Ophiolite

You don't say. How community spirited of you to let me know. You posted a selection of definitions from two sources. Your OED definition was far from complete. Both sources suffer the problem of all dictionaries that they lack currency. Moreover, you seem to working under the faulty impression that dictionaries determine meaning. They do not. Usage determines meaning and lexicographers seek to capture this meaning. Meanings change with time. The immense strength of the OED lies in its etymology. As noted, it is difficult for current meaning to be fully, promptly and accurately captured. Beyond that, the words used to define the object word may be varied yet deliver much the same meaning. So to be clear, you can - by all means - subscribe to an 'actual definition', but the danger of that is twofold: reality may come up an kick you in the rump; you place uneccesary restraints upon yourself. There is no 'official' definition, though I grant you the OED comes as close to one as possible. Anglophones are not trapped as the French are, by fruitless attempts of a government to control the development of their language. Meaning is given by how we use the words, therefore meaning is very personal and ultimately the sum total of a multitude of personal definitions. In the context of this thread it is even more important to step beyond the dictionary defintions. (By the way, you never made clear which definition you thought of as your official one.) The OP has asked for our understanding of wisdom. He has asked for our personal definitions. I am sure he has access to a good dictionary, so he has only initial interest in what they have to say. He wishes to hear our definitions, our meanings. Finally, if you take the time to consider the meaning of what I have said about wisdom you will see that it is wholly consistent with the definitions you hold so precious. What it does is provide an additional perspective on those meanings, something I believe the OP was looking for. May I suggest, not at all humbly, that before you next accuse someone of being wrong it would be wise to give the matter some deeper thought. Know where your limits are. Edited for silly typo (know=no)

Dictionaries reflect common usage, they do not set standards, they reflect standards. If you want a scientific definition of theory one consults a dictionary of science. If one wishes a lay definition, reflecting everyday usage one consults a regular dictionary. It is not the dictionary makers who need to be approached, but educators and individuals.

Is that D.S.T.? Dinosaur Saving Time?

The authors are not harnessing energy from vortex shedding but, as noted in the extract, from wake galloping. Given that they have generated energy in wind tunnel tests the technique appears to be valid both theoretically and practically. Hyung-JoJung, Seung-WooLee "The experimental validation of a new energy harvesting system based on the wake galloping phenomenon." Smart Mater. Struct. 20 (2011) Abstract In this paper, a new energy harvesting system based on wind energy is investigated. To this end, the characteristics and mechanisms of various aerodynamic instability phenomena are first examined and the most appropriate one (i.e. wake galloping) is selected. Then, a wind tunnel test is carried out in order to understand the occurrence conditions of the wake galloping phenomenon more clearly. Based on the test results, a prototype electromagnetic energy harvesting device is designed and manufactured. The effectiveness of the proposed energy harvesting system is extensively examined via a series of wind tunnel tests with the prototype device. Test results show that electricity of about 370 mW can be generated under a wind speed of 4.5 m s − 1 by the proposed energy harvesting device. The generated power can easily be increased by simply increasing the number of electromagnetic parts in a vibrating structure. Also, the possibility of civil engineering applications is discussed. It is concluded from the test results and discussion that the proposed device is an efficient, economic and reliable energy harvesting system and could be applied to civil engineering structures. The complete paper.

Wisdom is about recognition of limits.

Not strictly true. What we lack is an effective one that generates subtantially more energy output than input.

1. The metallic content of the impactor was not necessarily large. The precise nature of the bolide is still disputed, but the smart money is on a stone, or a comet, not an iron. 2. As swansont has pointed out the majority of the energy was employed in ways other than sinking material into the mantle. This includes crater excavation, crustal compaction, generation of tsunamis, melting and vapourising country rock, ejecting material into orbital and sub-orbital trajectories, heating the atmosphere, evaporating part of the ocean, etc. 3. Therefore no singificant activity of the type you suggest was to expected and - guess what - we don't see any. 4. Mantle plumes are thought to be very long lived and very deep seated. Your proposal seems incapable of initiating such an entity. 5. Although the total energy released by the impact is large and worthy of the adjective catastrophic, it is very small compared with the total thermal energy of the Earth, by several orders of magnitude and would not therefore be expected to influence long term, deep seated processes.

