An interesting article in American Scientist; "In this article we present a view gaining attention in the origin-of-life community that takes the question out of the hatchery and places it squarely in the realm of accessible, plausible chemistry. As we see it, the early steps on the way to life are an inevitable, incremental result of the operation of the laws of chemistry and physics operating under the conditions that existed on the early Earth, a result that can be understood in terms of known (or at least knowable) laws of nature. As such, the early stages in the emergence of life are no more surprising, no more accidental, than water flowing downhill."

Life in the universe is inevitable?
There is no "origin" of Life; it is happening everywhere, all the time.

I tend to think so anyway.

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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

Useful article, points out the physical as well as chemical inclination toward bigger molecules.

Another poster pointed out that the "clumping together and mixing up" nature of gravity itself (and friction) makes life seem less improbable.

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Yonder is Dubhe seen on Earth tonight as it was in the days of Grover Cleveland's presidency whereas this way is Deneb seen as it was in the lifetime of Muhammed . If one somehow travelled to Deneb at very close to c then whenever you looked back you'd measure Earth as closer to you than the distance you would simultaneously measure between Earth and Dubhe.

Interesting article. Thanks.

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Indeed this is an interesting article.

Truly life in the universe or even here on earth is inevitable!
A lot of theories have been made regarding the existence of life but still we are bombarded with a lot of questions.

Taken out religious content. Dear AnalynSarte, we do not discuss religion here on BAUT, nor make the claims that you did here on the board. Please refrain from these topics. (Tusenfem)

This is good, it gives us a handle on how life may have originated on earth from natural chemical processes. Thus, it gives us a bridge between "life" (whatever that is) and non-life.

Ironically, as I type this, I am listening to a podcast debate between Kent Hovind, a creationist, and a chemist. Hovind asked the chemist to describe how life originated from non-life, the chemist didn't know, and Hovind claimed a debater's point. Well, this article would have neutralized him.

You're quite wrong there. You're assuming that these people listen to reason. If they did, they wouldn't be Creationists.

I've always thought that life is plentiful in the universe, but complex multicellular life, far less plentiful and technologically capable complex multicellular life, much rarer still.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

Lets look at some data .

Before I start to speak on this topic let me assure people that I am no expert on anything , But on the other hand I am on some things .

I AM an expert in debating people about anything .

Where did humans come from ? I would say this much tho....If no life is on mars that could mean that there is a good chance that there is no life in the milky way other than we as a race of life and creatures ..I will have more on this as the days come

Protohumans.

That's a sweeping statment. I don't see how you can come to that conclusion from your first assumption.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

That's the spirit! Good stuff!

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Yonder is Dubhe seen on Earth tonight as it was in the days of Grover Cleveland's presidency whereas this way is Deneb seen as it was in the lifetime of Muhammed . If one somehow travelled to Deneb at very close to c then whenever you looked back you'd measure Earth as closer to you than the distance you would simultaneously measure between Earth and Dubhe.

So you're saying you can't be trusted. Expert debaters can argue any side of an argument convincingly no matter the truth of the matter.

On the other hand debating brings out all sides of a view ...Not just 1 side ....

If something is proved with science then if someone is trying to debunk a fact of a fact then its not so much right or wrong as a self goal to debunk ...Most ideas I ask are not to debunk anyone or anything ..its to ask ..

Facts are not truth and reality is not a fact....There are the same .....Fact is truth and its also reality...so anything that is fact is always right

debating people about any thing is not bad ..Even if its not based on fact

Tell that to my wife!

Aaahh, now I understand...

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Yonder is Dubhe seen on Earth tonight as it was in the days of Grover Cleveland's presidency whereas this way is Deneb seen as it was in the lifetime of Muhammed . If one somehow travelled to Deneb at very close to c then whenever you looked back you'd measure Earth as closer to you than the distance you would simultaneously measure between Earth and Dubhe.

Yup, clear as mud.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

I finally cracked open that issue of American Scientist and read the article. Brilliant.

It gets away from one of the big sticking points of a lot of the previous work, on how you get from the "soup" of complex organic molecules (for which I think there is abundant evidence) to life. Most of the previous explanations have been of the "happy accident" type - given enough time, the unique combination will come together.

The creationists love to jump on that sticking point, particularly the point that this seems to be a thermodynamic problem - that we are going from a simple, high entropy system, to a complex, low entropy system, and this couldn't spontaneously happen.

