[Nasif]

Arnab you gotta be kidding me bhai

You can flip HHHH on your very first trial (I did). Even at 1 chance in 4.29 x 10^40, a self-replicator could have turned up surprisingly early.

Just shows how un-scientific the approach of the article is. To convince the reader writer has to draw similarities with out of this world comparision of 1/16 to 1/billion-trillion(many times over)

If universe ran with this "fantasy" logic then all of our wishes would have come true and you could have gone to work today riding an unicorn.

1 chance in 4.29 x 10^40 is still orgulously, gobsmackingly unlikely

What said the probability of making a protein at random is 1 in 4.29x10^40? An average protein with around 500 left-handed amino acid (only left handed amino acid forms protien) combined with only peptide bond is 1 in 10^950. Visit the link given before to study complete detail of this probablity calculation.

Not really; in the above examples we were examining sequential trials, as if there was only one protein/DNA/proto-replicator being assembled per trial. In fact there would be billions of simultaneous trials as the billions of building block molecules interacted in the oceans, or on the thousands of kilometers of shorelines that could provide catalytic surfaces or templates

What happened to this successful replicator generation process? Was it successful for only one situation? Then it would be hard to speculate origin of plant cell (with cloroplast)! If it was successful many times then why all life on earth is of similar structure (DNA, chemical compunds, chemical composition etc)? Catch 22!

Given an amino acid concentration of 1 x 10^-6 M (a moderately dilute soup, see Chyba and Sagan 1992 [23]),

And how did amino acid come into being at the first place? And please don't quote Stanly's experiment of creating amino acid. Also, writer fails to mention that only left handed amino acid can form protein. All life on this earth only has left handed amino acid. Right handed amino acid is useless piece of junk.

Yes, one kilogram of the amino acid arginine has 2.85 x 10^24 molecules in it (that's well over a billion billion); a tonne of arginine has 2.85 x 10^27 molecules. If you took a semi-trailer load of each amino acid and dumped it into a medium size lake, you would have enough molecules to generate our particular replicator in a few tens of years, given that you can make 55 amino acid long proteins in 1 to 2 weeks.

Notice how un-scientific remark it is! He is stating the above as if it is a proven FACT. Whereas, the reality is that its just his hypothesis which borders on imaginative fiction. I wonder why no one tries the above experiment! One also wonders why all the micro-biologist in the world gave up effort to create any element of a cell.

My final question in the previous post was not about the probablity. Rather the question was chicken and egg question. Let me re-pharse it (quoted from Evolution Deciete):

One of the basic reasons why the theory of evolution cannot explain how the cell came into existence is the "irreducible complexity" in it. A living cell maintains itself with the harmonious co-operation of many organelles. If only one of these organelles fails to function, the cell cannot remain alive. The cell does not have the chance to wait for unconscious mechanisms like natural selection or mutation to permit it to develop. Thus, the first cell on earth was necessarily a complete cell possessing all the required organelles and functions, and this definitely means that this cell had to have been created.

I know evolution doesn't deal with origin of life (rather it deals origin of species). But you cannot talk one leaving the other. If you talk about chicken then you have to start with the egg. Anything else is just an escape from the truth.


Nasif Akand



PS: things to ponder about....

Formation of Carbon (building block of life)

Now comes the interesting story of that element of life, carbon. Helium is a very stable element. It is so stable that for a while physicists thought that it was a fundamental particle, and it was named the alpha particle. Carbon has a mass number 12, and consists of three helium atoms stuck together in a stable configuration. Unfortunately, two helium atoms, which make beryllium, are very much unstable. The stuff sticks around for less that 10^–16 of a second before disintegrating. It takes an additional neutron to make stable beryllium-9. Therein lies our problem. A collision of stable beryllium-9 with helium-4 will not add up to carbon-12. The unstable beryllium-8 does not last long enough to permit any reasonable level of carbon formation by interaction with helium. Finally, the odds of three helium atoms hitting each other simultaneously in just the right way to stick together as carbon is out of sight. It looks like there isn't any way to make carbon. And as noted, without carbon there is no life. Now, it is important to understand that without carbon there is still a universe. It does not even look very different from what we have, on a superficial level. The basic fuel for stars is here, and the stars burn very nicely. The only important difference is that we are not around to enjoy it. But we know that we are, in fact, around. And we know that there is lots of carbon around. So where did it come from?

In 1954, Fred Hoyle of Cambridge proposed a solution. He suggested that there is a resonance between helium-4, beryllium-8 and carbon-12. A resonance describes an effect where one gets a big result from a relatively small effort. Pluck a string in a certain way and you get a big sound for a small pull; do it some other way and it goes flat. Taking into account the mass-energy of each nucleus, and the calculated kinetic energy of the moving particles based on the temperature in the star, Hoyle predicted a hitherto unsuspected energy level, at 7.82 million electron volts, in the carbon-12 nucleus that would cause a resonance for the combined energies of the three elements. This resonance causes three helium-4 particles to stay together just a bit longer than usual, and that is long enough for these to rearrange themselves into the compact and stable configuration of carbon-12. The prediction was tested in the laboratory and found to be correct. The question to ask is, what is it in the basic laws of the universe that requires this resonance, involving three elements and the conditions inside a star, to be there? Why not have a universe without carbon? We do not know the answer.

Above quoted from Heavenly Time machine.

Carbon is there because God created it. Cell is there because God created it.

[Edited on 5-8-2003 by nasif]