None of the statements you have made are correct in the way in which you mean them. Whatever you have read or were told that led you to believe these statements are true was either badly presented, also wrong, or badly misinterpreted. It would be helpful to other members and casual readers if you verified your statements before posting. 1. You are correct that one form of hydrogen fusion is a chain reaction, but you imply by this - borrowing from popular lexicology - that it is a run-away chain reaction. Such is decidedly not the case. Even with the conditions deep within the sun, creation of two protons to deuterium, the first step in the reaction, is so rare half the hydrogen in the sun will still be unconverted 5 billion years from now. 2. Conditions to produce fusion into the higher atomic weight elements are not present within the design of any proposed fusion reactor. Further, as a minor detail, the progress towards iron is associated with supernovae, not novae - an entirely different beast. 3. Which is why the tokamak reactors contain the reaction in a magnetic field. 4. Wow! The atmosphere and the Earth's magnetic field are two completely different things. The magnetic field does protect the atmosphere from some very slow erosional effects of the solar wind, but is not what keeps it from collapsing. The core of the planets is already polarised, hence the magnetic field. Edit: the following was added as a separate post after noting stringjunky's observations. I believe the primary intention of a nuclear bomb is that people should be scared of its effects. Otherwise it's not of much use. Tell me, are you not somewhat scared of its effects? And if not, why not? You don't think safety considerations, real or imagined, have had a part to play?

I understand your frustration, but you are being governed by emotion, not logic. Many more people read threads like this than contribute to them. Many of these are not forum members, but interested persons, often young, trying to understand the world and the conflicting theories (in all senses of the word) as to how it functions. Discussion like this provide a current opportunity for the weaknesses of the creationist arguments and the strength of the scientific ones to be expressed. If the scientific arguments are presented objectively, not as scientific dogma. If objections are dealt with thoroughly and dispassionately, then there is a good chance the lurker will come to favour these over the unfounded assertions of the creationists. Presenting the arguments objectively includes making sure the objections are to the logic and lack of evidence of the creationist position, not an attack on faith, or religion in general. For these reasons I see these discussions as both welcome and necessary, as one road of many to educate and inform the layman about the nature of science in general and evolution in particular. We may never persuade the creationist initiator of the thread of why he is so painfully wrong, but that is not who our primary target audience should be.

Marat's position appears to be that there is a degree of pressure not to disturb current paradigms, especially if the disturbance would be substantial. That is a sound and, to me, obvious position to take. An example that occurs to me is the former strong disposition against any hint of catastrophic thinking within geology. Before Alvarez proposed that an impactor caused the KT boundary extinction event two Nobel laureates had suggested similar processes. Both were ignored. Had they been neophytes it is doubtful they would have been published, and if published they would have been castigated for the unorthodoxy. The Catastrophe versus Uniformity argument had been won by Lyell, not Cuvier a century or so earlier. Woe betide the geologist who stepped out of line and suggested catastrophes might still afflict the globe. Science, eventually corrects this bias, but it takes time for the data to accumulate to a level where it cannot be ignored. Edtharan appears to say this is not the case. That is an error and is thus part of the problem.

It appears to me that all you have demonstrated is that biological evolution could be identical to algorithmic evolution. You would also have to demonstrate that no other mechansims are present in biological evolution in order to state the case has been proven.

You don't think vibrations waste energy?

