Where is the Origin of Life on Earth?

To answer the iconic question “Are We Alone?”, scientists around the world are also attempting to understand the origin of life. There are many pieces to the puzzle of how life began and many ways to put them together into a big picture. Some of the pieces are firmly established by the laws of chemistry and physics. Others are conjectures about what Earth was like four billion years ago, based on extrapolations of what we know from observing Earth today. However, there are still major gaps in our knowledge and these are necessarily filled in by best guesses.
We invited talented scientists to discuss their different opinions about the origin of life and the site of life’s origin. Most of them will agree that liquid water was necessary, but if we had a time machine and went back in time, would we find life first in a hydrothermal submarine setting in sea water or a fresh water site associated with emerging land masses?
Biologist David Deamer, a Research Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and multi-disciplinary scientist Bruce Damer, Associate Researcher in the Department of Biomolecular Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, will describe their most recent work, which infers that hydrothermal pools are the most plausible site for the origin of life. Both biologists have been collaborating since 2016 on a full conception of the Terrestrial Origin of Life Hypothesis.
Lynn Rothschild, Senior Scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center and Adjunct Professor of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry at Brown University, who is an astrobiologist/ synthetic biologist specializing in molecular approaches to evolution, particularly in microbes and the application of synthetic biology to NASA's missions, will provide an evolutionary biologist’s perspective on the subject.

[@tomatocan2502]

A Hitchens binge brought me here.

[@glynndraper437]

Good lad

[@oobrocks]

Apparently there's no Rhyme or reason y some lines are highlighted

[@alexxdeloach4947]

That’s funny

[@jibrilrahim1930]

Ohh you reminded me of one of my Gods ( Christopher Hitchens).

[@nicosmind3]

SETI we love you and miss your videos. Good to see another upload

[@ThinkHuman]

Fascinating stuff, thank you for the interesting thoughts!

[@breimalislobodnoime]

thank you for sharing the videos

[@mirzamay]

Thank you to this wonderful panel 🙏. Appreciate so much your work and sharing it with us. And happy belated birthday Dave 🎂. I could have listened to a couple hours of questions. Those were so good. Especially from the "future generation". So well put together and also what I want to know.

[@TioYesi]

Excelente!!. Gracias por compartir . Saludos !!

[@MtnTow]

The birthday wishes at the end. Awesome!

[@Jimeniuss]

I just lost 40 seconds of my life...... during the happy birthday singing, ( not that I don’t find it lovely, I’m just a musician ), but the rest, oh my god! Thank you so much for such an amazing conference. It is mind blowing to be able to listen to this great scientists. What an amazing debate. How fortunate I feel to be able to have access to this recording. Big thanks to the presenters, the audience, the welcoming atmosphere, the fantastic moderator with her excellent professionalism. Simply, wow!!!!!

[@Raphael_NYC]

Wonderful. Thank you.

[@erikandreassen6531]

Thank you made it so easy to understand without to much technical information, for a dummy like me, Thank you again great lecture.

[@Norman92151]

Really interesting. Thanks

[@PeggiandSteve]

Very informative and appreciate really good presenters. Thank you

[@neddyladdy]

great images from movies i have never seen, prhaps from the speaker's childhood. oh yeah,, wonderfully enlightening!

[@jigsnep]

"There's a big gap in our understanding how to get from adenine to Adenosine monophosphate (AMP) which is a nucleotide actual monomer of RNA" - Biologist David Deamer

[@n721sw]

Thank you SETI for the awesome video! Such an interesting subject, my favorite!

[@nomoreblitz]

Great presentation!

[@sock2828]

He's very good at explaining things.

[@terigarrison5200]

Amazing!

[@cuscof2]

"You need to have a landscape supporting massive failure..." This is a very good point, because it's certain that almost all of the first proto-cells would fail. Just one needs to succeed, but getting to that one would take billions of tries.

[@FirestormX9]

Damn, i had no idea SETI has a KZbin channel haha what a fun find! Thank you, KZbin.

[@seemaophk]

Ver nice To listen

[@Semper_Fish]

Where is the origin of life? "We don't know." ... nailed it!

[@lrvogt1257]

"I don't know" is the best and most honest answer for many unanswered questions. Making up a fairy-tale is neither.

