involved. Another thing is that if space-and-time itself was
| born at some point (as they say), then talking about "before"
| and causality doesn't make any sense either.
|
| But yeah, to your point, thinking that there was never
| "nothing", and that there always was "something" is equally
| mindblowing.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I don't see why it should feel bothersome.
|
| To ask what came before the first moment is to apply a
| concept, time, where it no longer applies.
|
| Similarly, suppose you knew everything. No matter what it
| was, how much information it was, you'd still be able to ask,
| "What's beyond that?" But being able to form those words
| doesn't imply the question means anything.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| There is this super cool phenomenon where pairs of matter and
| antimatter will spontaneously come into existence in a vacuum
| and then neutralize itself. I always liked to intuitively
| connect that with an equation that looks really complicated,
| but just comes out to 0 = 0 when you simplify it. Add to that
| cellular automata that based on extremely simple rules can show
| mindblowing outcomes. I feel these things together give an
| intuitive feeling about a possible origin of this something we
| are looking at. I think Steven Wolfram voiced similar thoughts.
| Of course one might go further and ask why laws of physics
| exist at all...
| dieselgate wrote:
| You mentioned some good things but also cast a large net. Are
| you referring to the Casimir Effect? Am just vaguely familiar
| with some of the general concepts but very much recommend
| this video on the topic, by a Prof/physicist
|
| "Casimir Effect and Black Holes"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRcmqZkGOK4
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Yeah, reading about the Casimir effect seems like that's
| what I remembered. I hadn't read about it since it was
| covered in high school 20+ years ago. And yes, this entire
| line of thought is more an intuition than even a theory.
| But having something at all appear in a vacuum and seeing
| how complexity can arise from very simple rules is such an
| inspiring combination to me.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I really, really, really hope we will discover life on another
| planet, preferably in another solar system. Right now we have a
| sample size of one so a lot of thinking about the origin is
| speculation. I hope this will change.
| echelon wrote:
| I always like to daydream about the various solutions to the
| Fermi Paradox.
|
| If we're not early, if life isn't rare, and there are
| intelligent species [1], what might most of it look like?
|
| I don't think most of them would match the techno signatures
| we're familiar with. Factories, gas emissions, etc. are an
| industrial age thing.
|
| What if they're _really_ smart? What does that look like? What
| kind of signals might we detect? What kinds of energy might
| they be harnessing?
|
| Are there any good reads or papers that posit these things?
|
| [1] I also imagine they've found a way to escape the
| limitations of intelligence and death, perhaps by becoming
| computers of some kind.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I wonder if any sentient being would really want to live
| forever. What would there be to look forward to as the
| galaxies recede out past the cosmic horizon and all the stars
| shutdown? What would be the point? Just wait around in the
| dark until the heat death gets you? I sometimes suspect that
| simple nihilism is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
| echelon wrote:
| With all the compute and energy available at that stage,
| perhaps there are more possibilities than we can currently
| see or imagine?
|
| I sometimes like to think that we ourselves are actually
| the memories of a distant descendant. Maybe it reversed the
| light cone and was able to replay everything with exacting
| precision. Maybe it's studying and musing over its humble
| beginnings. (It might get a laugh that we're communicating
| this to one another.)
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I used to be a bit perturbed by the thought of living in
| an ancestor simulation, but then I figured if that's my
| reality, then I suppose it is what it is.
|
| It seems like a long time since there have been any
| really game-changing breakthroughs in theoretical
| physics. I'd be a fool to say that that means that there
| aren't any more to be had, but it does seem more like
| we're just sort of fiddling around with a few refinements
| and there might not be anything huge left. As you say,
| maybe a greater intelligence than what we've got can
| figure it out, but that does go back to Fermi - if they
| could do amazing things like enclose a star or travel
| interstellar distances, then why haven't we seen them?
|
| What if it's all just protons, neutrons, and electrons
| (and some other less important particles presumably) plus
| a bunch of energy out there? Would a super-intelligence
| really be interested in seeing more of them?
| rqtwteye wrote:
| "I also imagine they've found a way to escape the limitations
| of intelligence and death, perhaps by becoming computers of
| some kind."
|
| I am 100% convinced that this is in our future, not even very
| far out. Why put up with our flawed bodies if we don't have
| to? First we will probably replace parts of the body with
| something better until eventually the whole body has been
| replaced.
| HaZeust wrote:
| I think it's most likely we won't get "upgraded", but
| rather cloned into computers. I think the essence of
| ourselves, the original, will stay within the vessel of our
| body - and doomed to the flaws therein. But, our
| personalities will be able to be carefully cloned (likely
| using a ton of questions fed to AI, or otherwise) in
| essentially infinite AND limitless computers.
|
| It's a scary thought, to be sure. That, no matter how close
| a computerized copy of me is _to me_ ; I'm still stuck in
| this body, in this own brain, and its inevitabilities.
| iAMkenough wrote:
| Your Amazon Prime membership includes a variety of space
| shipping benefits, including several space shipping options if
| you need to expedite your discovery.
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