As I have stated, I think they are. I believe this is because you have taken a simplistic view of the topic, relying - perhaps - on popular accounts of the issue These can rarely adequately deal with a topic in the depth required for a thorough judgement. I accept this, but I have to tell you that you have insulted people. Some people deserve to be insulted. Your targets have been inappropriate and your attacks have made you appear like a self-indulgent, ignorant asshole. I accept your apology for the posts that have created this impression, but you will understand that my acceptance is conditional on your future conduct. In 1964, at secondary school, I built a circuit with transistors for adding two sets of binary numbers together and displaying the results with lights. I called it BASIL - Binary Adder Subtractor with Indicator Lights. I wrote a suite of programs for monitoring drilling rig operations in the early 1970s. I ran a small team of programmers in the late 1970s. I used to troubleshoot electronic euqipment to the component level. I wrote machine language code for mini-computers, on the fly, to diagnose problems. I was part of a four man team in the 1990s that laid out the specifications for a large technical data base. I know software. I know hardware. I know the mindsets needed to work with these. That's just one of the areas of expertise I have been involved in. I've also set up quality systems for companies. ISO9001 is part of my working vocabulary. Today I teach about the drilling process. One of the things I tell my students is that there is no ISO9001 for sedimentation. Geology is a hell of a lot more random than a J-K flip flop. You need to adopt the mind set appropriate to the subject. Geology is not as clear cut as the input of a logic probe. I don;t know where you got the idea that you were challenging. The research literature does not offer that idea in such simplistic terms, though some elements of what you are saying can be recognised in the research. However, this is why you have been given a hard time. In essence you have been setting up a strawman that has an element of truth, but is essentially inaccurate, and then attacking it. That is not a productive use of brain cells. Here is a useful review articlefrom 2002 that conveys some of the complexity of the issues. There has been a ton of research in the decade since then that explore this topic. I estimate around 400 published papers in that time. At one point you were implicitly critical that I expressed reservations about the snowball Earth hypothesis. Until and unless I have read at least the abstracts of at least half those papers, and the full text of at least the most important two dozen, I'm not in a position to have a clear view on the matter.

I am returning to the dropstone issue again, since your observations on this are laced with misinterpretation. Let's look at this in the sort of detail you should really be applying before you start questioning current consensus views. You think these dropstones are found in deserts (and later concede, in other places) and that this is evidence for them being transported by glaciers. This is an understanding, sufficiently warped to be quite wrong. Firstly, the dropstone character, including why we know them to be dropstones is dealt with in several places. (e.g. 1,2,3) Secondly, your tie in with desert locations likely arose as follows. The notion of Snowball Earth grew out of research on a rhytymically layered siltstone in the Elatina Formation in the Flinders Ranges, a desert area, in Australia. (4) This formation includes