Life (split from New studies on the brains of flys with an interesting animation)

[Luc Turpin]

15 minutes ago, zapatos said:

No, it didn't. Do you think it got up and walked away? Just admit you were wrong and move on. This kind of argument makes you look childish.

You get it that Denver was an analogy; not the real thing, right?

[iNow]

This is why I’ve stopped engaging with your threads. It’s like trying to nail jello to a wall

[swansont]

13 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

The point being made here is that we did not lose knowledge, but realized that Denver was FARTHER away than we thought. We got closer to Denver, but Denver got FARTHER away.

You’re confusing perception with reality

13 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

We have the capacity to vastly accelerate the experimentation through technology and knoweldge. Mother nature used trial and error until it stumbled on the winning combination. We are not doing it this way, which should have dramatically increased the process of figuring out how its donw.

No, I don’t think this is true. We don’t know what the conditions were, and chemical combinations are, in a sense, trial and error.

Some events have low probability and rely on a large number of attempts. proton-proton fusion in the sun, for example, has a probability of somewhere around 10^16 10^-16 per collision - on average a proton would fuse once in a billion years. But there are a lot of protons, so we get fusion. Similarly an event that’s got a low probability of happening in a day in a 1L flask, is going to have that probability enhanced by the number of liters of water under the right conditions (10^15? 10^20?) and the number of days of the reaction (there being around 10^9 days in 300 million years)

The math doesn’t agree with your unsupported assertion

[Harrot]

In the past, I was like everyone else, trying to figure out how to define things like life, intelligence, freedom and so on. Today, I know the answer with certainty.

The principle is as follows: If there's a word whose meaning everyone knows, but there's no definition other than: I define it this way because at least we need a common definition, but there's no real reason to admit it, then... there's a high probability that the word belongs to the category of words related to feeling.

We feel life, so we have a word for that kind of feeling: alive. So “alive” is nothing other than that....a feeling.

 

“And what about the concept of 'truly' alive?

“I reply: “The what?

It would be a very big coincidence if, for a word that comes from a feeling we have using our naked eyes (because yes, the word life is an old word), thus an erroneous conception of the living things around us, there was also a real concept behind what would exist in the world.

Other misconceptions include “animals”, a kind of animate living beings, but of course this isn't always the case. After classifying living beings (yes, we can! Arbitrary classification works well in some cases and for some reasons), some scientists thought they could distinguish those that are “animate”, i.e. “in motion”, from the others. But we now know that there are species that contradict this rule. Some animals don't move, and some non-animals do.

 

The reasoning above can be applied to many other notions. I particularly like it when it comes to defining the term “random”, leading to the conclusion that random is very likely a feary tale.

 

Now that we know (or at least it's very likely) that “life” is just a feeling, we can of course try to find out why we feel that way. After all, the thing we have in front of us “looks” like life, and yes, the way nature created it is not the same as the way we would use if we wanted to manufacture it in a factory. Therefore, “what looks alive” and “what is created by nature” have something in common, of course, at least because the “mechanics” have the same origin for all the “living” things nature has created.

 

Are viruses alive?

No more or less than a cell, but because they come from cells (yes, cells create them), they can be considered to have the same origin as life: created by nature and related to things we consider living because that's how we feel about them.

They are related to life forms and we can even speculate (I had a teacher who believed this) that they are a kind of “spore”.

Are mushroom spores alive? Yes, no, but they obviously come from living cells... that's just my feeling on the subject.

 

[Luc Turpin]

10 hours ago, iNow said:

This is why I’ve stopped engaging with your threads. It’s like trying to nail jello to a wall

The prospect of creating life has become more ELUSIVE than anticipated as a result of the increase in the number of steps required to make it happen and the level of complexity of the endeavour. Denver did not move away; it just got more complicated getting there. So, I could have said HARDER rather than FARTHER. The point still remains though that we have not done so, create life.

 

 

[zapatos]

3 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

The point still remains though that we have not done so, create life.

YES! WE KNOW! SO EFFING WHAT?!?! Why do you keep repeating this?

[swansont]

7 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

The prospect of creating life has become more ELUSIVE than anticipated as a result of the increase in the number of steps required to make it happen and the level of complexity of the endeavour. Denver did not move away; it just got more complicated getting there. So, I could have said HARDER rather than FARTHER.

