Primitive Asgard cells show life on the brink of complexity
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
So it seems like these Asgard Cells are complex cells that evolved on Earth over 1.8 billion years ago. These cells have features similar to both bacteria and eukaryotes, which are the two main types of cellular life on Earth. The discovery provides insight into the evolution of eukaryotic cells, which are believed to have originated from a symbiotic relationship between two different types of bacteria. As we go further and further back in time, chemical and biology evolution merges :)
When everything in the universe degrades or rusts or tends towards decreasing complexity.
Edit: When I say entropy the first time I'm referring to algorithmic information theory entropy, whereas the second indirect reference is to physical entropy.
That's just what I can recall. There's more about DNA/RNA and amino acids pairing, but I can't remember it off the top of my head.
That's exactly what the infinite monkeys on a typewriter are a metaphor for.
In literal terms, it's trillions of trillions of protein reactions happening along earth's coastlines.
> If you look at the timeline for the emergence of life, I don't think it's one that supports an infinite monkey type of mechanism. It was too fast.
If it literally was infinite monkeys, we'd expect life to emerge near-instantaneously.
The reality is, of course, that it's not "infinite monkeys" but "a whole f-ing lot of monkeys"--the question is whether it's enough monkeys to produce life in the timeline. There's a lot of research that's been done on this, and we have pretty good data. I'm not an expert in this field, but my outside impression from the research I read is that the open question at this point is actually not why it happened so fast, but why it didn't happen faster. If you're actually interested in the numerical justifications for the timeline, the research is pretty well documented, but given you've ex-nihilo declared that the timeline is too fast, I suspect you aren't actually curious, and are instead leading into an argument you want to make.
My point is, "infinite monkeys" (as a metaphor, taking them literally is a strawman) describes a brute-force approach. I don't think a physical process that randomly smashes together, say, long RNA molecules will actually result in life, certainly not quickly, probably not at all. The combinatorics of long strings are prohibitive. I think some selection process needed to take over sooner.
I don't know if that's the argument you think I "wanted to make". As far as I'm concerned I've said exactly what I mean, just longer and more explicit for a hostile audience this time.
It's been a while since I researched this, and now I'm trying to search with similar terms to what I used before and it's not working. The reason seems to be that there's a ton of fluff papers about life on Mars and other planets: this sort of speculative modeling isn't without value, but it's lacking much hard evidence, unlike the papers I was reading a decade ago which had a ton of geological information. It's frustrating. I wish I could point you at something good here, if only so I could find stuff for myself again.
> My point is, "infinite monkeys" (as a metaphor, taking them literally is a strawman) describes a brute-force approach. I don't think a physical process that randomly smashes together, say, long RNA molecules will actually result in life, certainly not quickly, probably not at all. The combinatorics of long strings are prohibitive. I think some selection process needed to take over sooner.
Well, two things:
Proteins aren't like cryptographic keys, and I'd encourage you to abandon that way of thinking about them. Finding a single cryptographic key is like finding a needle in a haystack: there's only one key that works. But with proteins there are a lot of combinations that work, and even "work" is a bit hard to define because there are a lot of proteins that aren't RNA or DNA, but exhibit lifelike properties. Some of these proteins are very combinatorially simple compared to DNA. So far I don't know of any research that connects a specific prion with a theorized route toward more complex structures (these seem to have evolved in the context of larger organisms) but it at least shows us that very simple proteins can exhibit lifelike properties. Put another way, partial answers count. So instead of a needle in a haystack, it's a haystack with a bunch of needles, and bits of metal that aren't really needles but count as needles.
2. And keep in mind it's not just the problem space that's large: the amount of "processes" doing the searching is also large.
My point is, I don't think it's evident that the combinatorics of long strings are prohibitive, given that there are many "right" answers in the search space, and some partial answers count.
To actually put numbers on this to say how long it would take would require information I simply don't have, but I'm skeptical that you have that information either.
There isn't a way to answer questions based on faulty assumptions, like "Why did you murder JFK?" People have actually been quite kind in giving you "sort of" answers such as "It came from the energy that the Sun pumps into the system."
I'll also point out that when people make the faulty assertion that everything tends toward decreasing complexity, they usually try to follow up with some intelligent design argument. You haven't done that in this post, but that is probably why you're getting answers that are a bit guarded or combative, because people are prepared for you to take this discussion to a truly ignorant place.
But that still doesn't explain to me where the complexity came from.
I don't think it's a self-evident given that going against the grain of increasing entropy leads to complexity. The obvious but naieve opposite of increasing entropy is going towards something like relatively simple crystal structures.
https://theconversation.com/emergence-the-remarkable-simplic...
Now, the question is whether the first replicator can arise randomly from the primordial soup or not? Was the first such replicator simple enough to be spontaneously assembled from random inorganic molecules floating in water? I think on a long-enough timescale, the answer is yes.
Not quite, you also need the replication to have random errors.
On a DNA/RNA level, various nucleotides have affinity not only for their normal partner, but less so for other partners. This becomes especially important as environmental damage (from the energetic systems we all live in) cause alterations in the chemical structure of the nucleotides. That's just one method of mutation.
https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/22098576-complexity-and-en...