diamictites and dropstones deposited from ice rafts. The glacial nature of these deposits is not disputed. (If you wish to dispute it, please bring forward factual observations to support that dispute.) There is no way in which these dropstones "could have been depossitted(sic) by glaciers from any ice age in the past". Your suggestion that this is so reveals that you have a) no idea what a drop stone is; b) no idea of their emplacement within other sediments; c) no idea of the associated sediments which exhibit a glacial origin. Given the depth of your misunderstanding on this issue do you still maintain your understanding of the possible character of volcanic activity in the Neoproterozoic and its influence on a Snowball Earth scenario is sufficient to allow you to have a relevant opinion on the issue? 1. Lemon,N.M., Gostin,V.A. Glacigenic sediments of the late Proterozoic Elatina Formation and equivalents, Adelaide Geosyncline, South Australia. In: The Evolution of a Late Precambrian—Early Paleozoic Rift Complex: the Adelaide Geosyncline. 1990 2. Coats R.P., Preiss W.V. Stratigraphic and geochronological reinterpretation of late Proterozoic glaciogenic sequences in the Kimberley Region, Western Australia Precambrian Research Volume 13, Issues 2-3, November 1980 3. Williams, G.E. Late Precambrian glacial climate and the Earth’s obliquity. Geol.Mag., 112, 441–444 1975. 4. Kirschivink, J.L. Late Proterozoic Low-Latitude Global Glaciation: the Snowball Earth In: J. W. Schopf & C. Klein (eds.), The Proterozoic Biosphere: A Multidisciplinary Study. Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Mark, yur observations in this thread and that on dating techniques suggests you have a limited familiarity with the topics you are discussing. This is perfectly natural and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with it. I do question, however, the conclusions that you then reach based upon a limited and inadequate understanding, which more often than not seems to be a misunderstanding. For example: It is irrelevant what the current climate is in the places where bedrock exposures reveal dropstones. The fact that you initially stipulated dropstones were found in deserts and that you repeat the observation here and then compound it by noting that they are found in 'other places' suggests that you do attach significance to the current climate/environment of dropstone exposures. That betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what is being observed. With all appropriate respect to Moontanman he is not, as far as I know, a qualified geologist and certainly not one working in this specialised area, nor is this a peer reviewed science journal. Occassional imprecise writing in this context is a reflection on Moontanman and not on science. This is not my first rodeo mark, so don't play games with me. Erecting strawmen is a cheap trick. Don't play that one again or this discussion is over. No one here has said this idea is based on rock solid science. There are enough question marks for the total coverage to be debated. I haven't consulted any recent research to see quite where we stand now. Until I see that research that provides strong evidence one way or the other I remain "not convinced". That is an appropriate scientific position to take. Another strawman - volcanism did not shut down for 25 million years, so we do not need to explain something that did not happen.Have you actually read any of the research in this area? If so, tell me what you have read. Otherwise I'll give you a reading list that will help overcome your current ignorance.

