You've heard it before and I am not denying it, but questioning it. Now I'm not that knowledgeable about proteins/DNA/RNA, but however that first single celled organism came about, how do we know that process wasn't repeated or still repeating? Millions of years ago when it formed, how do we know another didn't form on the other side of the world at the same time? Or a little bit after? Is it likely that it's still happening? Granted, it'd probably have a hard time not being gobbled up by organisms that have established a foot hold, but I think it possible, right?
I think it's mitochondrial dna. It's the same version in every person, and it technically the only immortal life still around today. Literally. It's the same fucking thing that's been around since the beginning of the Universe replicating itself over and over again.
let me put it this way. whatever basic cell structure that forms naturally existed. was the same even if it happened more than once. even if all life on earth diverged from different individuals, if they are the same organism the point is mute you wouldnt say that one dog evolved from a different grey wolf would you? its al in terms of populations
Yeah, I can understand that part. Seems like the saying "we all can from the same one" might not be accurate. That ideal was embedded in my head, looking at a stinkbug and thinking "damn, we're related" but in reality, some other life could of come from a different cell structure/life form/protein that formed naturally. Instead of being "we all came from the same one" it would/could be more like "we all came from life forms that formed the exact same way". I was thinking about hippie talk, when people say all life on Earth is related, coming from that ONE life form. But if it happened say a 2nd time on the other side of the world at the same moment, it'd be more like "we're related to half of the life here". I know it's over thinking, but still, lol.
If you were, I think you'd be able to understand why people think it's not all that easy for a single cell to come together. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKgINP5QDIg&feature=related"]Inner life of a Cell FULL! - YouTube[/ame] This is just one single cell.. so many things needed to be in place and all we have evidence of ever existing are cells just as complex as ones today.
Thanks for the video, pretty informative, but I think you're missing the point of my inquiry. I don't think it was easy at all, everything has it's complexity when you break it down. What I was saying though, everyone says we're indirectly related to all life. That when that first single celled organism came about, it split, made more, they evolved, became more complex, evolved more, spread out, evolved even more, til it got to how life is today. But however that first actual life form came about (provided it didn't come from an outside source), how do we know there weren't others that have zero relation to each other (other than the way they form) that formed separately? To me, I would think it'd happen a lot more than once. So the saying "we all came from one life form" might not be correct at all. It'd be more like "we all came from life forms that formed the same way".
Ooh I see what you're getting at. Well absolutely, if abiogenesis is indeed true then if it happened once I don't see why it couldn't do it a second time. Life is rather diverse in the first place anyways, from a blade of grass to a blue whale to a microscopic bacteria. I would find it much more believable that we all came from a few different individual cells rather than just one.
Yeah, that's what I would think. Last universal ancestor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This was on the Wiki page as a quote from Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'. I don't know if "one primordial form" means just one life form or a group of them that are all the same. But who is to say that that one primordial form isn't still forming? Or have I over thought this and confused myself?
I love this stuff, +great link. I may be mistaken and way off but our last observable common ancestor might be seen in Burgess Shale
Given what we know about evolution, I think it's safe to say that a process of natural selection was occurring between protein strands long before anything on the planet was what we would now call "living".....and it was occurring between short amino acid sequences long before anything on the planet was what we would now call a "protein"....and it was occurring between individual atomic groupings long before anything on the planet was what we would now call an "amino acid".... This kind of "competition" makes it impossible for progress to happen without "adversaries"...but, obviously no matter where we draw the line between living and non-living, chances are that something crossed it "first," if only because the statistical probability of this very same mutation taking place at a different location at the exact same time are presumably quite slim. This doesn't necessarily mean that this first "living" organism reproduced successfully. Maybe, given its locale at the time, living wasn't actually beneficial. Or maybe it did...uhhh...whatever-the-fuck-it-did for awhile until something else also mutated into a "living" creature and came along and happened to be able to kick its ass. Of course, this whole conversation is just silly at this point because we don't have a definition of "living" that would ever be specific enough to be able to boil down the difference to so few mutations that they would be able to take place in one generation......it seems to me that this problem alone points to something much more important about ourselves than whether or not we share a common ancestor that was ever "living"......
How would natural selection work if there isn't any DNA to pass on any genes? And where does the genetic information come from to make the cell capable of reproduction?
Natural selection doesn't only apply to DNA. Information is encapsulated in, and transmitted by, any physical system, no matter how simple. Certain kinds of molecules are more suited to their environment than others just as certain kinds of animals can live in shallow, warm salt-water better than others. You needn't boil evolution down to interactions between living things; any carrier of information is a worthy candidate.
Natural selection requires DNA to pass off certain traits. What purpose does a single protein chain serve anyways? If you just stick that in a cell membrane you're still not going to get it to reproduce. You need genetic information telling it specific instructions on what to do.
