Found: first amino acid on a comet | Hacker News Reader

Found: first amino acid on a comet

newscientist.com

46 pointsJohnIdol42 comments

"The discovery confirms that some of the building blocks of life were delivered to the early Earth from space."

Surely that should be "could have been delivered". The article says that the C13 count was different from Earth collected samples. Where's the causality?

Indeed, it turns out to be pretty easy to make amino acids, and they're everywhere. Take hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water, zap it with lightning, and you get amino acids.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller-Urey_experiment

It sounds like they aren't even sure where the amino acid came from. From the article:

"With only about 100 billionths of a gram of glycine to study, the researchers were able to measure the relative abundance of its carbon isotopes. It contained more carbon-13 than that found in glycine that forms on Earth, proving that Stardust's glycine originated in space."

Does anyone know how they can know that space glycine should have more C13 than earth glycine?

I suspect there argument does something like: if it has less than or equals to the amount of C13 as glycine on Earth then we can't rule out that it's contamination. But since it has more C13 than from Earth it must be from somewhere else.

It's not that they know space causes more C13. They just know it's not normal earth glycine because it has the wrong C13 ratio.

i for one hope that we don't discover nearby life. why? think about what it implies. if life is so phenomenally common that it pops up twice in the same solar system then it becomes downright unsettling that there is no sign of galaxy spanning civilizations out there.

I wish we do. I just don't want to feel so lonely in such a large Universe. Life is probably something very common out there, the fact that we are not observing galaxy spanning civilizations doesn't prove that life is not out there. After all is only about two hundred years that we came to know that there are microbes all over the place.

I would hope that higher life forms try and protect lower life forms, such as ourselves, from the influences of galactic domination.

Because that's worked out so terrifically in our history.

I think Star Wars-type galactic civilizations are very unlikely. Instead, life forms (humans included, eventually) probably just upload their minds into better hardware and "live" in a virtual Shangri La. After that, why bother exploring?

it becomes downright unsettling that there is no sign of galaxy spanning civilizations out there

Only if Einstein is wrong about the speed of light. Sci fi novels routinely assume he overlooked something, because they have to as a plot device, but he might not have.

Indeed. Out of curiosity, are you an SF fan? And if so, any favs?

I have a list I've put together for fans of sci-fi that have only read the standard stuff (asimov, clarke, niven, heinlein)

1. The Cyberiad 2. Babel-17 3. The Stars My Destination 4. The Sheep Look Up 5. More Than Human 6. Lord of Light 7. To Your Scattered Bodies Go 8. Earth Abides 9. Gateway 10. City

Woah, thanks! The Cyberiad is one of my all time favorites. If the rest are as strong as it, that's a serious list.

If you haven't read Memoirs Found in a Bathtub do yourself a favor and get it post haste.

even with the speed of light as a constraint it should only take a few million years for self replicators to spread through significant portions of space.

Interesting point. Either such replicators are hard to build, or civilizations capable of building them are rare, or they are already here, but quiet.

It reminds me of the famous Drake equation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_Equation

The most famous 'guesstimation' based on the Drake equation says there should be something around 10 civilizations in our galaxy. But there are other factors that influence here, like the tendency a civilization has to destroy itself before it reaches the space exploration era (and also the tendency it has to destroy other civilizations) [2]

Also, the fact that we have found none yet comes the famous Fermi paradox [2]. Alternative explanations for the seemly inexistence of extraterrestrian civilizations exist, such as impossibility of communication between long distanced civilizations.

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

I wish that we discover it after we have learned to live reasonably well with each other here on Earth.

It would be more interesting to discover nearby life, but at least if no one else is out there we'll get to colonize the nearby stars ourselves without conflict.

I wonder what the repercussions are for religion? Does news like this threaten to derail believers' faith in God (or higher being(s))?

[EDIT] Also what does this say about the possibility of life outside of earth?

>> I wonder what the repercussions are for religion?

Very minimal. Most people who are serious about religion don't base their faith on science in the first place. So when scientific understanding changes, it doesn't shake their faith a whole lot. Me for example - I believe in God for reasons independent of science. Any scientific discovery that seems to contradict what I believe doesn't make stop believing in him. It just makes me reevaluate what I believed and why, and if I still have reason to believe that.

