Life at it's Simplist

[*YoungGuyver]

I love this video. Thunderfoot explains things so well. I love his videos

[Salkafar]

Thunderfoot really deserves his name.

[*Jess♥]

ooh, this is really interesting!

kinda relevant to the other thread I just made. might even make my ideas obsolete.

[*YoungGuyver]

what if you tag your other thread onto this one, as Thunderfoot is explaining why water is so prevalent in our life, and you are suggesting something else be used for lower temperatures.

I think he pointed out that it's not just water's temperature, but it's size and bondability, and polarity. The molecule is funky. Finding a replacement is probably a little more complex than sliding everything on the periodic table just one square over (after all, this isn't a cheesy sci-fi movie ala 'Evolution').

[*Jess♥]

yeah it was pretty interesting how this topic was posted momentarily before i posted mine. it's was like, I posted my question and here cometh the answer!

so my thread is probably obsolete now anyway. probably worth letting it be.

[*YoungGuyver]

[Salkafar]

Reading a book on evolution and abiogenesis and the guy posed the very real possibility that life began inside what I shall call 'white non-smokers' because they are similar to 'black smokers', except they don't expel black plumes.

They're deep-sea hydrothermal vents, but unlike 'black smokers' they are not acidic based but alkalic; the distant 'ancestors' of these vents, in primordial, acidic, iron-rich, anoxic waters could very well have formed the very first biotope ever.

As it turns out, they provide the raw materials, the energy and the environment, because these vents are spongy and the vessicles are the right size for cells. The iron sulfide of the ancient smokers (modern ones don't have iron in them because iron doesn't dissolve in oxidated water) would have provided a catalyst, while the temperature gradients in the 'chimneys' would have promoted the creation of an 'RNA world'.

Our earliest ancestors might well have been part stone.

I don't know about you, but I am pretty moved.

[*Jess♥]

youngguyver, a wonderful video!

it's just a shame the video creator didn't sufficiently answer the issue that was brought forward.

I don't believe the creationists were questioning the mechanics of cell replication, protein synthesis etc.

I believe the creationists were positing the likelihood of the first proteins successfully forming.

i find it ironic that somebody so clued up would miss such an important prospect of an argument posited to him.

he then goes on to call the creationists ignorant. this is probably the main reason why there is so much fighting between the two 'camps'. because neither side listens to the other properly. then decides to insult the other side when they miss the point.

[*Jess♥]

salkafar, I don't know about our ancestors being part stone, but our teeth are made out of what is essentially ground up chalk.

and we do have a lot of salt in us too.

I wonder though, have i missed the point of what you were saying?

[Salkafar]

Yes, Ryuki. By 'our earliest ancestors' I mean literally the first living things. By 'they were part stone' I mean they were basically part of a system of chemical processes that could only take place inside large, sponge-like structures made or iron sulfides. There were no cell membranes - the boundaries of each 'cell' were the boundaries of the microscopic chambers in the foam-like structure of the stone.

It wasn't until much, much later that our ancestors started to incorporate solidified minerals in their bodies again - something like three and a half billion years.

[*Jess♥]

ah yes.

I did phrase my post a bit weird.

I know what you meant, our earliest ancestors, the earliest life.

but i never quite got the rock structure.

so perhaps it is similar to coral in some way. except in reverse.

comparing that type of life to current life, it seems like we could have far more advanced organisms in the future.

perhaps our technological advancement could result in something more advanced than a cellular structure or something. and that form of organism would be as different to us as we are to the pockets of chemicals in rock bubbles?

sort of in some way... the rock chambers kept a sort of mini ecosystem.

now our environment contains our ecosystem. maybe in the future, we will not need an environment to contain an ecosystem. maybe we can have a completely self contained ecosystem within a single organism.

edit:

so as our planet is currently one big energy net for the suns rays, and that energy is transferred into a form that we can use. our current energy consumption and acquisition would not be sufficient for an evolution of our species. instead the future of our 'life envelope', the future of 'earth' is probably more dependant on energy generation rather than energy collection. we ought to be looking at a paradigm shift where 'life' as we currently understand it is all to do with gathering of the suns energy and using that up, but we will evolve 'life' into a form where we generate our own energy and have no more need for a star to support us.

[*YoungGuyver]

'Generate' energy? From within our own bodies? From a device that never needs fuel? A slight violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

Energy can never be created, nor can it be destroyed. Only transformed/transferred from one medium to another. Though I agree in principle with you that we must come up with some better technologies.