Saying harder just makes the same mistake. 

7 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

The point still remains though that we have not done so, create life.

And the response is still "So what?"

That there is a better realization of how difficult it is should make it less prominent of an issue

 

(edit: x-post with zap)

[Luc Turpin]

12 hours ago, swansont said:

 

No, I don’t think this is true. We don’t know what the conditions were, and chemical combinations are, in a sense, trial and error.

Some events have low probability and rely on a large number of attempts. proton-proton fusion in the sun, for example, has a probability of somewhere around 10^16 per collision - on average a proton would fuse once in a billion years. But there are a lot of protons, so we get fusion. Similarly an event that’s got a low probability of happening in a day in a 1L flask, is going to have that probability enhanced by the number of liters of water under the right conditions (10^15? 10^20?) and the number of days of the reaction (there being around 10^9 days in 300 million years)

The math doesn’t agree with your unsupported assertion

Convincing argument.

Nonetheless, are we not able to manipulate variables that nature cannot do to get faster to the intended goal? Also, is it not faster to copy something that already exists? A monkey banging on a typewriter and getting out a shakespeare play would be in the realm of probability that you indicated. How about us humans typing away with a shakespeare play at hand and having to just copy away. Does that not at least make for a much higher probability of success?

[studiot]

12 hours ago, swansont said:

Some events have low probability and rely on a large number of attempts. proton-proton fusion in the sun, for example, has a probability of somewhere around 10^16 per collision - on average a proton would fuse once in a billion years. But there are a lot of protons, so we get fusion. Similarly an event that’s got a low probability of happening in a day in a 1L flask, is going to have that probability enhanced by the number of liters of water under the right conditions (10^15? 10^20?) and the number of days of the reaction (there being around 10^9 days in 300 million years)

The math doesn’t agree with your unsupported assertion

Is the negative button not working on your keyboard ?

[swansont]

3 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Convincing argument.

Nonetheless, are we not able to manipulate variables that nature cannot do to get faster to the intended goal? Also, is it not faster to copy something that already exists? A monkey banging on a typewriter and getting out a shakespeare play would be in the realm of probability that you indicated. How about us humans typing away with a shakespeare play at hand and having to just copy away. Does that not at least make for a much higher probability of success?

As I pointed out before, the numbers matter. "Faster" is relative. If humans are able to create life, even if it's 100 years from now, they will have done so at least a million times faster than nature did.

How many people do you think are actively trying to do this in a lab? 

1 minute ago, studiot said:

Is the negative button not working on your keyboard ?

Right. That should have been 10^-16

[Luc Turpin]

22 minutes ago, zapatos said:

YES! WE KNOW! SO EFFING WHAT?!?! Why do you keep repeating this?

Because it is the main point of the thread and if we have not done so, then maybe there is another reason beyond low probability of success for not doing so that should be contemplated.

If we close the door by creating life from nonlife then no other alternative explanation is required.

Science has been very fast and efficient at explaining a lot of things. It has been less fast and effective and successful at explaining life. Is it low probability of success or something else?

28 minutes ago, swansont said:

As I pointed out before, the numbers matter. "Faster" is relative. If humans are able to create life, even if it's 100 years from now, they will have done so at least a million times faster than nature did.

I forgot to mention computational biology.  Does it not make it so much faster that we should have gotten the life recipe by now?

[studiot]

14 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

2- Because I felt that we were in the semantics of things with your man-men example, not in the essentials of the debate.  There will always be exceptions to a rule and this would be a minor one. Change men to humans and the problem goes away.

'Humans' or 'Humankind'  is not an organism either living or dead, it is a classification.

I said A MAN and I meant A MAN.

Your earlier thesis begged no exceptions to your rules.

But apparantly you can ignore the rules.

 

I only chose one of your life conditions to demonstrate 'exceptions'.

I was watching the video of the first Alvin dive last night and low and behold saw indisputable evidence of another 'exception', namely non respiration.

Interestingly these life forms are candidates for the very first ones on Earth.

 

14 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

1- Hearth cells are not dead yet; just in a stupor. Electric reanimation does not work beyond a certain point! When cells are dead. Even after death, some cells continue to live. You can do things with those, but not with dead ones (e.g. transplantation).