If you take a very narrow definition of natural selection, yes.....but if you take a more interdisciplinary and modern approach, you'll find yourself defining "evolution" basically as any decrease in entropy (ie any increase in ordered structure which, by the way, corresponds very neatly with energy density.) This means that basic principles of natural selection apply not only to biological evolution, but to physical and quite possibly even social evolution as well. I know that's a pretty tough concept for most people to wrap their minds around at first, so I'll give you an actual scientist's (much better) explanation: We know well that fluctuations—random deviations from some average, equilibrium value of, for example, density, temperature, or pressure—are common phenomena in nature. Fluctuations inevitably yet stochastically appear in any system having many degrees of freedom. Normally, as in equilibrium thermodynamics, such instabilities regress in time and disappear; they just come and go by chance, the statistical fluctuations diffusing as quickly as they initially arose. Even in an isolated system, such internal fluctuations can generate local, microscopic reductions in entropy, but the second law ensures that they will always balance themselves out. Microscopic temperature fluctuations, for instance, are said to be thermally relaxed. Nor can an open system near equilibrium change spontaneously to new and interesting structures. But should those fluctuations become too great for an open system to damp, that system will then depart far from equilibrium and be forced to regroup. Such reorganization generates a “dynamic steady state,” provided the amplified fluctuations are continuously driven and stabilized by a flow of energy from the surroundings— namely, provided the energy flow rate exceeds the thermal relaxation rate. Systematic, coherent cycling is often the result, since under these conditions the spontaneous creation of macroscopic structures dissipates energy more rapidly than the ensuing, and damaging, heat can smooth out those structures. Furthermore, since each successive reordering often causes more complexity than the preceding one, such systems become even more susceptible to fluctuations. Complexity itself consequently creates the conditions for greater instability, which in turn provides an opportunity for greater reordering. The resulting phenomenon—termed “order through fluctuations”—is a distinctly evolutionary one, complete with feedback loops that help drive the system further from equilibrium. And as the energy consumption and resulting complexity accelerate, so does the evolutionary process. This is the realm of true thermodynamics, the older, established subject of that name more properly labeled “thermostatics.” Numerous examples abound throughout nature, and not just among physical systems, but for biological and social ones as well. Naturally occurring phenomena such as convection cells in a pot of warm water, river eddies behind rocks in flowing streams, and atmospheric storms that grow into hurricanes all display enhanced order when energies flow above some threshold. Yet biological systems also obey the rules of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, for we and our living relatives are demonstrable examples of dynamic steady states that have emerged via energetically enhanced neo-Darwinism. Even artificially made devices such as kitchen refrigerators and coherent lasers, among a whole host of similar examples of culturally produced systems, promote or maintain order when amply fed with sufficient energy. -Eric J. Chaisson, "Cosmic Evolution: State of the Science", Cosmos & Culture, NASA 2010. ^There's much more where that came from if that's not clarifying what I'm saying for you. What "purpose" does anything serve? Evolution is not about "purpose," it's about the interaction of packets of information.
I totally get what you're saying.. Something doesn't have to be alive to be stronger. You can break it all the way down to the atom. You wouldn't call them alive, but they can overpower others, bond, steal electrons, ect. Everything is energy in some shape or form, some energies can dwarf others. Shine an LED light and a spot light towards you and the spot light will make the LED seem nonexistent.. I guess the real question is when is life considered life? I am beginning to think that when Darwin said "Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed" people took it too literal. People seem to have the concept that there was only one beginning life form, that from this life form, all life came from. The primordial form he was talking about may have not even been living.. Could of very well been something several stages behind the line of living/non-living. As you said, something very well could of crossed that line and didn't make it. I can't really believe that it was only crossed successfully once though.. I mean wasn't there even a scientist who created amino acids from some type of hydrogen experiment? We all came from the same single cell..from cockroaches to whales..control your laughter please.. « Follow The Money Like this article, I would of been like "yeah, that sounds right" but now I'm like "eh".. I don't know how the proteins really fit together, but say it was something like A-C-T-A-A-G-C that was the first successful strand of DNA. But when they tried fitting together as A-C-A-T-A-G-C, it didn't take. Could of been a million different combos that didn't take either, but who is to say that they didn't line up as A-C-T-A-A-G-C somewhere else? I don't know if that makes sense, like I said, DNA isn't really my strongest subject. The lil I did learn about it was from a shitty high school and I can't sit myself down to actually study it. If I am completely off, feel free to criticize.
What I don't understand is that when asked to explain the reasoning for your doubts on abiogenesis, you say it's because the cell is SO complicated it would seem virtually improbable that all the components could have come together at one time to form a living cell. Then, in the above quoted post, you state that if it happened once, then it's more believable that this ridiculously low probabilistic event (i.e. abiogenesis) occurred many times. This is a total contradiction. When you flip a coin twice, you are not more likely to get heads the second time if you got heads the first time.
Actually do math once in your life before you make such claims. 0/10 = 0 , 0/10000 = 0 0/1000000 = 0, 1/10 = .1, 1/10000= .00001 ,1/1000000 = .0000001 the odds increase, pay attention in math
lolwut The odds of rolling a 4 on a six-sided dice is 1/6. The odds of rolling a 4 twice in a row is 1/6 * 1/6 = 1/36. Last I checked, 1/36 < 1/6. GMS said it was virtually improbable for a particular event to occur (i.e. abiogenesis) yet was simultaneously willing to concede that said improbable event could have actually occurred multiple times to explain the diversity of life on earth. It's like saying that if I did the improbable and won the Powerball lottery one time, it much more believable that I would win it multiple times. I'm simply asking him to explain this. If you didn't understand the point of my post, you should just say so. There's no need for the childish comments.