Re: OoL – out at first base?

On 9/12/2024 8:11 pm, jillery wrote:

On Mon, 9 Dec 2024 16:54:56 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
 

We need prebiotic formation and supply of nucleotides for RNA world, and
other models at some stage. The scope of the problem of the supply of
these precursors is prone to underestimation.
>
Nucleotides are chemically challenging in terms of the prebiotic
synthesis and assembly of their three constituents of nitrogenous base,
sugar and phosphate group.
>
Harder again are the requirements for supply of these building blocks.
You need (eventually) all canonical bases in sufficient concentration,
purity, chirality, activation, distribution, location, etc.
>
But the greatest problem I think is this: time. How long must you
maintain the supply described above in order to assemble a
self-replicating RNA strand? And even if you managed that, how much more
time is needed before reaching a protocell capable of self-synthesising
nucleotides? One million years? One hundred million years?
>
A hypothised little warm pond with wetting/drying cycles (say) must
provide a far-from-equilibrium system...for a million years...or
hundreds of millions of years. You can’t pause the process, because any
developing polymers will fall apart and reset the clock.
>
What are the chances of that kind of geological and environmental
stability and continuity?
>
Therefore, the formation of an autonomous protocell naturalistically has
vanishingly small probability.

  There were many warm little ponds, spread throughout the young Earth,
all multiplying that probability.  Try to keep that in mind.
 

Of course, but that doesn't solve the problem of time:
     10 million ponds x 10 years != 1 pond x 100 million years
You need to develop a self-replicating entity that also self-synthesises nucleotides (i.e. no longer depends on environmental supply). Aka a protocell. This requires an unbroken development process (lineage) over millions of years, i.e. one pond, or connected ponds.
And this one pond continuously pumping in a supply fresh nucleotides for MILLIONS of years.
No floods, droughts or interruption of supply allowed. For MILLIONS of years.
Not a chance on a young Earth (or any Earth for that matter).