Sujet : Last universal but not universal common ancestor of life
De : jtem01 (at) *nospam* gmail.com (JTEM)
Groupes : talk.originsDate : 06. Jun 2025, 23:09:35
Autres entêtes
Organisation : Eek
Message-ID : <101vouv$2gshg$1@dont-email.me>
User-Agent : Mozilla Thunderbird
Maybe it's just badly written, but it's as near to
gibberish as anything I've ever seen from this
source:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a64969200/amino-acids-origin-of-life-order/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=copy&utm_campaign=action_barFirst off, by "Universal common ancestor" they just mean
the "Common ancestor for life on earth."
The popular belief is "Common Descent," as you should be
aware, and this implies (or requires) all of life to trace
back to a single point, a single ancestor.
"Universal Ancestor" would be the ancestor of all life in
the universe, which if this piece is talking about then it
is entirely rubbish...
First off, I do NOT believe there ever was a single source
for life on earth. This would imply that there's only a
single way for abiogenesis to occur, AND that it only could
happen once.
Fact is, it could have happened dozens of times. I mean,
one defining characteristic of science is repeatability. So
if conditions are right, it should happen. Period. And if
conditions are not right, it should not happen. Period.
There is a way around this, yes. You can say that Panspermia
is the right answer, that life emerged however soon after the
Big Bang it could come about, and from there rained down on
worlds... which brings us to ANOTHER complaint of mine.
And here I do quote:
Our understanding of these extremely ancient times will always
be incomplete, but it’s important for us to keep researching
early Earth.
My issue here is that it's not really about time. It's not
about time at all.
If anything rained down on the earth from space, undoubtedly
more is this magic pixie dust still exists. We can find it.
We can study it.
The conditions of the early earth can be determined to a
greater and greater extant. We'll probably find models in
other worlds.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's not about time it's
about conditions. Right now we have ZERO clue under which
conditions life will form, nor even if it can spontaneously
form. If we can answer these questions we'll have everything
we need to reconstruct the origins of life on earth.
-- https://jtem.tumblr.com/tagged/The%20Book%20of%20JTEM/page/5