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."
Yes, but.... (Score:5, Funny)
..the meteorites were intelligently designed!
Boom.
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"What specifically caused life to begin on Earth remains a mystery. Professor Pizzarello hypothesises material from a meteor may have interacted with environments on Earth such as volcanoes or tidal pools, but says all remains a matter of guess work."
We should totally base our worldview around this.
Re:Yes, but.... (Score:5, Informative)
Abundant ammonia in primitive asteroids and the case for a possible exobiology
1. Sandra Pizzarelloa,1, 2. Lynda B. Williamsb, 3. Jennifer Lehmanc, 4. Gregory P. Hollanda, and 5. Jeffery L. Yargera
Abstract
Carbonaceous chondrites are asteroidal meteorites that contain abundant organic materials. Given that meteorites and comets have reached the Earth since it formed, it has been proposed that the exogenous influx from these bodies provided the organic inventories necessary for the emergence of life. The carbonaceous meteorites of the Renazzo-type family (CR) have recently revealed a composition that is particularly enriched in small soluble organic molecules, such as the amino acids glycine and alanine, which could support this possibility. We have now analyzed the insoluble and the largest organic component of the CR2 Grave Nunataks (GRA) 95229 meteorite and found it to be of more primitive composition than in other meteorites and to release abundant free ammonia upon hydrothermal treatment. The findings appear to trace CR2 meteorites’ origin to cosmochemical regimes where ammonia was pervasive, and we speculate that their delivery to the early Earth could have fostered prebiotic molecular evolution.
Without the full article it's hard to really follow why they think the earth needed excess organic chemicals, even specific amino acids, to be provided from meteorites. There is a large body of data that shows that amino acids, nucleic acids, lipids and a host of other moderately complex organic molecules could have been formed on earth at various times in it's development. As far as I can tell, there is nothing magical about the meteorite derived molecules and hence invoking panspermia (or more accurately, panorganicmoleculermia) is really unnecessary.
Anyone else out there with either access to PNAS or some better insight? So far it's a big meh.
Re:Yes, but.... (Score:4, Interesting)
As I understand it, life evolved QUICKLY on Earth. I mean, we went from a barren rock with magma flows and some water to teeming lakes of bacterium in the blink of an eye. (Relatively speaking). Only 500 million years after the heavy bombardment from meteors, and a mere 25 million years after the moon formed, Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes formed. As far as the universe goes, that's hardly any time at all.
The best explaniation for this rapid growth is that life didn't actually have to start here, but came from meteorites.
Again, I am not an expert, just an interested college student. Anyone with real knowledge, please correct me.
Re:Yes, but.... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not an expert - so I may be wrong here.
As I understand it, life evolved QUICKLY on Earth. I mean, we went from a barren rock with magma flows and some water to teeming lakes of bacterium in the blink of an eye. (Relatively speaking). Only 500 million years after the heavy bombardment from meteors, and a mere 25 million years after the moon formed, Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes formed. As far as the universe goes, that's hardly any time at all.
The best explaniation for this rapid growth is that life didn't actually have to start here, but came from meteorites.
Again, I am not an expert, just an interested college student. Anyone with real knowledge, please correct me.
Your numbers seem off...
It was about 200-400 million years from the end of major bombardment to the first geological evidence of life on Earth. The moon formed before major bombardment ended. Approximate dates are 4.6Gya for Earth, 4.5Gya for the moon, 4.2Gya for the end of late heavy bombardment, and 3.8Gya for the first fossil evidence of life). The Wikipedia article on geologic time [wikipedia.org] gives a pretty good overview. :)
As for the GPP, I agree. Every time they find something like this, there's always the "So Earth was seeded by these" speculation. It seems that such materials are rather common in our solar system, both here on Earth, on other planets, and on meteors and asteroids. If such organic molecules can form with relative ease in so many other places in the solar system, I see no reason why they couldn't have formed on Earth as well as it went through it's own geological evolution. Especially when geological processes for forming many complex organic chemicals abiotically have been documented. No doubt that stuff falling from the sky could contribute to organic materials on Earth, but I see no reason to believe that they are a major contribution.
