abiogenesis_123

> NB I'd expect none of these very simple machines to survive to present day - in fact, I'd imagine there to be several generations of early life, each obliterating/consuming/sublimating the ones before.

That's another really interesting axis of this topic -- why was early Earth special?

There may be no environments on Earth today that are like early Earth, but we could probably recreate them. Wouldn't we then be able to witness abiogenesis?

Or, early Earth wasn't special and abiogenesis happens today. If so, where do we look?

Abiogenesis. I understand that this is not considered understood but I'd be interested in hearing a qualified scientist talk about how we get from "dumb" matter to self-replicating, goal-driven matter. The closest I've ever heard anyone get (in a personal conversation) is that chemistry is about transformation, so "dumb" matter isn't really dumb in the sense that it's static. Still lots of hand waving to get from baking soda and vinegar volcanoes to me typing this question, however.

What's the playing field look like for proto-life? How "smart" are the simplest molecular interactions? What does almost-replication look like? Could we use a computational model for this?

Not sure how much of this is known, but I'd love to hear an expert paint a picture of their mental model of the subject.