 

Can you not admit that this is even partway to creating life ?

I

Edited October 8 by studiot

[Luc Turpin]

16 minutes ago, studiot said:

'Humans' or 'Humankind'  is not an organism either living or dead, it is a classification.

I said A MAN and I meant A MAN.

Your earlier thesis begged no exceptions to your rules.

But apparantly you can ignore the rules.

 

MAN is an amalgamation of cells and they replicate.

16 minutes ago, studiot said:

I was watching the video of the first Alvin dive last night and low and behold saw indisputable evidence of another 'exception', namely non respiration.

Interestingly these life forms are candidates for the very first ones on Earth.

Do they have no or low metabolism-respiration? I thought that it was the latter not the former.

Nonetheless, you are starting to convince me that there may be exceptions to the rule. Then, might we be entertaining core attributes with others being secondary?

19 minutes ago, studiot said:

 

Can you not admit that this is even partway to creating life ?

I

If the cells are still alive, then it is not even partway.

take dead cells and reanimate them and then I will admit that we are partway. But they have to really be dead before reanimation. 

[MigL]

On 10/7/2024 at 7:10 AM, Luc Turpin said:

ll of the stuff is in our bodies, but something happens for it to become alive.

If you assemble all the same atoms as in your body, and put them all in the same quantum state as the ones in your body, you will have duplicated yourself, with all the same memories, and 'it' will be alive. Think of transporters in Star Trek.
There is no magic that happens, to go from non-living, to living.
We just cannot do it As the HUP renders it impossible.

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

Because it is the main point of the thread and if we have not done so, then maybe there is another reason beyond low probability of success for not doing so that should be contemplated.

You said in another thread you had no agenda, yet this is a recurring theme in your discussions. 

[Luc Turpin]

1 hour ago, MigL said:

If you assemble all the same atoms as in your body, and put them all in the same quantum state as the ones in your body, you will have duplicated yourself, with all the same memories, and 'it' will be alive. Think of transporters in Star Trek.
There is no magic that happens, to go from non-living, to living.
We just cannot do it As the HUP renders it impossible.

You cannot prove this. I cannot disprove it. But you have a theoretical framework for it and I have no such framework if it is not as you describe it. So you are one up on me.

1 hour ago, swansont said:

You said in another thread you had no agenda, yet this is a recurring theme in your discussions. 

Assumptions yes. Agenda no. Evidence will lead where it shall.

Edited October 8 by Luc Turpin

[swansont]

32 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

Assumptions yes. Agenda no. Evidence will lead where it shall.

But you have no evidence. Your position is not based on that. 

[Luc Turpin]

18 minutes ago, swansont said:

But you have no evidence. Your position is not based on that. 

There is evidence that life is much more complex than anticipated. There is mounting evidence that the conditions required to make it happen were exceptional. And not wanting to upset Zapatos again, but we still have not figured out how to do it. 

[Harrot]

22 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

There is evidence that life is much more complex than anticipated. There is mounting evidence that the conditions required to make it happen were exceptional. And not wanting to upset Zapatos again, but we still have not figured out how to do it. 

I think the trend is more in the other direction.

As time goes by, it becomes more and more likely that life could be a very common phenomenon, but of course nothing is proven.

The discovery of probiotic molecules already formed in space, for example, is a point that has changed our opinion on the probability of the appearance of life.

Quote

In the past decade, it has become clear that the interstellar medium (ISM) is an extraordinary chemical factory. About 250 molecules, including ringed-molecules (see e.g., Cernicharo et al., 2021; McGuire et al., 2021), have so far been reported in the ISM. In addition, the pace at which new molecules are detected not only seems steady but accelerating (McGuire, 2021). In particular, the so-called complex organic molecules (or COMs)¹ have attracted great interest in recent years since a subset of them could have been involved in the first biochemical reactions leading to the origin of life. This sub-set of COMs are typically called prebiotic. Some examples of prebiotic COMs include urea and hydroxylamine (Belloche et al., 2019; Jiménez-Serra et al., 2020; Rivilla et al., 2020) since they are possible precursors of ribonucleotides (see e.g., Becker et al., 2019; Menor Salvan et al., 2020); ethanolamine and n-propanol because they could have triggered the formation of phospholipids (Jiménez-Serra et al., 2022; Rivilla et al., 2021); or amino acetonitrile, vynil amine and ethyl amine since they are considered precursors of amino acids (Belloche et al., 2008; Zeng et al., 2021).

