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| View Poll Results: Life's Origins: Either Or? | |||
| Abiogenesis on Earth |
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32 | 88.89% |
| Panspermia |
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4 | 11.11% |
| Voters: 36. You may not vote on this poll | |||
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I voted abiogenesis.
Panspermia can mean 2 things: That life started in space (e.g. inside a nebula or high orbit of exo-planet and floated into space) OR it started by abiogenesis ON ANOTHET PLANET and survived a flight through space to reach Earth and rain down (e.g. Earth life came from Mars by meteorite originating from Mars' surface). I'm going to apply Occam's Razor now, and pick abiogenesis on Earth as the most likely scenario. The right ingredients were all there. Nothing on Earth seems to have PREVENTED life from starting here, so abiogenesis on Earth seems a more likely option opposed to extra-planetary abiogenesis + surviving space flight. I'm not sure about the odds of life forming in space itself. Is there any reason to suspect that a nebula passed through our solar system 4 or 5 billion years ago and deposited proto-life on Earth? If not, then the odds of panspermia don't seem so good for that option.
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This user is currently on a smooth slope of Mount Improbable |
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Are you asking the question about life on Earth, or life in general in the universe?
If it is the former, the answer could be either, with a somewhat smaller chance of life starting elsewhere in the solar system and migrating here. Mars is the most likely candidate. Lithopanspermia between stars in a cluster is also a very small possibility. -------- If it is about life in the universe as a whole, then all life started originally by abiogenesis, whether or not it has been subsequently transported by lithopanspemia or translocation by intelligent species. |
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![]() Would you say 1) the odds of life forming in outer space are bettr than the odds of life forming on Earth? Or 2) do you think panspermia-theory a likely candidate for 'seeding' Earth because life would have had more time to develop? (The Universe is older than the Earth, and life has had more time to form in space/nebulae, etc, long before Earth existed.) The options are not mutually exclusive per se, but I have my doubts about number one.
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This user is currently on a smooth slope of Mount Improbable |
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I should've capitlaized "Earth" in the OP; Life on Earth origins (to answer your question, eburacum), as in primordial soup hypothesis...
I find it a conundrum somehow but can't quite articulate it at this time... more interested in the poll results really... ![]()
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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill |
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I'd go with an Earthly origin, just because the conditions in space are less than conducive to life. Could early life have come here from Mars? Possible, but 1) it would need to survive the trip, which would be no easy matter even for today's highly-evolved lifeforms with 5 billion years of survival adaptations, and 2) there's no reason to think Mars would be more likely to develop life than Earth.
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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." Shakespeare, Twelfth Night Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor "Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg "Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort |
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Oh, forgot to address the comet hypothesis. No dice there, a comet wouldn't have enough energy or any liquid water to support life. Even heat from the sun only sublimes off the outer layers, taking both heat and volatiles into space.
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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." Shakespeare, Twelfth Night Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor "Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg "Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort |
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Abiogenesis. Even if it didn't start here, it started somewhere.
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I suspect abiogenesis on Earth. It doesn't mean panspermia or CA is impossible, just unlikely, in my opinion.
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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau |
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Technically, since Earth was formed by planetoids which clumped into planetesimals and then into planets, all water and organic chemicals on Earth did start out in comets and asteroids.
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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." Shakespeare, Twelfth Night Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor "Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg "Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort |
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I'd guess abiogenesis on Earth, but there are so many varieties of possible, if unlikely, transfers of life between planets and other domains. Abiogenesis on Mars with a subsequent move to Earth would be interesting.
After that there are many conceivable levels right up to galactic or even universal panspermia. I don't think they are probable, but what do I know? If I had to guess, I'd say sparsely distributed independent biospheres with occasional cross transfers within a solar system. Last edited by agingjb : 12-June-2007 at 04:47 PM. |
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Our data, with a sample size of 1, are a little sparse. Abiogenesis on Earth seems to involve a smaller chain of unlikely events, so that's the way I'm voting. I'd put some money on it, but not all my savings.
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Actually, I think we've got a sample size of three, maybe more. One of the planets shoes signs of life and another presents evidence of past life, but is itself too small a sampling to be sure. The other objects currently show no signs of present or past life.
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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau |
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If you mean the Mars meteor, that hasn't been confirmed yet as having evidence of Martian life. What other planet has signs of life?
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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." Shakespeare, Twelfth Night Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor "Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg "Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort |
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That's what I mean, it's inconclusive, but it is still part of the sample set, along with Luna and possibly Titan, Eros, and perhaps we should include Venus too since we've landed on all of them.
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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau |
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I guess I just don't understand what you mean. Earth is still the only planet confirmed to have evidence of life. Mars has questionable data that might show evidence, or might not. None of the other planets/moons mentioned have shown any evidence, at present all we have is speculation, based on a few possibilities. That still leaves just one planet with life.
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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction." Shakespeare, Twelfth Night Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor "Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg "Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort Last edited by Noclevername : 13-June-2007 at 01:48 AM. |