[@waltertaleno35]

That was a great informacion, the paht to find the orogins of life is far to end.

[@bosco008]

Awesome

[@clivewells7090]

This is quite funny and sad at the same time. The man is talking about self assembly of lipid membranes but ignores the formation of protein machines that let things in and out of the living cell. The woman was slightly more honest when she said the DNA was a bit harder to get by accident, and said it stands for 'just DoNt Ask!'

[@zodammit]

Do abiological lipid bubble membranes have a uniform electric potential based on the composition of minerals and aminos the bubble contains?

[@choppps5858]

No

[@cernunnos_lives]

Thanks for the upload.

[@mostlynew]

I thank you for making this complex subject accessible to/for the general reader. I wonder how this concept is supported by the ‘geosphere’ approach that explains production of necessary minerals.

[@Murray9452]

The premise of SETI is that information is a product of intelligence. DNA contains information. Therefore according to SETI, DNA must be a product of intelligence.

[@sirsystem2341]

i happily loved to know the joy of it.

[@jeandanielneele]

There are three undeniable facts regarding current life on earth: 1. Cell theory . It states that all current life on earth (the only place where we are absolutely sure life exists) is cellular based. All life from cells. Viruses are no exception, they need living cells to become alive. 2. Biogenesis, Pasteur’s theory. Only life begets life. Anywhere where life is observed on earth, it originated from other life forms. .3. We might never be able to violate the”law” of biogenesis. Even if humans become able to create artificial life , it will still not violate the “law”. Human life producing new life is still life creating life. It will only be violated if life is observed to spontaneously appears spontaneously without any input by pre-existing life.

[@ianhopcraft9894]

fascinating, just what I wanted to listen to, thanks for posting this. Does anyone know if abiogenesis is continuing today, is pre-life or early life observable in any likely conditions around today?

[@donnagoring3859]

Your question is most timely. As one of the nation's sent a satalite to the moon and it crashed instead, there has been ongoing speculation on one of the species sent. The rest of the genetic DNA species from Earth is considered gone (radiation), all but this one species. It has been chatted in other circles that it may be still viable. Every thought on how it may not have survived, is disputed by the moons own environment, and the species ability to survive in the most inhospitable places on earth, from before the age of the dinosaur. Have not heard what NASA, private corporations are going to do with that area, speculating from my end that a quarantine untill they know in fact what is happening with it.

[@donnagoring3859]

Tardigrade, water bears, might be very interesting to observe, needed to look up the name for you, hope this helps.

[@mastergonz186]

Excellent presentation; I enjoyed the format of having each presenter have only 3 slides, but still present sufficient evidence to corroborate their hypotheses.

[@zapfanzapfan]

Nice to see a face with the voice, I was wondering what Molly looked like. Maybe the sea was less salty 4 billion years ago and the salt levels inside our cells represent what the ocean looked like when life formed?

[@chromabotia]

Brilliant insights, we are getting closer to life's beginning! Thanks for posting SETI!!

[@selvinrobinson8780]

Might be on path to the ending of life as we knows it,hope not🌏🌍

[@derreckwalls7508]

@@luisfilipe6253 Not anymore. The universe is just one occurance of an eternal existence. (No need for a subsistant God.) Life is an emergent property of the self-organizing properties of matter and reiterating systems that we are now beginning to understand. (No imposition by God needed.) Consciousness is evident in the behavior of quantum entities and is an integral constituent of existence. See "axions" in photosynthesis. (No God needed.) Primates exhibit compassion, sharing, empathy, group cooperation, and altruism, all of which are moral behaviors. Morality is explained by our social evolution. (No supernatural origins of morals needed, i.e., no God required.) Soon the experimental sciences will explain all of the things religion uses in its "God of the gaps" arguments and religion can finally return to dealing with the spiritual, where it belongs. Trying to prove God by denying science is not the norm in Christianity, it is only those extremists with an erroneous interpretation of the Bible (usually by literalists) that causes the ridiculous need to argue God vs. science "rationally".

[@AcePlaysGames]

@@derreckwalls7508 "The universe is just one occurrence* of an eternal existence." There is no proof for this statement, which is ironic considering it's something you put blind faith into in order to believe that there is no God or necessary existence. And what would this eternal existence be anyways? I'd love if you could explain that to me.