One of the most extended theories about the origin of life is the primordial RNA world. In this scenario, early forms of life relied solely on RNA to store genetic information and to catalyze chemical reactions. The basic units of RNA are ribonucleotides, which are composed of a phosphate group, a nitrogenous base, and a ribose sugar (a C₅ sugar with five carbon atoms). Interestingly, only small precursors of sugars such as glycolonitrile (HOCH₂CN; see Patel et al., 2015) or the simplest C₂ sugar molecule, glycolaldehyde (CH₂OHCHO), have been reported in the ISM (Hollis et al., 2000; Beltrán et al., 2009; Jørgensen et al., 2012; Zeng et al., 2019). Indeed, searches of C₃ sugars such as glyceraldehyde (CHOCHOHCH₂OH) or dihydroxyacetone (DHA, with the chemical formula CH₂OHCOCH₂OH), have not yielded any robust detection (Hollis et al., 2004; Widicus Weaver and Blake, 2005; Apponi et al., 2006; Jiménez-Serra et al., 2020). In contrast, larger sugar-like species such as C₃ sugars and ribose have been found in meteorites (de Marcellus et al., 2015; Furukawa et al., 2019), which opens the possibility that these species form in interstellar space.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/astronomy-and-space-sciences/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.843766/full

Of course, not all environmental conditions apply, but some scientists now believe that we may have over-restricted the requirements for life to appear and that the Earth model may be just one of the possibilities, arguing that if extremophilic species exist, life could be more diverse than we think.

Quote

Providing Clues About Possible Life in Space

Since hyperextremophiles inhabit conditions that are inhospitable to most life, they have been considered as models for extraterrestrial life. Researchers have been investigating the microbial life of sites like the Yellowstone National Park, Antarctica and the Dead Sea to isolate them. For example, a strain of the archaeon Methanopyrus, isolated from a “black smoker” hydrothermal vent grows at temperatures of 120℃, while another microbe Picrophilus can be present in conditions where the pH is as low as 0.06, such as solfataric lakes in Japan from where it was isolated. Such microbes could hold clues to understanding how life might potentially survive in other planets. Very recently, researchers discovered traces of life in geological samples in the Atacama Desert in Chile. These samples, known as the “Red Stone,” contained hematite and were geologically analogous to Martian soil. Interestingly, none of the life forms discovered could be properly classified phylogenetically. Researchers conclude that looking at extremophiles on Earth could give a better clue for addressing whether similar life existed some time ago on Mars and other planets.

https://asm.org/articles/2023/march/how-extremophiles-push-the-limits-of-life

Some even think that life could be the standard fate of molecules when placed in a particular type of environment: As with life forms, there could be a Darwinian process using trial and selection of the arrangement of molecules.

Quote

England is suggesting that biology arises because, in certain environments – like on planets – where the energy balance is so out of whack, physics guarantees that atoms rearrange themselves to be able to deal with the chaotic flow of energy. These atomic structures just happen to resemble what we refer to as “life”.

As England famously said back in 2014: “You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant.”

Using cutting-edge computer simulations, England and his colleagues dumped basic chemical compounds into an early-Earth like environment and watched what happened.

The first paper, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that life-like structural arrangements of atoms spontaneously arise. Importantly, biological inputs and variables – the behavior of cells, the formation of DNA, and so on – weren’t preprogrammed into the simulations.

The second, published in Physics Review Letters, shows that when driven by an external energy source – the Sun, in this case – these atoms rearrange themselves in order to absorb and emit the energy more efficiently. Perhaps most remarkably, these life-like structures started to copy themselves in order to better handle this energy flow.

https://www.iflscience.com/life-inevitable-consequence-physics-43007

[studiot]

57 minutes ago, Luc Turpin said:

but we still have not figured out how to do it. 

You have said that maybe fifteen or twenty times now., yet has anyone disagreed with that statement ?

