Amino Acid Found In Comet Dust
- Thread starter StarHalo
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StarHalo
Flashaholic
There's bacteria that lives on the end of control rods in nuclear reactors. The old idea that life is very fragile and requires an extremely rare and narrow set of circumstances to begin and survive was thrown out a long time ago.
The current data shows that the universe contains more planets than stars; the next time you see the Deep Field photo, note that there are more planets there than points of light..
Not sure where you're going with that, but I'd be very interested to see a comet hit a mild climate zone on an otherwise barren planet - that area would then have a very large amount of water and all the various molecules carried within the comet..
saabgoblin
Enlightened
Yes, but I contend that the components of that piece of wire were originally space dust at one time and I believe that all other life and matter is composed of space dust.
Nyctophiliac
Flashlight Enthusiast
Yeah, and the truth is, they will be dust again - the 'fog' of monatomic particles that awaits all substance when light and gravity have given up - that's the long rest of the universe, time off for good behaviour etc.
Long way off though!
Buy more torches!
Hi Lynx, I wasn't quite sure what you meant by this because I couldn't tell if you were responding to the original post or if you where responding to a response. In any case I mostly agree with your statement if what you mean is that finding a wire and thinking it would eventually turn into a LED, is like finding amino acid molecules in space and assuming a direct link to life on earth as we know it. I would take it a step further though and say that it would be like finding a clump of non-distinct metal alloys in the dirt and suggesting they could eventually turn into a nuclear aircraft carrier given enough time and undirected random chance firings.
The main problem that I have with Dr Elsila is the logical fallacy that he's creating with the quoted statement, as half-watt was quick to pick up on.
"Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorite and comet impacts." (Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.)
This statement implies everything and nothing all at the same time. The "everything" implication being based on this line of reasoning; life on earth exists, amino acids are sometimes found on comets and necessary to build proteins, comets sometimes collide with planets, therefore all life on earth was the result of panspermia. I don't think the Dr. meant to include the "nothing" implication but within the boundaries of his comment, what if the delivery failed? What if between .5 and 1 billion years into earth's early history an amino acid rich comet collided with the still volatile earth and all the matter essential to life was destroyed. Now I think we all realize that the intended connection is that panspermia caused all life on earth but he didn't articulate that point. As a scientist, the responsible thing for him to say would have been something along the lines of, 'we've now verified that amino acid molecules exist on comets and asteroids. We're continuing our research to understand how wide spread the existence of these molecules are in the universe.' See, it's just as easy to assume that "life's ingredients" didn't come from anywhere else and that they existed with mostly equal distribution ever since the expansion event. Perhaps amino acids formed as naturally after the big bang as snowflakes form in a snowstorm.
All of this theory, of course, is a somewhat disingenuous attempt to explain the origin of life. The thinking is, if life didn't begin here on earth then we'll focus on where it came from and offer that as the answer. Richard Dawkins offers the alien origins explanation when interviewed by Ben Stein. After that they'll postulate that perhaps life didn't even start in this galaxy and that life originated in another "group" or cluster of galaxies, which pushes the origin of life back two steps. Eventually they'll theorize through quantum mechanics that life originated out of a multi-verse or some other inter-dimensional source. Do see the trend? I would certainly agree that an inter-dimensional source was responsible for life, but probably not in the context the scientific establishment would portray. The problem with simply explaining where it came from does not answer the root question of how it (life) came from non-life in the first place. Given the sheer complexity of the cell, the math is an ever-growing barrier to the widely held naturalist model. By suggesting that life was transported via a comet or asteroid, all they've done is redirected the focus from the complex chemical and mechanical processes of cell building to another impossible matter of trying to specify the origin of life by location. It's especially ridiculous when notions like panspermia, by its literal definition, are spoken of as commonly held facts, then spewed in various media sources such as TV, radio, websites, articles and journals, as truth, when they're really nothing more than dogmatic assertions.
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To understand and prove natural laws is the absolute furthest from desperation.
It's the ability to test and be tested that gives truth,...not fairy tails.
Desperate people are easily told what to think,
I would have been more impressed if they found poop in a comet.
lctorana
Flashlight Enthusiast
OK, now we've moved from Star Trek to Doctor Who.
The Seeds of Doom was this episode, I believe.
mudman cj
Flashlight Enthusiast
LOL And just when the comet was about to yield ripe, juicy life.
I submitted this story and thread to a "creation" based group of scientist who podcast on numerous subjects. 4 days later they released a preliminary podcast of some things to consider about this story and also sent me and email saying thankyou for the podcast topic. So, I'll pass the thankyou on over to Starhalo for the thread. The commentary is from a Ph.D in biochemistry and there is also a guy who reffers to himself as "average joe" who poses questions for him. It's an overall very objective perspective and worth listening to if your a podcaster.
http://www.reasons.org/resources/radio-broadcasts-and-podcasts
Select, "Science News Flash" and then go to the podcast from 8.21.09, titled, "Fundemental Ingredient for Life Found in Comet."
or use the RSS feed.......
http://reasons.edgeboss.net/download/reasons/newsflash/20090821-FR.mp3
http://www.reasons.org/resources/radio-broadcasts-and-podcasts
Select, "Science News Flash" and then go to the podcast from 8.21.09, titled, "Fundemental Ingredient for Life Found in Comet."
or use the RSS feed.......
http://reasons.edgeboss.net/download/reasons/newsflash/20090821-FR.mp3