No. You implicitly raised the subject of creationism by posting a set of questions that are straight out of the creationists handbook. I have seen the same questions posed many times on a number of science forums, always by creationists. Mark, I would also ask you to give some thought as to how you asked those questions. I stand ready to be corrected by you, but it seems you asked these from an honest, heartfelt belief - arising from your faith - that radiometric dating (and other related things) are flawed. However, you asked those questions in an oh so casual fashion, as if your objections were not faith related. That is sneaky and it is dishonest. I asked how long you had been a creationist to bring that out into the open. I hope you will maintain an openess in our further exchanges. Of course I did. You were questioning the validity of carbon dating as if it existed in some kind of vacuum. One of the reasons geochronologists have such confidence in carbon dating is that its numbers are confirmed and validated by other techniques, including dendrochronology. That is the immense strength of science that it uses, indeeds demands independent verification of observations and hypotheses. I have emboldened the key statements in each of my quotes. You need to explain how you reach your bizarre conclusion. Perhaps you have misunderstood me. I'll try again: Science does not tolerate dogma. The scientific method inhibits and eventually exposes and destroys dogma. In some regards the opposition to and destruction of dogma lies at the heart of science. However, individual scientists (being human and subject to human fraility)) may, on occassion, behave in a most unscientific manner and fall into the trap of expounding dogma. This is a failing. This is a grotesque distortion of their role as scientists. This is unacceptable. And this is, sooner or later, exposed by the scientific method. You say this is convenient. I assure you there is nothing convenient about it. It slows the progress of science and provides the opportunity for some individuals to deliberately or accidentally misunderstand how science works. That is damnably inconvenient! Mark, you are the on challenging well established scientific hypotheses in a scientific context. It is your responsibility to provide evidence to support your non-standard, unconventional position. The solidity of geochronology rests on a vast amount of interlocked information, observation, experiment, testing, validation and the like. Are you truly prepared to study that material in order to reach an objective assessment as to its validity? That is an important question for you. I certainly lack the skills to present the evidence in a brief form in a way that will convince someone like yourself. I did not arrive at acceptance of the dating methodologies because someone told me about them in a lecture theatre, or I read a paragraph or chapter in a textbook. I accepted them because of the mass of experimental results I saw reported, the anayltical techniques I witnesssed in action, the sampling process I saw practiced in the field, the theoretical issues I read about in research papers, the vigorous debates about issues of contamination and sources I was a spectator of. You have three choices: 1) You can put in the effort to explore this subject thoroughly and objectively, but I assure you - it will be an effort. 2) You can accept that the work of thousands of scientists on dating is broadly correct, since deficiencies and defects in the process have been progressively ironed out. 3) You can remain ignorant of the awesome power of the methodology and the exciting means by which it was developed. If you choose option 1) I shall be happy to provide you with references that would get you started. Mark, you really need to do some studying. In science there is nothing no higher level than theory. Theory does not mean in science what it means to the layman - its not just an idea about how something might work. It is a integrated description of how things do work, validated by hundreds of thousands of experiments and tests and observations, subjected to intense, hostile scrutiny over decades - and in the case of evolution more than a century and a half. Every idea it rests upon has been substantiated many, many times over. You appear to be repeating the dogma that sits in armory of every creationists I have ever talked to. It isn't convincing, it isn't right, it is ignorant and it is not conducive to a an exchange of views. The only way you can fail to have seen this evidence is if you have closed your eyes to it. Let me ask you this - have you even bothered to read Origin of Species by Darwin? Now Darwin's ideas have been substantially modified over time, but he certainly opened our eyes to a new, productive way of looking at the world and is not a bad starting point for someone genuinely interested in assessing the validity of evolution. Are you willing to put in the effort to explore the evidence, or are you too scared you might be convinced? Please don't be silly. There is no benefit to supporting evolution for the sake of it. What would be the benefit of doing so, what would be the purpose? It's purest nonsense. You seem to be of that school of thought that believes all scientists are atheists out to prove the non-existence of God. I'm sorry if I become rude here, but that is monumentally dumb! You could ask the pope what he thinks about such nonsense for starters! Speciation has been observed. Are you willing to study the evidence, or are you going to continue to parrot the tired old creationist dogma that you have been spouting thus far? If you are willing to open your mind, there are many here who will take the time to explain things to you, but not if you approach this with opinions cast in stone. You really are working through the standard objections, aren't you. Darwin saw that it was a potential objection to this theory. He raised, as any good scientist will, any and all objections to his own theory that he could think of. He also saw that in time the Cambrian explosion would be explainable. And so it has proved. Are you willing to do the extensive study that will demonstrate this to you, or will you insist in burying your head in a Holocene sand rather than a Cambrian outcrop? If I am honest to myself I must accept the reality of evolution. If I am honest to the devoted work of armies of palaeontologists and biologists and genetecists and other scientists I must accept the reality of evolution. If I am honest to the use of a brain and an ability to think for myself and a desire to understand the world then I must accept the reality of evolution. If I am honest to the monumental mass of inter-related, well validated evidence supporting evolution then I must accept its reality. There is a whiff of dishonesty in the air, but it is not coming from here. No, you won't because your mind is closed. If it is not, then accept my challenge posed in option 1 above.

