The Origin of Life
Posted on: Mon, 2007-10-22 12:52
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The Origin of Life
Edinburgh Creation Group has a new video up on the Origin of Life. Video claims that even if the whole universe was filled with amino acids all reacting under ideal conditions, but with no DNA/RNA the chance of getting the proteins needed for even the simplest bacteria would be infinitesimally small. The talk is by Professor John Walton who is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and head of reactive Chemistry at St Andrews University.
http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/video.php
Dawkins suggests a multiverse is the most promising way round this what do you guys think?
I'm no biology expert, but based on everything else creationists claim I'd be inclined to believe it's another ignorant misunderstanding. I'm fairly sure Deluded god from the RRS has some stuff on that topic but I don't feel like searching around.
Im kinda for the comet idea.
Problem with this is the speaker says even if the whole volume of the universe was filled with amino acids then the proteins for the simplest cell are unlikely to form. A comet helps for the argument that life is unlikely to start on Earth but not that life is unlikely to form in the universe. The speaker is a Prof in chemistry and fellow of Royal Society so to dismiss his point as ignorant does not really engage with the question. This article in the Guardian seems to confirm he is in the right ballpark when he say the simplest cell has 500,000 base pair in it genome:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/oct/06/genetics.climatechange
The chance of forming this sequence at random is:
4 to the power 500,000 now you can shave a bit off this because there are will be several ways of achieving a similar ends, but I doubt this will shave even 50,000 zeros of the end (the estimated number of atoms in the universe is 10 to the power 100). Then you need a working cell in order to read and copy the DNA (which is as complicated again). Then on top of that you need an oxygen free environment to stop amino acids oxidising once they form.
There is also another talk "The Roots of Evolution" on the site today I've not downloaded yet.