These guys show that it isn't a happy accident, but pre-close to inevitable. The show that the entropy argument fails because of something we forget (I'll admit, I never thought this way). Yes, we are going from simple to complex, but we are not doing this at thermodynamic equilibrium, but in a high energy environment. There pond analogy is brilliant. It is not even a question of the "water going down hill", it is just finding a path for it to do so.

And I think the citric acid cycle may be a good choice - it certainly is very worthy of further examination.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Yup, people often use the entropy argument to 'prove' that things always have a tendency to run down, to become disordered and when they find something going counter to that argument, they defer to the metaphysical. Whereas all that is needed is an input of energy to bring order from disorder (this principle also applies when you are asked to tidy up your room by your mother - unless you expend energy and effort, the room will remain messy!).

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

If the reasoning in the article is on the money then we might expect chemical systems analogous to life to occur wherever the laws of nature are trying to 'solve' slow to equilibrate imbalances. That in turn would affect our searches for life: Venus would then be more interesting than mars due to the chemical imbalances in its atmosphere. It would be interesting to know if nature adopts similar solutions regardless of the chemicals available, or if it does something radically different when H2SO4 is substituted for H2O, for example. More missions to Venus, hooray!

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For me it's enough for the garden to be beautifull; why do so many want to see fairies at the bottom?

"Many of those people are not getting four when adding two and two; many of them aren't even getting five or twenty-two. They're getting potato."
Gillianren

No, the OP is clear on that, this thread was started about life everywhere. From the OP:
That seems to be an overly optimistic generalization from the article, given what we know about Mars, for instance.

Why is it overoptimistic? And what does our knowledge of Mars have to do with it?

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

If modern life can be shown to be the end product of nature steadily improving it's mechanisms for levelling chemical disequilibria then I suppose that any example of a chemical imbalance levelling itself might be considered 'potential life'. Therefore 'life' would be occurring in a lot of places, if not everywhere. But that’s an 'if' and even if it is shown to be so many people might prefer a more narrow definition.

I like the idea though. Spontaneous structure does seem to arise wherever disequilibrium is in the process of balancing itself out, my favourite example of this being the weather, particularly hurricanes.

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For me it's enough for the garden to be beautifull; why do so many want to see fairies at the bottom?

"Many of those people are not getting four when adding two and two; many of them aren't even getting five or twenty-two. They're getting potato."
Gillianren

Mars is part of "everywhere"?

Well, if you want to be pedantic...

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

I was just explaining the argument that was presented by TRUTHisnotfacts

Do you have a different interpretation of the OP? (especially in light of the "all the time" comment)

If life is inevitable everywhere, then there seems to be little need for panspermia.

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

One just needs to look at the nebula in our own galaxy to see that life is inevitable. We can see clouds, 100s of light years across, that are made up of molecules required for the creation of life. There are clouds of alcohol, definitely a bigger molecule, and a lot of it out there.
http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/JCMT/publ...r/n5/sci2.html
http://www.physorg.com/news63346824.html

Other molecules found are ethyl cyanide and methyl cyanoacetylene.

Google Books: Astronomy

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Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

Ooooo, I think I thought a thought. Ooo I did, I did, I did think a thought.

Perhaps Im jumping the gun but nature's tendency towards complexity appears undisputable, or at least it seems that way to me. Biology appears to represent the apex of complexity in the universe - as far as we know.

Evolution is sort of the same in that natural selection emerged as a process - which not only enabled life to continue - it also provided a mechanism for continual improvement.

For this reason i cant accept that "we are alone". If nature is almost hard-wired to build layer upon layer of complexity, causing states of non-equilibrium, bifurcations leading to striking new physcial configurations and self organising behaviour, then it must be happening all over the place, wherever conditions permit.

Evolution is not a mechanism for continual improvement, at least in the sense that organisms get more complex or advanced. Species are only "improved" by evolution such that they better match current environmental conditions such that they are better able to reproduce.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Weren't you quoting and responding to A.DIM?

My take on the OP was simply that life can arise from chemicals anywhere (given the right conditions, ie, like early Earth or similar) that it happens all time (in those environments, which must not be uncommon given the size of the observable universe and what we know about exo-planet formation).

It seems that you have taken a much too literal interpretation for 'everywhere' and 'all the time'.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.