The origin of life was something I was thinking about earlier too, when I came up with the unoriginal idea that crystals are a spontaneously forming structure that may have led to DNA. I found this website:
The Origin of Lifewhich discusses this possibility from the viewpoint of a more original thinker.. A. G. Cairns-Smith.
Peter (ocsrazor) added a good comment on the website to the thread that I mentioned it in..
http://www.imminst.o...t=0The crystal article (actually a summary of the Cairns-Smith ideas on origins of life) is right on target. As we know now - life as naked replicator in open water is kind of silly - even as small a body of water as a tidal pool. You do need a surface to act on to concetrate enough molecules to get the information denstiy and level of interaction required to create a functioning whole. Cairns-Smith proposes clays as the possible surface for interaction. One of the most exciting ideas along this track is the concept that life arose in deep sea thermal vents, which have iron-nickel chemistry (which are great chemical catalysts) with lots of little pockets roughly the same size as bacterial cells and the pockets have extremely high molecular diversity. The idea is that these pockets acted as the protected environment in which pre-membrane biochemistry formed coherent molecular systems. Their is strong evidence for something like this happening because the two most primitive forms of life, the simple Prokaryotes and the Archaea, have internal biochemistries which suggest a common evolutionary ancestor, but their membrane structures are so different that it is likely that their different lipid coats arose in seperate evolutionary events. If this is true, the basic biochemistry of life comes first before formation of a protected chemical environment (the membrane) and it clears up a lot of the nasty timing issues involved in origin of life theory.
It is interesting that in the theory it suggests that two methods of passing information forward can exist at the same time with one eventually supplanted by the other in a kind of parallel evolution. From this perspective, computers are the "LIFE" that we create. It is co-evolving just as the organic molecules evolved their own method of 'crystallizing' leading to DNA. We are in effect, a persisting pattern generator that has managed to create a more efficient method of transmitting our patterns into the future. Although I do not believe in the 'god' of any religion, I do find it interesting that there seems to be an underlying thermodynamic self-organizing principle that has led to us and is pushing us to create another level yet... I wonder what will come after 'transhumanity'... so far crystals->dna->silicon.. have all been at least based in matter.. will the next form be based on plasma energy and magnetic flux.. nothing but pure consciousness? whew.. (shaking head and shuffling muttering out the door.. )
Edited by kperrott, 04 July 2003 - 03:34 AM.