As for TFS, I found this to be rather humorous:
Chemical analysis of the meteorite shows it to be rich in ammonia and containing the element nitrogen.
Well, I should hope so. I'd be very surprised and impressed if the meteorite were rich in ammonia but didn't contain nitrogen. :p
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Thank you for that comment; this is exactly what I came here to post. It's nice to see other people having the same opinion... I mean 'common sense'.
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As for the GPP, I agree. Every time they find something like this, there's always the "So Earth was seeded by these" speculation. It seems that such materials are rather common in our solar system, both here on Earth, on other planets, and on meteors and asteroids. If such organic molecules can form with relative ease in so many other places in the solar system, I see no reason why they couldn't have formed on Earth as well as it went through it's own geological evolution. Especially when geological processes for forming many complex organic chemicals abiotically have been documented. No doubt that stuff falling from the sky could contribute to organic materials on Earth, but I see no reason to believe that they are a major contribution.
Well, different molecules require different environments to form, and I think it's a least likely, that some necessary molecules could only be formed outside Earth. If they didn't rain on Earth with meteorites, there might not have been life, because critical building blocks would have been missing.
Speculation in my part of course,and in any case it's hard to know which molecules these were, and certainly nothing "astromystical" about it.
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Here's some stream-of-consciousness, ad-libbed sci-fi for you.
December 11, 2012: A meteorite containing ammonia and sodium percarbonate slams into Alabama, dissipating mustard gas into the air.
December 12, 2012: Local civilization rapidly falls apart. The federal and state governments promise relief.
December 13, 2012: The International Red Cross, Salvation Army, and local volunteers spring to action. Mass looting, rioting, and general disarray are seen. Citizens organize into militias to defend their nei
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In my undergrad biology lab, we replicated the Miller-Urey experiment that created some amino acids from water and a few gases in a sealed system with a spark gap in a few days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment [wikipedia.org]
The earliest known fossil evidence of prokaryotic life is almost 1 billion years after the Earth's formation. I can't imagine how you can call 1 billion years any time at all, even in the scale of the universe :)
But if you are curious about the history and research on the to
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The earliest known fossil evidence of prokaryotic life is almost 1 billion years after the Earth's formation. I can't imagine how you can call 1 billion years any time at all, even in the scale of the universe :)
It's easy. I call it on the order of 10% of the current age of the Universe.
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Uh, that should be "how you can call 1 billion years NOT any time at all". Though I'd hope from the actual context of my post you'd get that I was saying and you're just being nitpicky.
But if you think 1 billion years is not significant in astrophysical as well as evolutionary scales, I can't help ya...
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I'm not an expert - so I may be wrong here.
Ten minutes is all it takes to understand the leading theory of aboigenisis. No ridiculous probabilities, no supernatural forces, no lightning striking a mud puddle. Just chemistry! [youtube.com] Nitrogen and ammonia were both abundant in the "second atmosphere" (archean era) [eiu.edu] which is when the oceans and life first formed.
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The best explaniation for this rapid growth is that life didn't actually have to start here, but came from meteorites.
Are you sure this is what you meant to say? If you're saying the ingredients for life came from meteorites (as the article states) then okay. But, if you're saying that fully-formed life itself came from meteorites, then it begs the question, "where did that life originate?
Just asking for clarification.
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"What specifically caused life to begin on Earth remains a mystery. Professor Pizzarello hypothesises material from a meteor may have interacted with environments on Earth such as volcanoes or tidal pools, but says all remains a matter of guess work."
We should totally base our worldview around this.
+1
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Intelligent design means that we have been created by god, and for a purpose. Evolution means that we are here by an accident, we dont really have to do anything except make babies and have a good time (optional). There is no purpose following evolution.
There is a dissonance here. And that is why people have faith that there is god and he created them. We as a species a
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Actually, I thought of that too. I figured my purpose is to leave the earth a little better than it would have been without me around. In other words, if you do not have a purpose, you can make one. No faith required.
