Meteorites Brought Ingredients of Life To Earth 199
Meshach writes "A new analysis of a meteorite found in Antarctica is leading scientists to think that life on Earth may have come from outer space. Chemical analysis of the meteorite shows it to be rich in ammonia and containing the element nitrogen. Nitrogen is found in the proteins and DNA that form the basis of life as we know it. The prevailing theory is that our planet may have been seeded by a comet or asteroid because the formative Earth might not have been able to provide the full inventory of simple molecules needed for the processes which led to primitive life."
Panspermia (Score:2, Insightful)
Welcome to the Theory of Panspermia.
And why did they have to call it something that sounded so perverse?
Re:fp via meteorite (Score:4, Insightful)
There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe... Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens.
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Not quite, complex organic compounds are found throughout our solar system. For example, on Titan it literally rains organic compounds that, when mixed with water, form amino acids. It is a plausible hypothesis that a third party could have brought such compounds to earth but it is also equally likely that earth simply formed them on its own. If Earth could have formed them on its own it doesn't require the third party hypothesis.
Re:Might != Did (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair to modern observational evidence versus historical record, historical record often isn't really all that good. Even big, fairly educated civilizations like the Romans didn't leave behind particularly reliable history. Take Caligula, for example, we know a few things about him, but many of the things we think we know are probably just made up. Historians throughout the ages have also often been popular fictional writers and little effort seems to have been put into distinguishing between their fictional works and their factual ones at the time (of course, they were writing for a contemporary audience who probably knew through context). Not to mention all of the propaganda.
On the observational evidence end, dating by geologic layers isn't perfect, but it's still pretty good at telling us that A happened before B, which happened before C. Sure, the dates we ascribe to the events aren't perfect, but, unlike recorded history, we usually have a pretty good idea of what actually happened. We can see flood, fire, meteorite impact, earthquake, continental drift, this species vanishing, this one arising, 1000s of different species all over the globe vanishing at once, etc., etc. Even geological evidence isn't perfect and it apparently can even lie sometimes, but nowhere near as much as a human writer who may well be on drugs, just plain insane, repeating common misconceptions and rumors as fact, or just plain lying like crazy to support an agenda.
Re:Yes, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"the answer for the simplest is God."
There. Fixed that for you.
Scientists do not need faith in their theories after they are proven. Scientific theories are verifiable according to a simply describable
rational process that anyone with skills can carry out without faith. Scientific theories are considered promising explanations of
parts or aspects of reality if
a) they are self-consistent,
b) they are logically consistent with other theories which co-define the same
terms (symbols for parts or aspects of reality),
c) they are structured as a mutually supporting set of statements which are particular assertions about the
presence and state of some things; assertions clearly enough stated in terms of other known/accepted concepts/terms/things that the assertions
could be falsified by comprehensible experiments carried out to measure the mentioned/described aspects of reality.
d) they have not been falsified yet, and
e) they are simpler (contain less information, in their so far unfalsified explanation of the same amount of phenomena) than competing theories.
"God did it" definitely fails c) in that the explanation does not explain any phenomena in terms of any other known (already explained)
phenomena/concepts/terms. Instead, it explains just about all phenomena in terms of a completely unknown, undescribed, and unexplained
posited entity, which might as well just be the concept "null" because it does not differ in description or properties from null except in the
completely circular and content-free sense in which it is defined as "the entity which is the cause of all these other phenomena".
God as prime cause stories also fail c) because in form they are generally rambling analogies or vague generalities which are not carefully
or coherently or specifically enough stated to be falsifiable assertions. Those specifics which are stated in the "God" stories have the
safety (from falsifiability) of being about alleged episodes lost in the mists of the past.
Most more detailed description of what this prime cause is like also fail b) in that the stories about God's appearances and works on aspects of reality are not consistent with other verifiable measures of those aspects of reality and also different versions of the God and God-cause stories are inconsistent with each other in many specifics.
Re:Yes, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, science doesn't even ask the questions that religion answers - it doesn't ask "why".
Religion doesn't ask "why" either - it asks nothing. It proclaims a whole bunch of stuff, but enquiry is not part of faith. Faith by definition is unquestioning.
It seems to assume that the answer is "no reason, freak accidents",
It's good that you said "seems" there, as this is an absurd straw man that is merely what religious people project onto science as a reaction when science demonstrates the lack of necessity of their beliefs.
The term "freak accident" is loaded to imply that something, given everything we know about the physical universe, should not happen. This is a mischaracterisation of the scientific explanations for why humans exist. It is not series of unexplained events, at each step flying in the face of logic and understanding. It is a coherent thread constrained and predicted by a comprehensively tested body of rules, backed by 200 years of meticulous evidence collection. the only part of the process that is still a total mystery is the intial existence of the universe itself - the only reason for this mystery being that, as yet, it is impossible to collect any evidence about this event.
..irrational set of ethics that goes slightly beyond securing the most comfortable existence for themselves ... irrationally believe that there is a point in trying to preserve humanity
Those values aren't irrational. They are an inherent part of being a human. Believeing that they are not inherently human, and that they are infused from an external supernatural source is however, highly irrational. If god told you to kill your children, would you do it? It's moral because god told you to do it, right? Wrong, it isn't and you know it isn't because that urge to protect people you care about is part of the social emotions instilled in the human brain by millions of years of evolving in social groups. So when god told Abraham to kill his kid, he shouldn't have passed the test because he was prepared to do it - it should have been the other way round. God is basically grooming Abraham to be a mindless child-murderer, encouraging the "i was only following orders" excuse.
If I won't be alive to see my grandchildrens children, I really shouldn't give a fuck about them. Right?
If somehow you found out tomorrow that god doesn't exist, or that god sent down Jesus again and he told everyone to stop giving a fuck about there grandchildrens children, you'd still care about them wouldn't you? I have no religious beliefs, and happily accept that humans have no universal significance. Yet I'm not an amoral sociopath. This is not becuase science told me to care about people - i've been caring about people since I was first concious. It's because evolution has crafted a brain that values social bonding. My emotions and feelings, while being the product of cold emotionless processes are neverless real.
We're not special. We'll be wiped out eventually, and the universe will not notice.
You're right, the universe won't notice if all human life ceases to exists, provided the universe itself is in no way sentient, which there is not evidence to suggest it is.
Define "special".
if you define special as "having some significance" than of course we're special. We all have significance to ourselves and to everyone we know. If you define special as "being significant on a universal scale" then no, we are not special. You seem to be arbitrarily pinning your self-worth on something for which there is no rational objective evidence, and in terms of the biblical accounts, masses of counter evidence. This does not mean that you cannot have self-worth. You just need to realise that you are the person who is defining what gives you self worth. Not the bible or your church. Whether you realise this yet or not