NordicMonkey

Thanks a LOT! I think I might have something for him now

"According to recent observations, there might be life in this universe." -Science

You, experienced in biogenesis or biochemistry!: I have this one guy whom opened a conversation (text) like this: "There aren't enough atoms in the universe for life to arise by chance according to science." As a student in his last year in finnish "lukio", I pretty well knew that this wasn't true so I managed to write an answer: "Hey dude you got this one wrong. Life is possible to form "accidentally": There are about 3.0 x 10^23 stars in the observable universe, a big portion of them have planetary systems orbiting them. Lets say about 1/100 of them. Now we have 3 x 10^21 planetary systems out there. It's a fucking big number. Now out of all those planetary systems there are millions of billions planets like ours with a molten spinning core forming a magnetic field and some of those planets have water and some don't. Its actually proven that life doesn't need water or oxygen to form, it can substitute even carbon with silicon. Thus the possibility of planets CAPABLE of forming life increases. The calculated possibility of the simplest known "life", a self replicating peptide only 32 amino acids long, forming randomly on earth is about 1 in 10^40. I know, it's really big number considering the fact that the known universe should have about 10^80 atoms in it BUT the possibility of life forming and evolving randomly is still possible. Now to give that a boosting factor: the approx. amount of water in the oceans is about 10^24 litres. The concentration of amino acids in the prebiotic oceans was about 10^-6M which is dilute, yes. BUT still 10^31 self-replicating peptides would form in under a year, because of these billions of chemical reactions happening simultaneously. The atoms are there, and the conditions for forming life are there. Not by some "intelligent creator" but by chance which our enormous universe has given. Now think about that happening in billions of planets. Do you really believe it's really that impossible? Life in the universe isn't some miracle. It's "de rigueur"." His response came in pretty quickly: "COPIED AND PASTED answer from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html LOL! (at this point I tought about leaving this unanswered, but I really wanted to bring all those memories from chemistry and biology classes back up) Your copied and pasted answer doesn’t even bring up the FACT that you need functional amino acid sequences to make a functional peptide or a protein. They come in a ratio of about 1 in 10^77. Furthermore, they don’t even mention that amino acids come in two forms, they’re called optical isomers. D-amino acids are harmful to life, all life on Earth is composed of L-amino acids (left-handed). Also, unnatural non-proteinogenic amino acids won't form bonds. Natural amino acids come in a ratio of 1:3. So you have another obstacle to overcome. So, the probability to find that functional peptide would be 1/(1/2)^32=~4.3*10^10. To get the bonds right, 1/(1/3)^32=~1.86*10^15. So, 1/((10^77)*(4.3*10^10) * (1.86*10^15))=1.25*10^-103. or 1 in 8*10^102 which is IMPOSSIBLE. Following so far?, good because that is high school math for you. "the concentration of amino acids in the prebiotic oceans was about 10^-6M which is dilute, yes. BUT still 10^31 self-replicating peptides would form in under a year” LAUGHABLY WRONG. The website from where you got this nonsense might not be aware that the environment in the Early Earth was mainly composed of nitrogen and oxygen, which would have destroyed any organic material from forming. Try again Peer-reviewed: Ratio of functional protein sequenceshttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723" (I did not actually copy and paste my answer) This is where I could not give an answer to him. The article he referred to was a bit sketchy considering his argument. My knoweledge about amino acids and biochemistry stops at basic bonding stuff and structural stuff so I'd like to expand my knoweledge on this matter. Help?