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Yes, there is no point to life whatsoever, but life itself. No species has any purpose other than continuing it's existence. Such is life, and I fail to see the dissonance.
I CAN see how people can want that not to be true, however, and how that leads to people setting "higher" goals for themselves than merely eating, fucking and sleeping. In simpler times, religion made the worship of random higher beings that purpose. In more enlightened times, mankind has started to make knowledge and understanding of all
Re:Yes, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Any finite explanation of the universe, no matter how complex, is simpler than an explanation by God.
Well, that's some non-trivial statement. Can you prove it?
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You now have the same problem but one stage worse than the one you started with. 'Where did life/the universe/everything come from vs. where did life/universe/everything/God come from.
Occam's razor for me says if you leave the God part out you're closer to a solutio
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"To create everything from scratch God would have to at least understand *everything* and so has to be more complex than everything else. "
What if he just created the starting position (e.g. Big Bang, or even Earth), and some basic physics laws, and left it alone. Then he doesn't have to understand everything. He was just messing around with universes and accidentally, one had life.
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If we ignore traditional definitions of God then I feel we're in the position of inventing new Gods, or of amending the supposedly inviolate idea of God to fit our current beliefs and knowledge, which to me would be evidence that God is a social phenomenon rather than an entity.
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.
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Science is great as long as it deals with "how does stuff work" and "what can we do with this".
However, science doesn't even ask the questions that religion answers - it doesn't ask "why". It seems to assume that the answer is "no reason, freak accidents", and elevates this to "fact".
Thankfully though, despite your rejection of divinity, the purpose o
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Religion has caused wars, famine, genocide,
And for the love of god (pun intended) don't go claiming religion is needed for morality, bec
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[Science] seems to assume that the answer is "no reason, freak accidents", and elevates this to "fact".
I don't think you get this "science" thing.
A lot of people are affected by an irrational set of ethics that goes slightly beyond securing the most comfortable existence for themselves. A lot of people irrationally believe that there is a point in trying to preserve humanity beyond our own individual lifespans.
Yes, but you don't need religion for that.
Thankfully though, despite your rejection of divinity, the purpose of religion seems to affect most of humanity.
Mostly because it gets away with using dishonest arguments, like the "ethics requires religion" one that you used in the previous paragraph.
We're not special. We'll [probably] be wiped out eventually, and the universe will not notice. If I won't be alive to see my grandchildrens children, I really shouldn't give a fuck about them. Right?
Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premises. Scientific explanations might not tell you what you should care about, but they also don't tell you what you should not care about.
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
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Sure, but an illogical worth has been assumed about society.
What exactly is illogical about assigning value to society?
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Note, that this answer is only viable for extremely complex values of "simple".
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Wow, how insightful.
The problem is the same "logic" can be used for any bothersome problems.
How did the universe start? God did it.
What caused life to evolve? God did it.
Why does a rotating magnetic field induce electrons to move? God likes it when rotating magnetic field cause the motions of electrons.
Why do the planets revolve around the sun? God likes circles.
Sure, its an "answer". But it's an entirely vapid answer. It doesn't expand our knowledge of the universe, and is the scientific equivalent o
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He must be pretty annoyed then.
Seriously, can anybody explain why orbits tend to be elliptical?
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>He must be pretty annoyed then. Seriously, can anybody explain why orbits tend to be elliptical?
In the original creation, all orbits were circular. Only after the Fall of Man did things start to orbit in imperfect ellipses. Seriously, where did you go to Sunday school?
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So it's a simple assumption, and yet completely useless (a contradiction implies that any statement is true, and also false). Worse, it's not just useless, it kills the power of logic, and therefore the ability to learn and make progress.
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I fear I may be falling prey to Poe's Law [tvtropes.org] here, but given your quote of choice from your sig, I don't think I am and you're actually serious.