And the creationist is basically saying that the odds are so stacked against a protein EVER forming. I've seen that argument used to discount -anything- forming without the hand of god. In the beginning of the video, he pointed out that just because the odds are incredibly high, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. That's what the card example really shows, and why it's used. People love to spout off high odds without really understanding in what context the numbers must be taken. High numbers are used so often to say that 'something' never happens

[Salkafar]

The 'odds against' example is bogus. How do I know? By the distinct lack of creationist biochemists.

Biologists, as a group, have the lowest proportion of religious people among their ranks. The highest? Mathematicians. Which seems odd, until you realize they live in an intangible, invisible world most of the time anyway.

[*Jess♥]

'Generate' energy? From within our own bodies? From a device that never needs fuel? A slight violation of the laws of thermodynamics.

Energy can never be created, nor can it be destroyed. Only transformed/transferred from one medium to another.

stars don't violate the laws of thermodynamics, but they generate energy from within.

that's where I'm coming from.

yeah the things called 'chance' and 'probability' are odd constructs. I mean, things that have a really low chance of happening, happen all the time.

[*YoungGuyver]

And stars also have an expiration date. They die. Unless you come up with a renewable energy system, human civilization would crumble as the infrastructure falls away.

They say that eventually the universe itself with fade away. Or at least cool off and die in the 'freeze'. Ultimately death is inevitable, unless you interact with another

[*Jess♥]

well if energy can't be created or destroyed then i don't see how a self contained system would ever have a problem?

[Salkafar]

The second law of thermodynamics, Ryuki! In a closed system, the total amount of disorder only increases. Usually this is waste heat - it cannot be turned back into usable energy. Energy transfer is based on a difference in energy potential; labor is provided by (partial) correction of the difference. But once all energy is transformed into a kind that cannot be turned back into another form, and the energy is distributed evenly, all activity ends.

That's what was expected to happen to the universe in the end, but now they think it's probably going to be torn apart by dark energy first. I can't believe I just typed that sentence. It's like something out of a bad science fiction novel.

Edited October 18, 2012 by Salkafar

[*Jess♥]

ok, I'll take your word for it.

I just think that as time goes on, we humans tend to rewrite the laws of physics. so something we expect to be impossible now, won't be impossible in the future.

[Salkafar]

Humans have never yet rewritten the laws of physics. We have only used what is available.

[*Jess♥]

I find that statement tough to digest.

A quick search yielded this -

Newtons Laws of Motion. Still highly respected and ubiquitously used they were 'improved upon' by the Theory of Relativity by Albert Einstein 1940

The laws of physics were written by humans as a way to understand the way the world works. Is it not arrogant to think we've got it all 100% correct and can't be found to be wrong at any moment.

[*YoungGuyver]

well if energy can't be created or destroyed then i don't see how a self contained system would ever have a problem?

1-Your self contained system must NEVER radiate ANYTHING away. No heat or light whatsoever. Otherwise it would lose energy.

2-It must never move. Moving would require energy to be expended, thus it would eventually run out if it tried to move.

No system is truly self contained. No man is an island. If you are radiating heat, and you try to make up your loss by absorbing stellar radiation, then you are Solar powered. Etcetera etcetera

[*Jess♥]

good plan! yes absorbing something is good. but i was thinking that if a man is in a desert and has a camel with him and lots of water, he is ok. because the only thing he needs to collect from the environment is air.

the same in an ocean liner.

of course these are not self contained organisms but they represent the ideal.

a (mostly) self contained system or organism travelling in the depths of space could use the same fuel that stars use and is in abundance. hydrogen.

I understand it is not completely self contained but as you stated, it is of course impossible to be completely self contained if movement is necessary. what fun would it be to be a stellar nomad and not be able to travel~?

[*YoungGuyver]

Thunderfoot's got a new video. the next in this series:

[Salkafar]

So, Ryuki, in short, you can't have a self-contained system.

[*Jess♥]

So, Ryuki, in short, you can't have a self-contained system.

I would just personally prefer to phrase that as :-

'we don't currently know of a sensible way in which a self contained system could be possible.'

and

'it would violate our currently accepted notion of how energy and matter exist.'

after all, we have no evidence of how the 'laws of physics' started and whether or not they remain constant over trillions of years.

anyhow,

youngguyver, thanks for posting it, I love this type of video.

it's so cool to see this stuff in action!