For instance, I've always believed that if God's creations are infinite, and he put his children here on Earth, I'm sure there're planets elsewhere that he's created and made as beautiful as this one. And if one day someone found an asteroid with amino acids on it - that doesn't diminish my belief. It just makes me think things like, "I wonder if that's how God put life here". Nobody said God did it all by hand - maybe he just did it through natural laws.

I'm very religious and I follow science, and it's extremely rare that I feel conflicted.

What have you found that suggests that there is a god in the first place?

You are asking for what evidence he has of the existance of a god. That question, by its nature, is a scientific one. The poster you are responding to stated that they do not base their belief in God on science. You are asking the wrong sorts of questions.

Actually, in all fairness to kevin, I think it would be silly to believe in God for no reason. But on the other hand, it's equally silly to say that he doesn't exist just because we don't see him everywhere. If there is a God, he's obviously not going to do all the work for us - he wants to us to learn, and we do that by learning from experience and from testing for ourselves.

So to answer Kevin's question: prayer. That's what suggests God's existence to me. Yes, it's very personal and subjective, but it's an 'experiment' of sorts. If God's there, AND wants us to know about him, AND created us, then surely he'd provide some way for us to find out about him, and he'd make it possible to tell him part of some 'trick' or 'coincidence'. I believe one can simply ask God if he's there, and he'll answer. I also believe you can ask him if the Bible, or the Koran, or any other thing is true. If you do your part to learn for yourself and then seek his guidance - he'll answer. How he answers is the very personal part. The Bible talks about 'fruits of the spirit' - feelings of love, joy, peace, comfort, etc... I've prayed, and I feel those things. They're distinct from anything else - they almost have a 'personality' to them. Maybe another person will get a different answer. I would never claim that a person who got different results was somehow 'less worthy', because like I said - it's personal. It's between that person and God, and he judges our lives. I'm in no position to judge what someone else feels.

Now, I don't expect everyone to believe what I said just because I said it, but to me what I experienced is evidence. Nothing anyone could say or show me could convince me that I didn't feel that. And that's why I said that no science could change my mind about God. It could make me question complex beliefs and assumptions, but the aforementioned comet doesn't make me question those feelings by any stretch of the imagination.

edit: I added my email address to my profile - if anyone has further questions or issues with anything I've said - feel free to email me.

What have you found that suggests that there isn't a god in the first place?

Please, everyone on earth knows proving or disproving the existence of god is impossible, so why did you ask a moronic question like that?

I guess I'm getting negative points because some people either disagree with questioning faith, or because others consider this flameworthy.

But I assure you, my goal was merely to probe the OP's lack of conflict between science and faith.

"I'm very religious and I follow science, and it's extremely rare that I feel conflicted."

How? Please elaborate.

I can only assume that he means that he's not a Young-Earth Creationist who believes that God created the world and life as we see it today a mere 6000 years ago, and then subjected the globe to a catastrophic flood a short time thereafter.

Creationists (usually of the Abrahamic faiths) are pretty much the only ones who have a hard time reconciling God and science. They also make up the minority of religious people in developed nations.

Actually I would consider myself "of the Abrahamic faiths" - I'm Mormon, and we accept both the Old and New Testaments, among with other books that we consider scripture. The reason I don't feel conflicted, is because I don't place a huge amount of emphasis on

1) My own interpretation of that scripture, or 2) Theoretical science

A lot of both of them is just ideas. I think it's good to have ideas and theories and try to improve those over time, but just because one turns out to be wrong, doesn't destroy my whole belief system. Those theories exist because we're trying to piece really complex things together, and it will be a long time before we really understand the whole picture. My "religion" is based on simple things that I feel very sure of. I'm very sure that there is a God, I'm very sure that Jesus Christ is the messiah, etc... And those are the things that I base my faith on. Science is similar - there are simple principles that every scientist accepts as fundamental, and they work on those to come up with more complex theories. I see creation as one of those theories. The scriptures aren't specific, and it's left to us to try to understand it for ourselves. I don't think we need to understand it to be "saved" - it's just part of learning and understanding more about the God we worship. What God requires is, I believe, that we simply live good lives according to what we believe to be 'right'. So if a comet shows up with Amino acids, it has nothing to do with my religion. The Bible never said there WASN'T life on other planets, or that God didn't work natural laws. Personally, I believe there is life on other planets. After all, why would an infinite and eternal being limit himself to one planet? But like I said - that's not one of those "fundamentals", and so if something conflicts with that, it doesn't bother my faith. It's just a part of piecing those complex pieces together - and so I see nothing wrong with discussing different religious ideas with people, or discussing science and religion, etc... To me it's just a discussion of what we think makes sense. God wants us to try and learn for ourselves - reasoning and making guesses is a part of that.