Just because you can parrot the phrase doesn't mean you understand it. Your statement " everything in the universe degrades or rusts or tends towards decreasing complexity", which simply isn't true for a local subsystem such as the earth, demonstrating that you do not understand what it means for Earth to not be a closed system.
> But that still doesn't explain to me where the complexity came from.
It comes from energy from the sun forcing trillions of trillions of proteins together at random all along the earth's coastlines. The proteins, forced together, are more complex than the previous molecules. Most of them are unstable, but even a one-in-a-billion chance of forming a stable protein is almost guaranteed to happen when there are trillions of trillions of reactions occurring.
2. I said a lot more than what you put quotes around, which explains the method of action. If you want more specific information, you'll have to engage enough with what I've already said to ask a more specific question. I won't waste my time explaining parts I've already explained and you've ignored.
If you think randomness created dna with a specific function I have a bridge to sell you
Ah, there it is, the total nonsense I was expecting.
That's not even a coherent scientific claim: it's not provable or disprovable because you can't even clearly define half the words. You're just saying things with no evidence because they were told to you.
Next time, save everyone some time and just make your argument for creationism up front without asking questions as if you were interested in answers. This whole pretending to ask questions thing you did here was dishonest.
Bye.
The big innovation of life is having a form of matter that can quine its own arrangement. Once you have that, the complexity that ensued was predictable.
I don't believe this is supported by evidence. Finding a few organic molecules in a meteorite is pretty thin, and as Carl Sagan pointed out the lethal doses of radiation in space make panspermia highly unlikely.
How did you to get aliens from this?
“How could something so complex have started here? There must be a wizard who made it on rigel 7”
But who made the wizard?
“…”
The problem is, if it could have been created elsewhere then it could have been created here. It’s a meaningless statement. It’s like saying “no she didn’t shoot him, she called a man from mexico and he flew over and pulled the trigger and then gave her the gun and flew back”, you’re just making something up and adding random extra complexity with no evidence.
Clearly they should have asked humans for the sort of help they needed with the replicators. We could've provided plenty of our primitive DNA. Wait, were there any female Asgard?
Perhaps mitochondria were a key partner to chloroplasts, but I wonder which came first? Or maybe just the free-living chloroplasts were capable of raising oxygen levels, once they'd figured out how to prevent themselves from being oxidized by their own waste products.
>Within the now-dominant two-domain picture to which the Asgard archaea are contributing, the big story of life on this planet goes something like this. Some 4 billion years ago, life forked into two single-celled branches, the archaea and the bacteria. Genetic evidence implies that the two branches crossed again 2 billion years later when an archaeon — likely from the Asgard group — somehow ingested a bacterium. The process domesticated what was once a distinct, free-living cell and turned it into the organelles called mitochondria that persist inside eukaryotic cells. The descendants of that fateful union branched into other single-celled organisms like dinoflagellates, and then later into multicellular creatures that grew to macroscopic sizes, left fossils behind, and colonized both sea and land.
What stands out for me the most throughout the article, however, is the hostile environment and over-competitiveness "slowing down" the already painstakingly slow research itself (acknowledged by all parties):
>Now a high-stakes, slow-motion race is on as labs around the world attempt to grow their own Asgard cultures. Samples aren’t shared; growth strategies are tightly guarded secrets. “We were honestly shocked” when the Schleper team’s results came out, wrote Hiroyuki Imachi, the microbiologist at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology who, after a grueling 12-year effort, isolated the first and currently only other Asgard archaea sample.
>Meanwhile, in Schleper’s lab in Austria, the initial six-year grant was dwindling and no new funding was in sight. One postdoc assigned to the task of growing the organism had ended up leaving science. Another team member, a technician, had pipetted so much they needed surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome.
>Still, labs around the world are gambling that bringing more diverse representatives of the Asgard group into cultivation will yield a bonanza of new clues about their — and our — common ancestor. Schleper is trying. So is Ettema. So is Baum, who said his lab is soon welcoming a new colleague who will bring vials of archaea from groups like Heimdall and Odin. So is Imachi, who declined to speak to Quanta for this story. “If I were to be interviewed by you now, I would most likely talk about new data that has not yet been published,” he explained in an email, adding that his group applauded the Schleper team’s efforts. “It is very competitive now (although I do not like this kind of competition),” he added.
Other sources also bemoaned the overly pressurized atmosphere. “It would be nice if the field would be more open to sharing,” Spang said. The pressure weighs heaviest on the young scientists who tend to take on the high-risk, high-reward cultivation projects. Success can add a glowing Nature paper to their resume. But wasting years on a failed effort can stunt their chances of ever getting a job in science. “It’s really an unfair situation,” Schleper said.
We need monetary awards and recognition for sharing techniques. And we need better structures for credentialing people in the sciences. Students with theses which did not work, but which demonstrated good science, should still be awarded doctorates, and in a timely manner without having to exhaust themselves until nearly impossible tasks are accomplished. This is self-evident. I can only think of chauvinism as a reason to not do it this way. Chauvinism and glory hogging.