Anyways, the reason you believe "God" is the simplest answer to the origin of life, the one meant to be assumed under Occam's Razor, your idea that evolution is a "web of lies" that scientists "believe in" because "otherwise their whole career is demolished" and that scientists need "faith", all of that is simply due to one factor: your own ignorance of science in its
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Scientists don't depend on faith, they collect evidence, make assumptions and then try to prove those assumptions wrong. Why can't some people even understand how science work? I weep for the future *sigh*
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Why will I hunt you down and torture you for weeks before allowing you to die ? Well, God wants it that way, it's the simplest explanation.
It's pretty obvious, but for people like you Occam really should have specified that he meant the simplest reasonable explanation.
Fundamental Misconception of Occam's Razor (Score:5, Informative)
If you're going to cite Occam's Razor, you need to understand what it actually says. It's not just "the simplest solution is usually the correct one". There is one particular way that Occam's Razor can identify which arguments are objectively simpler than others. There is a very narrow range of arguments that can be compared with Occam's Razor. What it actually states is that if you have two comprehensive explanations for something that have the following form:
Explanation 1:
Explanation 2:
Since both explanations fully explain the same subject, Occam's Razor states that explanation 2 is less likely to be true as it is objectively more complex, since it is a superset of explanation 1, sharing parameters a,b and c, with parameter d simply introducing more opportunities for the explanation to be incorrect.
What you are trying to compare with Occam's Razor are apples and oranges.
Explanation 1:
Explanation 2:
Neither of these arguements is a superset of the other, so they can't be compared using Occam's Razor.
Although there are more parameters to the first explanation, there is no way to objectively measure or even define the "complexity" of each individual parameter to check that even if you add them all together, if they are more "complex" than explanation 2
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Yes, but how did God come to being? If "in the beginning He was there and then He created everything" is a simple answer, then "In the beginning everything was there" is simpler still.
Yep, the whole biblical god thing gets very complex within the first few sentences when you consider that he was speaking to himself ("Let there be light") before he ever created the universe, humans and their language...
Why would a god "speak" -- would the speech be more of a thinking to one's tri-self? Perhaps speech arose because he created humans in god's "image"; If this is the case god would need to speek before anything was ever created... In order to need to convey information (and ultimately cre
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Score++!
Panspermia (Score:2, Insightful)
Welcome to the Theory of Panspermia.
And why did they have to call it something that sounded so perverse?
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Really, this should just be one big "duh" to anyone who has read up on theory of planetary formation. Basically, the whole planet is made up of meteorites that crashed together. And maybe a couple times it was large aggregations of meteorites that collided into the growing mass, and even small planetoid bodies such as the event that is theorized to
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I'll kind of give you that one. We're really splitting hairs though. All of the pieces, or a complete basic organism, which one wins.
I will agree totally on the planetary formation though. Planets are large lumps in space that grew through contributions of generally disorganized matter colliding. If it ends up being a sufficient side, in an orbit, and rotating, it's probably a planet. If it doesn't achieve an orbit it'll likely become a contribution to the next closest body
Makes sense (Score:2)
They had to come from somewhere right?
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.
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> equally likely that earth simply formed them on its own
I don't claim to understand the exact science behind it, but apparently this is not as likely. And, also apparently, it happened too fast for many people's liking.
I am not saying it's that way, mind. Just that, from what I know, external seeding solves the problem in a nicer way.
Well, yes, of course... (Score:2)
What went ye into the weilderness to see? (Score:2)
He probably meant "contains elemental nitrogen", but it's a crapdot summary so what do you expect.
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Correct. Also, we kinda have enough Nitrogen ourselves.
Might != Did (Score:2)
Article says the theory is that metorites brought it required ingredients to Earth.
Summary says might.
Title says did.
In reality, everything on Earth came from space according to current scientific theory, the planet coleased into existence from matter orbiting Sol a few billion years ago.
So, I'm not really sure why you would consider this news, the 'ingredients for life' were more than likely ALREADY HERE by the time the Earth qualified as a planet, and most certainly by the time it cooled enough to not des
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Article says the theory is that metorites brought it required ingredients to Earth.