Doesn't your penny whistle play any other tune ?

 

If you really want to think about life you should also consider death properly, especially as we know more about it, rather than offer smart arse replies when such discussion is offered.

3 minutes ago, Harrot said:

probiotic

prebiotic not yoghurt

[CharonY]

5 hours ago, studiot said:

I was watching the video of the first Alvin dive last night and low and behold saw indisputable evidence of another 'exception', namely non respiration.

Potentially off-topic, but I am curious (and not familiar) with that one, do you have a link or other resources I could check?

[Luc Turpin]

7 minutes ago, studiot said:

 

11 minutes ago, Harrot said:

I think the trend is more in the other direction.

As time goes by, it becomes more and more likely that life could be a very common phenomenon, but of course nothing is proven.

The discovery of probiotic molecules already formed in space, for example, is a point that has changed our opinion on the probability of the appearance of life.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/astronomy-and-space-sciences/articles/10.3389/fspas.2022.843766/full

Of course, not all environmental conditions apply, but some scientists now believe that we may have over-restricted the requirements for life to appear and that the Earth model may be just one of the possibilities, arguing that if extremophilic species exist, life could be more diverse than we think.

https://asm.org/articles/2023/march/how-extremophiles-push-the-limits-of-life

Some even think that life could be the standard fate of molecules when placed in a particular type of environment: As with life forms, there could be a Darwinian process using trial and selection of the arrangement of molecules.

https://www.iflscience.com/life-inevitable-consequence-physics-43007

 

I am aware of these findings. Some even consider this matter to be post biotic rather than prebiotic. 
 

22 minutes ago, studiot said:

You have said that maybe fifteen or twenty times now., 

Your count is too high

32 minutes ago, studiot said:

Doesn't your penny whistle play any other tune ?

No, I am too stupid.

33 minutes ago, studiot said:

You have said that maybe fifteen or twenty times now., yet has anyone disagreed with that statement ?

Doesn't your penny whistle play any other tune ?

 

If you really want to think about life you should also consider death properly

How about NDE’s; there’s a lot to learn even if they may not be what they intend to be

35 minutes ago, studiot said:

 rather than offer smart arse replies when such discussion is offered.

Doing the best that I can but guess that I am not smart enough for you.

attack ideas, not people.

 

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

There is evidence that life is much more complex than anticipated. There is mounting evidence that the conditions required to make it happen were exceptional. And not wanting to upset Zapatos again, but we still have not figured out how to do it. 

That’s not evidence of anything.

It’s like concluding that unexplained flashes of lights in the sky are aliens. 

edit: it’s even less, since at least flashes of light are evidence of something.

[studiot]

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

attack ideas, not people.

and you were not doing this when you castigated scientists for being tardy and not discovering things. ?

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

oing the best that I can but guess that I am not smart enough for you.

Actually I think you are not only pretty intelligent and well educated/read/experienced but are sadly wasting it pursuing this one goal/viewpoint you keep referring to.

 

2 hours ago, Luc Turpin said:

How about NDE’s; there’s a lot to learn even if they may not be what they intend to be

That's a really good reply. +1

So why did you try to shut down my comment about defibrillitation ?

So far as I am aware all life, with the exception of an amoeba dies.

An amoeba can be killed, but that is a different matter.

Dying has no meaning for an organism that reproduces by splitting as it does.

In one of your threads, someone responded that Life is not a thing or a property but a process.

And processes need a suitable host system.

I think it is worthwhile examining the subject of life (and death) in terms of this idea as it not only allows for living and non living parts of the same system, does not imbue things like water molecules with life in their own right; it takes us beyond the current biological restrictions I posted earlier and I think are too narrow.
In doing all this it offers somwhere to place this mysterious 'spark' you claim is non religious (so do I) as well as offering a platform to examine what happens as the process degrades and even fails.

 

Yes indeed there is much to be learned.

[Luc Turpin]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

That’s not evidence of anything.

It’s like concluding that unexplained flashes of lights in the sky are aliens. 

edit: it’s even less, since at least flashes of light are evidence of something.

Life’s complexity making the step from molecules to life that much more difficult to contend.

Conditions required to transition doing the same

it is not proof of concept, but might be an indication of a need to recalibrate