[@rocroc]

Life developed like a random selection of self generating punches on an Altair 8800 computer. Love it.

[@neptunespixels]

I wonder if the same wet dry cycles could be found in pools of liquid methane on the surface of Titan? And would there be anything in the chemistry of Titan that would prohibit the wet/dry cycles from replicating the mechanisms in liquid methane instead of fresh water?

[@lengould9262]

Water is pretty much unique chemically, in that it freezes from top down. If a pool freezes bottom up much more difficult for life.

[@markalbert506]

Wonderful.

[@georgewbushcenterforintell147]

The fact that Life exsist is amazing . We had to be in a universe with perfect physics with rocks turned into planets just the right distance from a star with the right combination to produce stuff that made more stuff that made a pile of stuff that turned into stuff that became intelligent life .

[@xdarkartemis6136]

To think that if consciousness developed 10% later we possibly wouldn't be alive today. The decisions of creatures before us are the reason we are here today. 🤔 From the creature that climbed out of the water, to the creature that decided to climb trees and migrate. It's just mindblowing that all of those lives once lived played into what we are now. Imagine our future, our decisions will have impact on the lives that come after us. It's just so strange, scary and fascinating all at the same time.

[@TheMickeymental]

@@xdarkartemis6136 You are describing a fantasy world which never existed. Abiogenesis is not possible therefore evolution is impossible.

[@nicosmind3]

Happy birthday Dave

[@MrRobertX70]

I definitely just because a believer in the hot spring hypothesis.

[@luisfilipe6253]

God is the creator.

[@lucienmaryle5850]

Thank You the hosting! Berkeley room Flying Dutch they'ere say. Preview on Discovery planetaries Space &Universe ISS

[@TheFhdude]

Life as we know it always comes from life and it always has the body building plan code, the software of life aka DNA i.e. the information containing the building and body plan. Unless you come up with a theory of how such a complex information in the form of DNA code came in the first place, you explained nothing. That is why there is very little progress in the study of the origin of life compared to other disciplines because the more we know about life the more we become aware how complex life and the robotic mini high tech machines inside the cell are. Our theories are still very old, like life originated from some random chemical processes etc. That is baloney and explains basically nothing. You don't have to try to explain the physical and chemical part in my view. I can give you a dead animal body which has all these components. Now give me a living animal back i.e. even if I give you all the DNA amino acids of the world still a dead animal is a dead animal and has no life. Until now, we know no origin of life other than life itself. life comes only from life. Don't act as if the main problem is getting all these chemical components together. We can get them now easily but still even our modern robots that are sophisticated are cakewalk compared to the complexity and sophistication of life. Come on, think big, don't focus only on single issues but use common sense and see the WHOLE PICTURE. The complexity of a single cell, the sophistication of a single organ like an eye, a brain etc. can never be produced with these kind of "silly" random methods even if the earth is 100 billion years old. What you guys are doing is like finding a Sumerian writing on a clay and trying to explain the physical and chemical components of the ink and in the process missing the real message, the information, big time!

[@ryanlashbrook5721]

It is amazing how geniuses try to explain away the fact of a creator.

[@jomen112]

Can you even write a single sentence without conflating things into an utter word salad of nonsence?

[@ivyrose779]

It’s like you didn’t even watch the video.

[@jamieobrien8172]

@@ivyrose779 main thing about natural selection I question and ask is why a single cell organism would bother to multiple and pass on its genetic code to be able to develop any evolutionary traits to die anyway?

[@danielash1704]

I wonder if Earth's outer atmosphere with lightning charges or frequencies had something to do with the assistance to the programming system of this project.

[@dougeagleton8814]

👏👏👏

[@nayanmipun6784]

Life is the automated self sustaining systems helped with incoming energies, this started with the super rudimentary system and then developed into 1 st archaic cells as the main source of today's life cells. There was many small genesis that combined together to form the archaic cells. Understanding super rudimentary metabolism is a good method to know life beginning

[@jamiboothe]

[@StewartChaimson]

Shouldn't these lipid bubbles with fragments of RNA (mats formed in the wet/dry places) still exist?

