by EndofMysteries 27 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Life started here by a serendipitous coming together of the right conditions and basic "building blocks".
The thing is though, that this whole "Universe" as we call it is in fact just one small cell/atom in a much larger Verse, and we form part of a chair leg in that place.
What worries me is what happens when the chair goes out of fashion and the owner burns it.
Phizzy, a little along the lines of what you said, a new theory is that our entire universe is actually either the result or contained inside a black hole created by a 4th dimensional star that died. If that's the case, imagine how small a black hole is in relation to our universe, then our entire universe in a black hole of a 4th dimensional universe.
It is certainly a possibility. But as jwfacts was alluding, that hypothesis doesn't answer the fundamental question of the orgin of life. All it does is kick the proverbial can (origin of life) down the cosmos to another alien planet. The fundamental question of the origin of life remains unanswered.
For this reason I think the orgin of life, period, is the more salient question that needs addressing - not just the orgin of life on earth - because at the end of the day finding out that life on earth came from an extraterrestrial source will not really satisfy the burning question of the origin of life. It's like taking out a 10,000 dollar loan to pay off a 10,000 dollar debt. At the end of the day you're still 10,000 dollars in debt.
I don't know any "athiests" , but I do know that atheists generally have an expectation that there is alien life out there. However, it would take a long time for them to get here, which lessens the chance that they had time to travel all the way here and plant people seeds.
Perhaps more importantly, it only displaces the question of origin. As jwfacts said, how did the aliens develop? This hypothesis only complicates the question of origin, unless it turned out that there were aliens which somehow evolved in a way that was much easier to understand than our own evolution. Then we could say that you are actually providing a simpler alternative to evolution happening on Earth.
But it's difficult to imagine how this simpler evolution would work, as a lot of the evolution that's theorized as taking place on this planet is already quite easy to understand (and yes, there are still lots of open questions too). It's similar to saying "God did it" -- not an unreasonable hypothesis, if you can demonstrate that it's simpler for God to come about spontaenously than for life on Earth to do so.
Its an interesting POV but I'd re-frame the question 'Do scientists believe it's possible that life on earth is part of a larger garden patch and why?'
http://theweek.com/article/index/218127/the-dna-from-outer-space
while we haven't quite discovered extra-terrestrial life yet, we may be inching closer. Scientists worldwide are excited about NASA's recent announcement that the building blocks of DNA have been discovered on several meteorites — and that these meteorites' DNA components are not the result of any contamination from here on Earth. The discovery adds weight to the theory that life on our planet may have been started by meteorites, comets, or other objects that fell to Earth. Here, four key questions:
What did the NASA team find? Scientists analyzed 12 meteorites — nine of which were found in Antarctica — and discovered that 11 of the 12 meteorites contained traces of adenine and guanine. These are two of the four compounds — called nucleobases — that are needed to form the structure of DNA. The scientists also found three other exotic compounds that are similar to nucleobases, called nucleobase analogs.
On to another article.
Ever since the discovery of organic molecules in a meteorite that landed in Australia about half a century ago, scientists have been tantalized by the possibility that the building blocks of life originated in space. New research is shedding light on how such compounds might have formed and found their way to Earth.
Fred Ciesla, a planetary scientist at the University of Chicago, and Scott Sanford, a NASA astrophysicist, say our solar system was on the fast track to create life before Earth existed. The scientists made a computer model of the solar nebula—the disk of gas and dust from which the Sun and planets formed 4.6 billion years ago. The primordial debris included icy grains containing frozen water, ammonia and carbon dioxide, among other molecules.
Ciesla and Sanford simu- lated the movements of 5,000 ice grains over a million years in the turbulence of the solar nebula, which tossed them about like laundry in a dryer, lofting some “high enough [so] that they were being irradiated directly by the young Sun,” says Ciesla. High-energy ultraviolet radiation broke molecular bonds, creating highly reactive atoms that were prone to recombine and form more stable—and sometimes, more complex—compounds.
Ciesla and Sanford say this process could have generated organic molecules such as amino acids, amphiphiles and nucleobases—the building blocks of proteins, cell membranes and RNA and DNA, respectively.
The odds of meteorites reaching Earth got a boost from Jupiter, say Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado, and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. When the solar system was forming, Jupiter’s gravity prevented nearby planetesimals from coalescing. The bodies smashed into one another, breaking into fragments that settled into an asteroid belt 158 million miles from Earth. If a young Jupiter had passed through the belt while settling into its orbit around the Sun, it would have scattered the asteroids; if its orbit had been too far from the belt, asteroids would have accumulated and constantly bombarded the Earth, rendering it lifeless. Instead, the asteroid belt provided just the right amount of asteroids to courier compounds to Earth without pounding it into oblivion.
Both studies point to the possibility of life on other planets. Ciesla says, “If the process that we describe did play a role in the formation of the organics that we see in meteorites, then we expect basically every solar system to contain” organics. However, only 4 percent of the known solar systems in our galaxy possess a Jupiter-type planet in the right place to create an asteroid belt like ours. “There could be more asteroid belts out there,” says Martin, “but we just can’t see them yet.”
island man - while it's true if the origin of life on Earth was extraterrestrial would not answer the question about the origin of life and the origin of the extraterrestrial life, it would be a step in the right direction and possibly impossible to answer without access to the extraterrestrial and if that is the case, the answer may never be found until that happens if it happens. We may be the equivalent of metal robots w/ AI built into ourselves to what extraterrestrials may be if they made us. Gotta work backwards to get to the origin, jumping and skipping major points probably won't work. But we gotta work with what we have now.
We may be the equivalent of metal robots w/ AI built into ourselves to what extraterrestrials may be if they made us.
Is reality just too dull for you?
Personally I am endlessly fascinated by things we actually know.
No reality is not dull at all.
Things we DO know and are FACT are fascinating.
Putting a halt to critical thinking for theories and hypothesis that so far can not be proved is limiting and could be hindering.
It seems most of the world thinks that the answer life on Earth must be either A) creation by all knowing all powerful eternal master of the universe OR B) a series of dividing by zero and a trillion chances to one for just the right conditions to happen to just the right thing to spontaneously result in the first life form then subsequent mutations resulting in billions of different life forms on Earth.
What if both are wrong? If it's nonstop trying to prove one or the other without entertaining other possibilities then may never get the answer if it really is neither of those two.
B) a series of dividing by zero and a trillion chances to one for just the right conditions to happen to just the right thing to spontaneously result in the first life form then subsequent mutations resulting in billions of different life forms on Earth.
Abiogenesis has not yet been solved but it will be. Subsequent evolution is not up for debate.
Speaking as one who is a athiests. I think it is fun to think that people from another planet came hear 10's of 1000's of years ago and started the human race but there is now proof. Just as there is no proof there is a god. For those who are athiest all they asked for is proof and with that proof they will decide what to believe. Still Totally ADD
