Re: Ool - out at first base?

On 10/12/2024 23:51, MarkE wrote:

On 10/12/2024 2:35 pm, Bob Casanova wrote:

On Mon, 9 Dec 2024 16:54:56 +1100, the following appeared in
talk.origins, posted by MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com>:
>

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.
>

Please provide the mathematical calculations which support
your assertions. In detail, please, with error bars; no
"but it seems too long!" whining.

>

 At some point this would need to be calculated and quantified, so valid request.
 My discussion at this stage though is a line of reasoning that in principle may significantly reduce the presumed probabilistic resources available for the formation of an autonomous protocell.
 In summary the argument is: if a hypothesised little warm pond (or thermal vent, etc) has virtually zero chance of producing this protocell, then no amount of ponds and planets will help:
 P(OoL) = N_ponds x N_planets x P(protocell) x P(post-protocell)
 If P(protocell) -> 0, then P(OoL) -> 0
 Of course, it remains to be demonstrated that P(protocell) -> 0, but would you agree with the logic of the argument?
 

Given sufficient trials the occurrence of a low (per trial) probability event becomes nearly inevitable. The assertion that "if ... has virtually zero chance of producing this protocell, then no amount of ponds and planets will help" - if the probability is non-zero the option of adding more ponds and planets will generate a near certainty. If the probability is sufficiently low, then the number of trials possible in this universe can be too low to reach that near inevitability, but you should be talking about numbers below around 10^-40. If you asked the average person they would say that numbers orders of magnitude larger are virtually zero. Add a multiverse and you require even smaller numbers.
--
alias Ernest Major