[@jeremiah1059]

Wouldn't "synthetic biologist" be considered a contradiction in terms?

[@tomhall7633]

"Fascinating", said the fellow with the pointed ears.

[@simonsimon2888]

Dews found at the tip of a leaf could be water of condensation during the night when the absence of photosynthesis. While, in the day, if we tie a plastic bag tightly to a branch of leaves 'water vapours' are formed during the process of photosynthesis.

[@phoule76]

what an interesting discussion! I can't wait until we have more data. If we do find simple life under the Martian surface, I wonder if it will be indistinguishable from Earth life.

[@MultiBikerboy1]

2021 and the US starts to fess up that there are ‘unidentifiable craft in the airspace’. Well wadda ya know!!!! Hope the penny drops for SETI some time soon. 😃

[@flappy7373]

My favorite type of youtube video titles.. ones that ask a question that they have *absolutely ZERO* intention of answering. In this case, it wasn't meant to be clickbait, it was just the title/theme of the discussion.. and it was a fun one.

[@phantomwalker8251]

boring,stopped after 5 mins,flicked,bored..it is for beginner students. try & find out why we have a voice box,dare you,,or why we have non human dna..now that,is interesting..

[@simonsimon2888]

He is correct when a bottle of cold drink begins to lose its coldness through warming up 'water of condensation' is formed outside the surface of the bottle.

[@gledatelj1979]

03:50 "Life is an emergent process based on physical components, not just an object" She is literally describing a machine, not a living creature, a car not a cat.

[@nicolaemanole8444]

Excellent video; I'd like to see more of these on the subject. My only concern is that nobody tried so far to calculate the natural radiation of the soil/rocks which, 4 billions years ago, was much higher than today's values. Everybody seems to be concerned of the UV solar radiation which I tend to disapprove because at that time the Earth was a much hotter place with lots of water vapor and volcanic ashes floating in the primordial atmosphere kind of blocking the solar rays to rich the surface of the earth. I use to picture that primordial earth (at the very moment the first bacteria emerged) a place much like today's Venus with almost all the water dispersed in the atmosphere and the Moon being much closer to the Earth puting a much higher pressure on the Earth's magma through tidal forces. Knowing that the Earth's crust was much thinner that is today and one day on earth was less than 10 hrs we can imagine the scale of the cracks occurance on that crust with magma pouring all over the place and all day long. In conclusion I think that the future experiments in reproducing the conditions in which the first form of life emerged should to take into consideration much higher temperatures, a much higher atmospheric pressure (40 Bar the least) and a much higher radiation values comming from the radioactive isotops. I also agree the idea that the first bacterie showed up in the very first pools of water condensing on that hot Earth probably on the higher grounds in wich there might be the best conditions to form phospholipids peptides and, who knows, maybe short chains of nucleic acids. A big thumb up for this vid and keep up the good work for all the guys envolved in this field.

[@papat9470]

All I hear is a lot of conjecture.

[@ManicPandaz]

You must really hate religious apologetics then.

[@Greenie-43x]

1:07:52 serious question, scoff, dodge 1:14:31 nanoo nanoo

[@jaysilverheals4445]

as a retired machinist approaching 70 and of course near end of life I finally got lucky because I have never believed it was possible we all sprang from one common ancestor. We all accept that out of trillions of planets we cant be the only life. If that is accepted then it also follows that there was no patent office open at the time as far as I know 4 billion years ago. If that is true and with out perfect conditions plus knowing amoeba type cells can neither read nor write or file patents it then follows that life could spring up in multiple locations even on earth. Once an amoeba or virus forms in a warm pool in auastralia area and considering lack of communication at the time there is no way a cell could send out the word "no other life I am it--everything now goes in linear evolution from me till I build the first radio". so formation of life must be constant and what occurred then must be occurring at this moment. not in a line from one ancestor

[@rustyshackleford9888]

The thing is, there isn't any evidence for that. If there were multiple origins of life in the early days of the Earth when conditions became right for life to form, all vying for the same basic nutrients in a competitive environment to replicate themselves through independently derived biological mechanisms, then only one ended up becoming dominant and outcompeting the others, and subsequently all life today is descended from that same origin of life. This is supported by the fundamental similarities that all cellular life and viruses share today, i.e., a universal genetic code and the fundamental biochemical mechanisms to replicate and express that code, which would be very unlikely to have evolved identically through completely independent means. The reason why life hasn't independently developed in the billions of years since life first emerged may be because life as we know it had already taken over, and the competition for new independent origins of life to emerge from abiotic chemistry is too great.

