'Microlightning' in water droplets may have sparked life on Earth

phys.org

15 points·geox··6 comments

Assumed age of LUCA: 4.2 billion years. Age of Solar system: 4.6 billion years. LUCA had ribosomes. A ribosome is assembled and shaped by about 200 different proteins, it is an ultra-complicated molecular machine.

Conclusion: pre-LUCA evolution and abiogenesis did not happen on Earth, or even in the Solar system.

Corollary: life (at least on some primitive level) is probably common in the Universe, or at least in our local area of the galaxy.

I find it curious that you're choosing an article that strengthens the general case for abiogenesis on which to opine this point.

I am not doubting abiogenesis itself; I am just noting that most probably it didn't happen on Earth. The article merely shows yet another pathway to producing complex organic molecules. There is an immense gap between complex organic molecules (and even possible self-replicating molecules) and an actual ribosome, which existed back at LUCA time.

400 million years is a fucking long time. If the right conditions existed, I don't have any problem believing abiogenesis happened here on Earth, even with the first part of that during the Hadean lava world.

It is a fucking long time, but the ribosome is fucking complex (and ribosome biogenesis is _particularly_ fucking complex). My Fermi estimation skills give me the probability of ribosome evolving on Earth as "fucking whatever, more research needed". Though in my heart I doubt it. Wouldn't everyone.

This theory has been around since the 50's, and I think it's cool that people are still poking at it. Although it looks like their real purpose was to make ammonia for fertilizer, which to me is a funny connection to the origins of life.

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