h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Haven't been here long and I'm just getting round to doing a journal. Hope I don't make a complete balls-up. Here goes.

I'm interested in loads of things but there's always 1 subject or maybe 2 that interest me more than anything else. I go through phases and my focus changes. At the moment my big fascination is about how life began. I'm happy with the "big bang" theory of how the universe began and I'm happy that evolution provides a nice tidy convincing explanation of how we got to where we are now, from a time AFTER life began.

There's a gaping great hole between those 2 key events though. Life might have begun in a warm pond where all the conditions were just right, as Darwin speculated, but what were those condition. They haven't managed to make anything very convincing happen in a lab yet by providing what they assume to be the right conditions. The requirements for life to begin are, apparently, a hell of a lot more complicated than they might have appeared in Darwin's time. There seem to be plenty of scientists who reckon life is probably fairly common in our universe based mainly on the fact that we're here and if we're here then it would be arrogant to imagine that we were the only ones (the sort of "politically correct" view of life). But perhaps we are the only ones. Or perhaps, as some scientists have conjectured, our first ancestors on earth arrived as something like bacteria or a virus, in a meteorite. If that's the case, how did those bacteria or virus get started and where did they come from? It's the VERY BEGINNING of life that I want to know about.

I'm not interested in supernatural explanations. My satisfaction with evolution and the big bang have nothing whatever to do with faith and if better explanations come along, I'm willing to change my view. The good and the bad thing about this particular subject are the same: that is, the scientists don't know yet. I wish they did, because I want to know, but it's also nice to be able to discuss a scientific subject without feeling like a complete ignoramus and being pulled up by those who know better, for contradicting what are deemed to be the facts. It's not just me. The scientists don't know either.

So, does anyone want to touch this?

Hiya Shorn. Are you going to let your feathers grow back for the winter or are you going to borrow some goose's bumps?

I read something a while back that suggested it was very easy to get amino acids to generate spontaneously. You just put a chemical cocktail (representing the conditions on the early earth) in a test tube and shock it or heat it or sing bawdy songs to it. The problem is getting the amino acids to make peptides, polypeptides and proteins. There are lots of different sorts of amino acids and they have to be connected in very specific ways to make peptides. Apparently, the chances of just the right sequence to make a protein, forming spontaneously are astronomical - like the chances of a monkey sitting at a typewriter accidentally producing the script of Hamlet.

Interesting stuff, huh?

Hi Salamander. Kind of you to show concern for my wellbeing. No, as a matter of fact I won't need to grow my feathers for the winter. I've got a set of gooseflesh longjohns and my mate's mum (Mrs Pie) has knitted me a nice little yellow cardi. My mate, Tweety got me a duckdown anorak (also yellow, of course) with a hood and loads of pockets with zips.

I'm glad someone else is also interested in the subject that currently has my attention. What you say about getting from amino acids via peptides and polypeptides to proteins is also my understanding of the matter. Proteins are a collection of amino acids in a very particular order. Say you had a protein made up of 5 each of 20 different sorts of amino acids (that would be a relatively small protein), the sequence of those amino acids could be arranged in billions of different ways, so what are the chances of getting that protein by accident? Without the help of anything like RNA or DNA to produce the proteins, how on earth did it happen?

Also, jumping the gun a bit, another question that I've never noticed anyone taking a stab at, is why should wiggly little bits of DNA WANT to replicate themselves. How can an incy-wincy little chain of information generate the WILL to reproduce itself? And where did the information come from?

If you have the vaguest idea of the answers to these questions, please tell me.

Shorn, I haven't the faintest idea what the answer is, but chaos comes to mind for some reason. I read a book about it a while ago. I'll see if I can find it. There was a bit about information theory (I think) and the 2nd law of thermodynamics and how it might be countered by strange attractors - or at least that was the way I read it. I'll have to dig it out and get back to you. It'll probably turn out to be completely irrelevant to this.

The idea of little bits of stuff (is it even alive? - I suppose it must be) wanting to reproduce . . . it seems bizarre.

Ok Shorn, I've found the book and I think I've found the bit I mentioned. The book is "Chaos" by James Gleick, first published 1988. It says "To Robert Shaw, strange attractors were engines of information. ... Strange attractors, conflating order and disorder, gave a challenging twist to the questions of measuring a systems entropy. Strange attractors served as efficient mixers. They created unpredictability. They raised entropy. And as Shaw saw it, they created information where none existed."

He says that in Shaw's view, "chaos was the creation of information".

There you have it. Pick the bones out of that. Maybe that's where the little wigglers got their information from - chaos. There are a few intriguing bits like that in the book. 'Fraid I've not the wit (or time) to précis it for you. If you think it looks promising, get the book (published by Heinemann originally and Vintage more recently).

Thanks for that Salamander. I'll have to look into chaos then. It looks quite promising. I hope you won't mind if I come and bug you further about it, if I feel I must.