[HN Gopher] Scientists get closer to solving chemical puzzle of ...
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Scientists get closer to solving chemical puzzle of the origin of
life
Author : gardenfelder
Score : 44 points
Date : 2024-02-29 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| pfdietz wrote:
| In OoL, there will be steps. Some could be easy, others
| potentially very hard.
|
| By their very nature, the easier steps will be understood first.
| Understanding them therefore doesn't say much about how the hard
| the overall process is.
|
| An analogy is those collect-all-the-letters games one sometimes
| sees from grocery stores or fast food restaurants. If you collect
| all the letters in some phrase, you win a big prize. When you
| start playing the game, the letters come quickly, and the phrase
| fills in promisingly. But there's one letter that never seems to
| show up. The contest ends and your phrase is still incomplete.
| What happened, of course, is that all the letters except that one
| were just distractions. That one letter was very rare and
| controlled how many times the prize would actually be awarded.
| The contest exploits the unconscious bias that the letters have
| to show up with the same probability. They're all just letters,
| right? There's a feeling that when you get a letter you're closer
| to winning, but unless it's that rare letter you're not
| significantly closer at all.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| That's just how it is when you are studying the unknown. Good
| thing that there are people who do stuff without letting such
| thoughts stop them.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And bad thing that people overrepresent what's been found so
| far.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| In general I agree, although neither the scientific article
| nor the press release seem misleading to me.
|
| In any case, you seem to be assuming that the most
| important part is still missing, but do you actually know?
| croes wrote:
| Just because a step is easy doesn't mean it's easy to
| understand and vice versa.
|
| Just because you understand something doesn't you it's easy or
| hard.
|
| Or to use your letter game: You got an E, without knowing the
| phrase you don't know if it's a rare letter or a common one,
| especially if even don't know the language of the phrase.
| _xerces_ wrote:
| I wonder if AI could help us with the problem of how life
| started. Either through simulation or some extension of existing
| programs like the ones used for drug discovery and protein
| folding. I know AI is not some kind of panacea for difficult
| problems, but it might be able to suggest things like the
| experiment detailed in the article and predict results.
| RajT88 wrote:
| "With the rapidly approaching inception
|
| Of artificial intelligence Humanity may well set the stage
|
| For its own demise Once the exponential rate of intelligence
|
| Reaches critical mass There will be no turning back And all of
| mankind will be exterminated
|
| The human race, who, for centuries
|
| Have looked to the stars for answers
|
| Have always questioned
|
| Whether or not God exists
|
| He does now"
| gardenfelder wrote:
| Here is the paper linked in that piece:
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4432
| 1stub wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240229165406/https://www.washi...
| specialist wrote:
| Ever since Sagan showed the flask of chemicals getting zapped,
| creating a goo of amino acids and whatnot, I've wanted to know
| how life started.
|
| Then I want to know the role of disruption in the emergence of us
| (intelligence). Randomizers cataclysmic events, plate tectonics,
| seasons, lunar tides, epochs, and so forth. Would evolution have
| stalled had there not always new niches being created? Should
| SETI be focused on planets (in the goldilocks zone) which have
| had pretty rough histories?
| pictureofabear wrote:
| "On early Earth, the reaction could have taken place in small
| pools or lakes of water, the authors said. Large oceans, though,
| would have probably diluted the concentration of the chemicals."
|
| This has interesting implications for possibility of life in
| places like Enceladus or Europa--places that may not have any
| isolated areas for these chemicals to interact over long periods
| of time.
| animitronix wrote:
| I'm so glad this has finally been pointed out professionally!!
| Every time I hear about life on Enceladus or Europa the very
| first thing I think about is the dilution problem. Maybe in
| pockets underneath the volcanic vents, but the heat would seem
| to rule that out, no?
| thriftwy wrote:
| What about ATP? We depend on it but it has to come from
| somewhere.
|
| See https://shkrobius.livejournal.com/401292.html
| philsnow wrote:
| not answering your question, but TIL that there are also GTP,
| UTP, and CTP, having somewhat similar functions, but each
| fulfilling one or more (much) smaller niches than ATP:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleoside_triphosphate
| taejavu wrote:
| By analogy, amino acids are to proteins what a pile of bricks are
| to a house. Have we made any progress on figuring out what could
| have possibly caused the amino acids to become arranged into
| proteins?
|
| If you read between the lines, I know this sounds like an
| argument for creationism, but it's because I'm an atheist that I
| find the question so frustrating/compelling.
| chimineycricket wrote:
| Even if you had the answer to that question, I think it should
| not soothe your atheism/creationism concerns. The bigger
| question would still remain on why anything exists at all.
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