I hope that makes sense. If anyone's interested in discussing the matter further, I'll add my email to my profile.

"Creationists (usually of the Abrahamic faiths) are pretty much the only ones who have a hard time reconciling God and science."

I would agree that they have the hardest time, but I disagree that anything in science points to the existence of the supernatural (including one or many deities).

It may not point to anything for you, and that's fine. But there are lay people and scientists alike who see the pursuit of knowledge about our universe as a glimpse into God's own mind. Note that most of this hinges on accepting at least a simple cosmological argument for God.

The fact that these people phrase it like that - or believe that there's something supernatural about it - isn't something that increases the probability of it being true, IMO.

I'm sorry, but I think religious thinking and scientific thinking are _almost_ incompatible. One is based on faith and dogma, other on testable evidence.

There are areas that they shock directly: religion says something about our reality, and scientific investigation finds out that that thing is just wrong.

IMHO, beliefs about our reality that _are testable_ should never be based on religion. Science does a better job at this. Now, beliefs about things that is out of science scopes can rely on religion (it can't really rely on much else.)

I don't think it does anything for religions, they are by definition faith based.

As to your other question. We have known that amino acids exist out there for a while: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_meteorite

And there's a reasonable theory that these compounds form naturally as the the stuff out there tumbles down the entropy stairs, so to speak.

And here's where it gets interesting, if it's true that the building blocks of DNA are fairly common in the universe, then it's a reasonable assumption that DNA based life can emerge with some frequency.

note that amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, not DNA. Also it's worth bearing in mind that DNA is a complex and fairly inert molecule, whereas RNA or TNA are often catalytic, thus potentially both simpler to spontaneously originate as a standalone, self-replicating entity (life!)

"Also what does this say about the possibility of life outside of earth?"

A certainty. In fact, we may one day decide that life is just one of the phases of matter, along side liquid, solid, gas, plasma, and Bose-Einstein condensate.

Whether humanity ever finds anything more sophisticated than extraterrestrial algal mats before we go extinct is another matter.

I think it's strange that every time a scientific discovery occurs one of the first reactions to it is, "Well, that about wraps it up for religion, eh?" Followed by dismissive comments about how religion is completely different from science because it's "faith-based" (read: irrational, unconcerned with the facts).

Certainly, it's possible to come to different conclusions based upon the objective evidence. That doesn't mean that one of the conclusions is irrational and the other is rational.

In fact, I don't think there's any less faith involved in concluding that the only way life could have originated on earth is via panspermia (and that therefore, there is no God that matters) - all because we found an amino acid in space.

Over the last hundred years the probability most assign to the existence of an omnipotent god has decreased dramatically. Most rational people will come to the conclusion that there is such a vanishingly small chance of a god existing that there is no point believing. That's thanks to science.

That's kind of a bizarre way to put it. Science has very little to say about the probability of God.

Science has removed some old proofs of God - the watchmaker proof in particular, by providing alternative explanations for the existence of life. Science itself has come almost nowhere towards placing a probability on the existence of life given the universe we live in, using only known physical processes.

It's completely plausible to say that, given a modern version of evolution, and all the time and planets and matter in the universe so far, the odds of creatures at least as intelligent as humans is one in a million. Or a trillion. Who could possibly know otherwise? There are, after all, thousands of unknowns in any such calculation.

If, in a few centuries, someone did accurately calculate that the odds were one in a trillion, would you say that science gave "a vanishingly small chance of a god existing?"

"Science has removed some old proofs of God - the watchmaker proof in particular, by providing alternative explanations for the existence of life."

Said more eloquently than I.

FYI, glycine is the smallest amino acid, its chemical formula is C2H5NO2. color me surprised when they find tryptophan on a comet

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