Summary says might.
Title says did.
Shush, you with your accurate distinctions!
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.
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Not to mention all of the propaganda.
"History is written by the winner".
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"Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow." - Agent K, Men In Black
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I don't know why people in the US seem to think that Columbus thought the world was flat, but ask most people on the street and that's what they'll tell you.
Because they are taught that from the time they are in grade school?
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Calling it anything other than a theory means you don't understand how science works at all.
Ohhh, the irony [wikipedia.org].
Anyways, the big, practical problem with your postulate is that it applies to stuff 10 million years ago just as well as whatever happened 10 seconds ago, making whatever meaning you held of "knowledge" pretty f'in useless.
The meteorite (Score:2)
Duh (Score:2)
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Pretty much. As such we're creatures of the entire universe and not just of this earth. Just so happen that things worked out better for our model on this planet.
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Thanks. Now I've got stuff like "We are stardust, we are golden, we are interstellar carbon" in my head.
Beware! The Blob! (Score:2)
OK, it took a few hundred million years, but it did cover the planet.
Ammonium Nitrate? (Score:2)
That's a fertilizer bomb! Thanks a lot, outer space.
And what seeded the comet or asteroid? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why is it any more likely that life would arise in a comet, asteroid, or other planet than it would be for life to arise on earth?
Why is it more likely that life arises anywhere that isn't point X, versus on point X? Well, maybe because there's trillions of places that aren't point X but only one point X. For starters.
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Re:And what seeded the comet or asteroid? (Score:5, Informative)
The article didn't say life starting in space. One of the major problems with the leading hypothesis about how life began here on Earth is that many of the chemical elements required by said hypothesis were not present in sufficient quantities in early Earth. Or at least were not present based on what we think we know about the early composition of the planet. Chief among these problems is the absence of organic compounds in the rock matrix of the oldest known rocks.
Fast forward a few hundred million years and now these ancient-but-not-oldest rocks now have organic traces. What was different from when Earth cooled vs a few hundred million years later? Uncountable millions of comet and meteor strikes. Objects that have been shown to contain just the missing ingredients needed to complete the shopping list for the formation of Life.
Inert organic compounds have since been found throughout the known cosmos, from nebula containing ethanol to ammonia in asteroids. There are a multitude of hypothesis about why organic compounds form better in cosmic bodies instead of planets, from ionizing radiation in solar wind to the fact that planet formation is too hot an event for any traces of the compounds to remain after consolidation.
Turtles (Score:3)
It's asteroids all the way down
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Editors appear not to know the difference... (Score:2)
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They've found _one_ meteorite with the ingredient, so we know for a fact that it was 'brought' to earth... Or are you trying to claim that meteorite was planted there by some meta-physical being?
I took "ingredients of life" to mean "the ingredients from which life was made", not "a bunch of stuff chemically similar to the ingredients from which life was made".
Warning, completely non-technical/hippie comment (Score:2, Informative)
A few months ago I was walking with my wife/son back to our home from the library. In the seam of a manhole of an asphault jungle (I.E. downtown) ~175k population city, I saw thriving sprouts. Life will always find a way.
If we were seeded by intelligent life, that is awesome and I can't wait to find out more. If it were completely random that in our universe, which we have no idea even the size of, meteors with just the right contents to start life in the Earth's environment came to us, then awesome as well
Damn Bruce Willis (Score:2)
Um (Score:2)
Given the whole accretion disk theory of planet formation - didn't the whole damned planet come from just a bunch of meteorites clumping together and falling to an ever larger body?
Not so sure (Score:5, Informative)
So the Earth's atmosphere contains about 4*10^19 kg of Nitrogen (surface of the earth * 100 kPa/g * 80%). That's a *lot* of mass. A 10 km asteroid (like the one that could have wiped the dinosaurs) is maybe 10^12 kg. So it would take more than 10 *millions* of those to provide the Earth with its current atmosphere -- assuming these asteroids were pure frozen nitrogen.