Moontanman has adequately addressed the variability of volcanism and the need for a substantial build up of carbon dioxide to cause a reversal of the ice age. I want to handle the dropstones. People don't make assumptions. Nor are dropstones specifically found in deserts. The dropstones are found in rock sequences that date from the specific periods in question and are found at a variety of paleolatitudes. It is true that recently ice ages have occured every 100k years or so - strictly speaking we are currently in an ice age. There is absolutely no risk that we could confuse recent ice age rocks with preCambrian rocks. You ask what our thoughts are about Snowball Earth. I am satisfied that there were periods of extensive glaciation, but am not yet convinced that there was total coverage of the globe. Ongoing research should clarify this within the decade.

Markearthling, in order to respect the rules of the forum and the reminder from swansont I intend only to dicuss those portions of your post directly dealing with dating techniques, with a couple of exceptions, which relate to the background and context of the dating discussion. I'll address those first. Yes, most things are open to interpretation. That is why the scientific method is so effective at guiding such interpretation. The method demands that observations be repeatable; that all assumptions and conclusions be questioned, not once, but many times; that all plausible interpretations be considered. Individual scientists, being human, may occassionally be dogmatic, but science has no room for, or tolerance of dogma. Your comment that science conveniently interprets is a telling choice of words. This implies that science has an agenda, that it is trying to 'prove something' and selects interpretations that support this agenda. If this was your intent it displays a serious ignorance of the nature and objectivity of the scientific method. I hope you will take a more honest approach in our further discussion. Yes, I do. I am careful to talk confidently only about those topics about which I am knowledgeable . In subject areas where I lack expertise I either ask for information, or remain silent. If I am expressing an opinion rather than an established truth I try to make that clear. Yes. Do you know about the inspiring work being conducted my many researchers around the planet to elucidate how these awesome life forms arose and evolved? Do you understand how the work of botantists, zoologists, gentecists, anatomists, embyrologists, microbiologists, astronomers, statisiticians, palaeontologists, geochemists, biochemists, cladists, and members of a score of other disciplines, is all coming together to bring understaning and clarity to the separate processes of abiogenesis and evolution? Please do not answer this point here. If you wish to discuss this then start a new thread and pm me. None of my principles are shaky: that's why they are called principles. Now to the specific issues in relation to dating. This seems to be an intrinsically foolish statement. An equivalent would be this: just because I have never seen a dolphin walking down my local high street does not mean that might not happen tomorrow. There is no reason to expect that any evidence will arise showing significant variations in decay rates. There is plenty of evidence to support the constancy of decay rates over time. It is unreasonable to withhold provisional acceptance of the constancy of decay rates. (In science all acceptance is provisional: dogma is prohibited.) The Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. The Late Heavy Bombardment Phase ended about 3.8 billion years ago. The first reasonable evidence of life is dated around 3.5 billion years, allowing 300 million years for life to arise. I am from a minority school that suspects 'primitive' life may have arrived from space ready-made. This could then provide a longer time period and a larger volume in which life might develop. I am at a loss as to what your objection is here. We are talking - at your suggestion - about carbon dating. Carbon dating is valid out to about 50,000 years. Dendrochronology runs out to beyond 10,000 years. That's the same order of magnitude and more than adequate to provide calibration of the carbon dating.

Of course they do. All scientific work rests on critical assumptions. However, since researchers recognise the critical nature of these assumptions they are rigorously tested. Experiments and observations must be repeated with consistency; alternative methods of determining values are applied and the results compared. Careful analysis of the material, its context, mode of collection, preservation and transport, history, environment of 'deposition', chemical character, etc can allow us to avoid such errors. In addition the ages determined with this method can be correlated against other dating techniques, such as dendrochronology. There is no evidence to suggest decay rates have varies in any significant way. If they have, then our entire understanding of atomic behaviour is badly wrong and it is purest luck that our predictions based on theory are correct for everything from stellar charcteristics, to particle accelerators. If, occassionally, some of the assumptions (1 and 2, not 3) are poorly justified then the dates for that isolated example would be wrong, by some amount. You are right: they are probably better today than most people give them credit for. Now may I ask you a question: for how long have you been a creationist?

I think you are misinterpreting what you see. Flight patterns of birds vary, but consider for a moment seagulls. As they glide alongside a ship they can maintain a very level flight with considerable stability. When they do 'tilt and swerve' it is for one of two reasons: to better position themselves to look for food; to adjust to minor air currents. Similar behaviour can be seen on the parts of hawks and kestrels. Fine control of feather positions affords all birds an excellent aerial stability. Evolution has served them well. A large 'tailplane' would be a serious disdavatange and poorer solution to what they have in place.

And I apologise for posting my observation before reading the entire thread.

You subscribe to the oscillating universe theory, then? Otherwise there is no way in which you can describe nuclear energy as renewable!

I doub my understanding or reading in this area is much different from yours, so let the blind lead the blind. In a sense everywhere is the centre, since the universe is thought to have expanded from an incredibly dense 'thing' that was almost a point. Since it probably has no edge then how can it have a centre. Your balloon analogy holds. Show your friend a square sheet of paper and ask him to point to the centre of the surface of the paper. Then ask him to do the same thing for the surface of the balloon. Now tell him imagine that instead of a two dimesional surface there is a three dimensional space. When he says he can't note that few people can: we didn't need that kind of ability when we roamed the savanna.

