Were large soda lakes the cradle of life? | Hacker News Reader

Were large soda lakes the cradle of life?

ethz.ch

54 pointsgeox21 comments

In ecology it's recognized that highly alkaline lakes are some of the most productive[0] ecosystems around. Despite this, most organisms able to survive in highly alkaline environments are considered "extremophiles".

Maybe it's the rest of us that are the extremophiles.

[0] In ecology "productive" is usually measured by the rate at which biomass is measured in a system

>Despite this, most organisms able to survive in highly alkaline environments are considered "extremophiles".

I was surprised to learn the humble Flamingo is considered such. A fascinating animal.

https://www.birdwatchingdaily.com/news/science/how-flamingos...

> the humble flamingo

This is an amusing choice of words :P To many people "humble" is the last word that comes to mind when thinking of flamingos. It's probably the most common animal icon in Vegas, strip clubs, and casinos!

Potentially also supports the idea that subsurface channels and cavities could also have been involved with providing environments for early life. There would have been high heat, a range of minerals including phosphorus, and a wide variety of interconnected cavities that could act as reaction chambers or even cells.

After reading "The Mysterious, Deep-Dwelling Microbes That Sculpt Our Planet" in the nyt I figure the most likely origin is deep in the earth. https://archive.ph/VgzKD

Reasons, apart from the phosphorus thing is it's warm and stable with chemical gradients to fuel reactions, and some rocks have cell like cavities which could be handy. Also there's an awful lot of it. I guess you could try some experiments with different suitable rocks and chemicals.

Good video with Harry Brodsky from CU Boulder talking about phosphorus availability around ocean vents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ppc3zzMTJTs

So this is being suggested purely because of phosphorus availability there? How does this compare on that aspect to say the the theory that life arose in alkaline hydrothermal vents? (Note: Alkaline hydrothermal vents are not to be confused with "black smokers", the more famous kind of hydrothermal vent.)

They’ve got electrolytes?

> pfdietz [flagged] [dead]: Oh great, more inherently untestable speculation about origin of life.

What is the value in this kind of speculation? I think that it can help provide direction for future research. If we think these soda lakes were the cradle of life, then we could look for remnants of early (even though finding that is quite unlikely). We could also try to replicate (steps of) abiogenesis in the lab in conditions mimicking soda lakes and plausible variations thereof. If that yields promising results it could inform exobiology speculation, and as to the purpose of that speculation, it could inform where we send probes in the very long term.

FYI you can "vouch" for dead comments if you have enough karma. But in general, if a comment is dead it is a sign that it is not worth engaging with it.

I think im3w1l's response is valuable enough to be worth showing the original comment's text without reviving it entirely

pfdietz has 13 thousand karma since 2018 so that's not a non-serious account.

perhaps in this case "he" edit-clobbered his comment because it was so unpopular, but what it says now is just off-topic and doesn't match the response:

"It had to do everything because the business case for it (that it would have sufficient ROI) required it. Even then, the business case was basically fraudulent, and the reality was even worse than the critics like Mondale were saying."

Not to mention that "speculation", better known as theory, is a fundamental and crucial part of science. Some of the most celebrated scientists in history are celebrated for their theoretical work. Newton, Einstein, Charles Darwin(sure, Darwin did a lot of observation as did most biologists of that era, but his theory of natural selection, though inspired by his observational work, is clearly a theoretical idea, not an empirical result).

And of course, skimming over the actual paper in question, it's not even theory/speculation really. It's more like a review of the existing literature and empirical data on soda lakes, the different types of them, and their plausibility for abiogenesis based on their ability to maintain P concentrations despite significant biological activity.

This is actually someone testing a previously theorised idea against the best available data and affirming it as plausible.

Speculation is part of the process by which we formulate a *hypothesis*. We then run experiments to test and validate this hypothesis. If it is found to be correct then it gets promoted to a *theory*.

I was gonna reply to this earlier but forgot. I think there is a difference between a theory of ongoing dynamics and laws compared to a theory about what happened once upon a time. The former is easier and more valuable. But the latter has some value too.

Another reason is it gives us ideas of what to look for if we're trying to find life on other planets or moons instead of just dead remnants.

> Large, phosphorus-rich soda lakes are the most likely places to have met this requirement.

Cola then, not orange or lemon-lime.

Um, haha, no.

Mountain Dew, duh. Real creatives crave it.

It's got electrolytes, it's what abiogenesis craves.

But what are electrolytes!? Da ya even know?

In the Midwest they're called pop lakes.

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