How Life Arose on Earth, and How a Singularity Might Bring It Down

[n2doc]

By George Musser | September 23, 2011 | 3

It didn’t take long for the recent Foundation Questions Institute conference on the nature of time to delve into the purpose of life. “The purpose of life,” meeting co-organizer and Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll said in his opening remarks, “is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide.” Well, there you have it. Carroll is one of the most reflective scientists I know and would never claim to reduce all of human existence to molecular disequilibrium. Still, it’s nice to know your place in the grand scheme of things. The FQXi meeting had much to say about where we came from—and where we’re headed.

Last year, Carroll blogged the backstory of where his purpose-of-life line came from. He had bumped into Mike Russell of JPL, an expert on the origin of life, on an airplane and got to chatting about the role that living things play in the geochemical cycles of our planet. Russell was on hand at the FQXi conference, too, and elaborated on his engrossing thesis tracing our descent to inorganic chemical reactions.

In Russell’s picture, the primeval Earth looked uncannily like a giant bacterium. At the seafloor, in spots like the Lost City hydrothermal vents, the chemically reduced interior met the oxidized exterior, creating a state of chemical disequilibrium. Hydrogen bubbling up from the interior sought to combine with carbon dioxide dissolved from the atmosphere to form methane, but this reaction has a bottleneck because intermediate stages such as formaldehyde require an input of energy (see this helpful graph). A geochemical reaction known as serpentinization can push through the bottleneck, using metals such as iron as catalysts, but biological reactions are more efficient, and Russell mapped out a series of steps whereby serpentinization would evolve into membrane-encased cells.

Evolution at this stage was not by natural selection, but by the spontaneous generation of complexity; the Darwinian version came later as information-bearing molecules arose. The scenario is commonly referred to as “metabolism-first” as opposed to “genetics-first.” It is the protobiological version of the principle that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

more

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/09/23/how-life-arose-on-earth-and-how-a-singularity-might-bring-it-down/

[PATRICK]

1. Some discussion of what I have been musing

that a game changing point of REAL change is coming fast. The trend is accelerating and unsustainable for humans as we know them. To please the teabaggers evolution might become mostly the purview of the best of human intelligence or its extinction the victim of the worst. The bad news for them is that in both scenarios there type must become extinct. No wonder the rapture deux ex machina is so popular...and unfortunately by the major tenets of faith THE most likely to give them a safe harbor without a lot of mercy- if they would have it.

All human advancement is beyond the capability of humans to handle and survive, as ironically impressive as it is, this fever of discovery and manufacture. It DOES seem a very natural dynamism too. It even seems to have a possible stimulus purpose of developing a brain to protect the life of the planet from outside forces. Stasis makes us mere a sitting target for eventual tragedy. Which short lived humans shrug off like short sighted animals. Which our minds really don't let us do without a very vulnerable blanket of lies. Before thought there is knowledge, then emotion. Inutition. Then comes thought where the wrong emotions are quickly allowed to edit out of custom and habit. So we can fail and the forces of failure can take what is already out of control and mindlessly doom us all.

We have little real idea, even religiously speaking of what life can be beyond this rapidly approaching barrier. The acceptance that this is the typical useless burnout of any intelligent species in the universe seems on its face senseless, but individually we can fail at any time with any number of excuses, with I hope sympathetic judges out there somewhere how well we did under our particular circumstances. One thing seems certain. We have to be and do our best to make it possible for new humans or whatever comes after to live. One truly hopes this precludes a horror show some of the supposed conservatives begin to lust for. Likely mere survival will be from a remnant of what and who we have today, a great sorrow, and a shame.

[Speck Tater]

2. One very sobering conlcusion...

--quote--
Complexity theorist Raissa D’Souza of U.C. Davis argued in her talk that when you have coupled complex systems, any break in the growth trends tends to be accompanied by wild fluctuations. Modern society is predicated on growth; stability is tantamount to collapse.
--end quote--

Now since continued growth is not possible on a finite planet, we MUST eventually reach a point where growth is no longer possible. From the above it follows that after that point "wild fluctuations" and "collapse" are the best we can hope for.

[Motown_Johnny]

3. and what purpose does hydrogenated carbon dioxide have?

[Igel]

5. None.

Unless you really like methane and water (which is, it would seem, what he believes we exhale, thus showing he doesn't know his ass from a hole in his face).

In my more rationalist mode I'd probably rephrase it to, "to move electrons about in a controlled manner so as in order to store energy and use it in catabolism." But what do I know. I haven't been taught a lick of biology since I was in 9th grade in the early '70s.

[Ready4Change]

10. I question some of it's conclusions, too.

Much of the articles content is more pseudo science than real science. For example, the claim that like at all scales gets about 1 billion heart beats. That would mean we humans are done at 25 years. Doesn't match reality.

Still, some interesting ideas. But large grains of salt needed.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. He's wrong. The purpose of life is to ...

slow the re-radiation of energy to space.

Sun is the energy source.

Space is the energy sink.

Life is the turbulence kicked up as the source drains into the sink. Nothing more.

[Igel]

6. Ooh.

So in other words, anthropogenic global warming is right in line with our purpose.

(Okay, time to finish the morning coffee.)

[tgearfanatic234]

11. I agree.

[snagglepuss]

7. Is “metabolism-first” the same as let's eat and talk later?

[snagglepuss]

8. This is a stellar article. Not just mind boggling but witty..Highly recommend.

"The flu makes me wish intelligent design were true. We might have some hope of outwitting a designer, rather than remain locked in perpetual combat with a shape-shifting adversary."

[gtar100]

9. Excellent. I'm on track. Now, back to hydogenating more carbon dioxide.

Busy day ahead.