Perhaps you missed my more detailed response to your concept and request to explain why it wouldn't work when we discussed the point on another forum. For your convenience, here are my concerns. I await your response with interest. 1. Mars could only be captured by Jupiter if a third body were involved. What was this third body. 2. There is no plausible mechanism by which Mars could be captured, then released by Jupiter. If you believe there is please show the maths of the process. 2. You state that once captured, Jupiter begins to "bend and warp" the planet, creating the Highlands and Lowlands. Please explain how this "bending and warping" creates a lowland area with a thin crust and relatively few craters and a highland area with a thick crust and many craters. Further explain how this "bending and warping" caused residual magnetism to be found only in the Highlands. 3. You state "as the little planet passes into the shadow of the giant planet, its surface and atmosphere have become a turbulent mess". Your implication is that passage into the shadow is responsible for this turbulent mess. Since the planet will be passing in and out of shadow in a period of days this statement is ambiguous at best. 4. Demonstrate mathematically that the distance at which L1 enters the body of Mars is greater than the Roche limit. 5. Why will this situation, supposing for a moment that it can actually occur, "carve a giant crater into its surface"? Where is this giant crater on Mars today? 6. Explain how "thousands" of asteroids can now "hover in the no-man's land between the two planets". 7. Then, miraculously it seems, Mars moves away from Jupiter and the asteroids stop hovering! Really, if you had even a passing grasp of orbital mechanics you would not make such assinine statements. If you believe I am mistaken show me the maths - in simplified and approximate form if you wish - that demonstrates I am wrong. 8. You state that the majority of these asteroids return to Mars, but a proportion of them go on to form the asteroid belt. Please explain how you reconcile an age for the asteroids that is greater than the age of Mars. 9. The sound quality of your video, coupled with your nasal congestion make it diffcult to make out some sections. You appear to say that some of the asteroids are not the familiar irons and stones, but are made of "air and water". Certainly you say that as they hit they will cause "high velocity air to rush from the Highlands to the Lowlands". Please explain how air was retained in low mass asteroid. 10. Explain how the impact of asteroids would cause the "formation of massive volcanoes". Well over one hundred impact structures are known on the Earth. None of them caused any vulcanism. Any one of these ten points is sufficient to invalidate your speculation. Together they render it simply wrong.

It was kind of you to establish that you have a superficial knowledge of the topic. That let's me pitch this at the right level. The issue is greatly simplified by the fact that we are talking about the emergence of life and not the emergence of intelligent life. If it were the latter we would have to exclude a substantial proportion of hypothetical planets because their residence time in the habitable zone would be inadequate, or they were adversely affected by supernovae, gamma ray bursters and the like. Since we are considering only the origin of life all of these concerns can be set aside. We are left, largely, with issues of chemistry. On the one hand we have no problem in assembling a nice array of prebiotic molecules. The GMCs are full of them. Comets and asteroids carry them. There are many routes to building up more complex molecules by lightning strikes, adherence to mineral surfaces, cometary impact and so on. Almost anywhere we look we see simple organic molecules and ways of populating the primitive Earth with them to yield Darwin's "warm pond" filled with "all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c.,". But on the other hand we have not determined the pathway by which we might move from this eclectic mix to the first, simple life-form. There are a dozen or more general descriptions of how this may have occured, but nothing established even to the point where we can say "life may not have originated in this manner, but it most certainly could have originated in this manner". We are, in all regardless, in a highly speculative and provisional state of understanding. We know life did originate, but in the absence of a clear, detailed process we cannot assess the probability of any stage of this process and certainly not the probability of the overall process. Eventually, I feel confident, we shall be able to do so. I suspect we shall find the probability is high - indeed I shall be surprised if it is not. But at present, with our current knowledge, it is impossible to quantify what that probability is.