7/13/2004: Baited bull

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by spudcon

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey
SNIP

"That's the thing about self-replication. If it's possible, and the universe is big enough, it WILL happen."

That's a big IF, scientifically speaking. Any evidence of non organic molecules coming to life?

Technically, "organic" roughly means "has carbon", so evidence of non-organic compounds forming life would be even more interesting than organic ones.

Of course, evidence (not proof) of non-life becoming life is that there is life now, and evidence for it becomes simpler and scarcer the further back you look in the geological record, and if you go far enough back, the Earth was in a state where life was probably impossible.

There is also evidence that various components of life can arise naturally, and various steps that are hypothesized as being likely in the formation of life are possible.

And there's also the fact that the leading "competition" to the idea of abiogenesis is "maybe it was magic!"