Another thing I don't quite understand is why the nitrogen would have to come from somewhere else. As far as I know, stars produce plenty of it (CNO cycle and all), so if we have carbon and Oxygen, why not nitrogen as well. Am I missing anything?
Re: (Score:2)
No, you're not missing anything at all.
The 'meteorite idea' seems moot from the start: for a meteorite to have some importance in the 'creation of life', it has to either a) bring the elements lacking (until then) from a life-creating environment for the planet (a theory that you've disproven quite eloquently), or b) somehow be the 'instigator', between ingredients already existing on the planet, of the process that was the creation of life.
Bioforms are a natural occurance even in space; it is their environ
Oblig (Score:2)
Nitrogen!!! Amazing... (Score:2)
So meteorites brought the life-critical element Nitrogen(!) to Earth... that truly is an astounding finding... no way that life could have evolved here without that contribution from space...
oh wait... doesn't the Earth already have "some" nitrogen? And ammonia? is that hard to make? (no don't think it is...)
Would it help if we named that meteor God? (Score:3)
Then scientists and creationists would at least *sound* like they agreed.
Of course, it would make life tough for Muslim cartoonists... not being able to draw rocks anymore. But hey, even if they did and we're sentenced to stoning - as soon as someone picked up a rock to throw they could just point and yell "Forbidden Idol!!!", and nonchalantly amble away in the ensuing confusion.
Geez, when you said it brought the ingredients for (Score:2)
What are you talking about? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Well, if space stretches on all sides of me to infinity, that would mean that ~I~ am the centre of the universe.
The toilets of the Gods (Score:2)
Perhaps the great author Arthur C. Clarke was not far off in his hypothesis [astrobiology.com].
Being descendants of... alien poo... is a humbling thought.
Summary is wildly inaccurate (Score:3)
Neither the BBC article nor the abstract* of the original paper mention 'life on Earth may have come from outer space'. They say that the nitrogen may have come from outer space. From the abstract "we speculate that [ammonia rich comets] delivery to the early Earth could have fostered prebiotic molecular evolution" (emphasis mine).
* Alas, my institution only has free access to PNAS articles older than 6 months, so I haven't seen the paper. I could probably get up and read it in the library, but reading a paper off paper just seems morally wrong. Won't somebody please think of the trees?
just like women (Score:3)
Meteorites are like women: they bring life and love; and then smash it all to hell in a jealous fit such that you have to start all over again in another town.
Rare elements (Score:2)
Yeah because one thing the Earth is short of is Nitrogen.
obvious (Score:2)
may have - not did (Score:2)
The simplest answer is that life formed from indigenous materials on the planet. Personally I think that anywhere life is possible, life appears.
Space funk.... (Score:2)
So I like to think of it as Space Cum. I know this sound disgusting, sorry. But if the planet is the egg and meteorite is the seed, wouldn't that basically imply that this planet and all living creatures come from some Space funk?
Planet X meets Planet Y, they bang into each other and had a Big Bang. Their seeds now free to float in space land here and there and Wham life as we know it.... 900 million years later.
It could happen.....
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: (Score:2, Funny)
Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a rag-tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest -- a shining planet, known as Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
...upon their arrival into its atmosphere, through the use of low-flying shuttles, open bay doors and copious amounts of beer, the crewmembers embarked on their ultimate goal for the planet: spreading life.
Re: (Score:2)
Gives you a whole new way of thinking "illegal alien" then, eh?
I, for one, would like to see a fence erected to keep out comets potentially seeding our planet with life. In 3-5 billion years those spores may take our jobs!
-Matt
Re: (Score:2)
actually, that could be interpreted as pro-life - after all, you're breaking up large asteroids into smaller meteorites that could scatter everywhere. Of course, there would have to be an optimal balance between small enough to scatter but large enough to survive falling through the atmosphere...
Re: (Score:2)
actually, that could be interpreted as pro-life
Yeah, maybe. But I’m pro-choice.