Re: The First Self-Replicator and early Lunar tides

markr1000 wrote:
Tim Tyler <seemy...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

IMO, the most likely locations are highly stable ones -
deep in the ocean, or perhaps in underground caves:

From what I've been reading, stability is exactly what you
don't want. Inert substances are the pinnacle of stability,
they're also the opposite of life.

Gigantic tides sloshing around for many millions of years would
keep the oceans a constant soup of amino acids and other
inorganic building blocks as well as creating billions of tidal
pools test tubes in which trillions of experiments would being
going on.

I ran across this in my search on early tides and whoever it is
paints a thorough picture. I have no idea what holes might be
poked in it beyond the talk of "original non-replicating atoms"
which is silly consider the immense amount of amino acids that
would have been available in the absence of free oxygen.

I consider rock pools a relatively unlikely environment for
early life - due to general instability and inhospitability.

They are relatively often invoked by other OOL researchers,
though. They like the concentration via evaporation, the
sunlight, an influx of silt and the action of waves.

IMO, sunlight would probably fry the earliest organisms, and
waves would smash them to bits.

Whatever else, I think stability is highly overrated in the
origin of life.

Stability is a matter of degree. Too much and you have no
activity at all. Too much and you have a chaotic system.
Living systems lie in the middle of this spectrum.

However, in the context of the origin of life, we have a high
temperature environment, bombarded by meteorites, and with
widespread vulcanism.

Simultaneously, we have the least technologically advanced
creatures that ever existed, probably with one of the lowest
ever abilities to resist environmental perturbations.

In this context, I feel the stability of life's cradle is
what needs emphasising.

IMO, it would be quite plausible if the bottom of the ocean -
and possibly underground environments like caves - were the
only habitable environments for a considerable period of time -
simply because anything on the surface of the young earth would
get alternately irradiated, melted, boiled, and smashed to bits.
--
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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Paper: Life: In search of the simplest cell
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  • Stability as the Goal of Evolution
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    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • de Duve Quote (probabilities for life popping up)
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  • Re: The first "Information"
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  • Re: Make life more stable with more frequent job changes
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