[@juggy666]

These are very good presenters,!

[@chuckwhite3033]

I'm convinced that Panspermia is the origin of all (most?) life in the universe. Just look at how hearty our own spores are as some spore forming species can survive in space! Not much of a stretch to believe that many genetic material containing spores can survive inside comets, asteroids, etc. I'm not a believer in the primordial soup theory of organic molecules combining to form organized lifeforms. The template already exists but explaining how that template formed in the first place is the problem.

[@The.Kyle.Scott.]

I agree. Thus our goalpost is moved, and an almost identical question remains.

[@robertszontagh1297]

Thank you for the long excursion to the land of Wedontknow which lies at the end of the road Maybecouldhhawouldha. Now you can take some soap and cook them on a hot rock, throw in a little precious dust and win that Nobel Prize for “creating” life.

[@101xaplax101]

why does the sea 🌊 vent have a thermodynamic hurdle to overcome? he's assuming an awful lot with his wet/dry cycle approach

[@PhysicsPolice]

Talk begins 0:38

[@guthrie_the_wizard]

I predict that we will have a demonstrable solution to this within the next 10 years due to advances in computer modeling and in the field itself. Very exciting stuff! Science freaking rocks! 🧪 🧬 🧫

[@nahshon9998]

This site is pure nonsense. Not a scrap of evidence is offered, just beliefs. Life cannot arise from non-life, and they know that fact very well. But they skirt the science to pretend that, with enough study, they can do what scientists have been unable to do for decades, produce life. In the mean time this is a bed time story for abiogenesis believers. Science? Hardly. Science is about observable and testable evidence. The origin of life is a belief, not science.

[@craftycriminalistwithms.z3053]

@@nahshon9998 I’m sorry but no, you have the idea of what science actually is, and what scientist actually do; sci·ence noun the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world *through observation and experiment* Meaning one *observes* the world around, or the universe, or something else. Next a person comes up with a *theory about what they have observed.* Next a person puts said *theory to different tests*, scrutiny and so on, to see if then that theory would work, or not. It may be hard for people like yourself to believe those who spend their lives on nothing except continuing to learn, and answer questions they and many may have, which people like you can’t comprehend someone spending a life to only possibly answer one question, if not at all and still having a huge impact on education, and knowledge in totality. Open your brain some, and while you learn to open you brain some try also opening your mind up as well, you and people like you may find life a little more pleasing then you may now find it, especially when thing don’t go the way you expect it to or want it to, for whatever reasons you may have…

[@Psalm1101]

Make rna in the lab and its that simple in nature 70 yrs since miller eury exp and with supercomputers and they are today do it

[@sambrose1]

Making life may not be all that hard but having it replicate. That's the rub.

[@brianjacob8728]

And all the cellular processes needed to maintain life ALL had to be operational at the same time. Didn't happen...

[@derreckwalls7508]

@@luisfilipe6253 I see you are spamming the comments. You aren't even bothering to substantiate your claim. (Not that we haven't heard the same tird, debunked arguments a thousand times.) What would you think if I went to religious sites and put, "science debunks your God" all over the place? This is a forum to discuss science. You are being disrespectful of "opposing" views that are only opposing because you don't understand that God could be so much more that the bewilderingly fickle and simplistic magical sky daddy you make him out to be. Maybe a universal consciousness is responsible for existence, but just didn't create it in the way that scientifically ignorant Bronze Age people thought he did.

[@michaelwellman3293]

And yet, they'll still get no closer than Miller-Urey in the end.

[@hmgrraarrpffrzz9763]

So far they didn't. In future they might.

[@9w9w42]

What a privilege to hear 3 such lucid teachers, explain their work. This, for many of us laymen, was a mini-intro. to current work in the field.

[@dietrevich]

I think that it should be clear that whatever the conditions were that allowed life to occur are no longer present as the Earth otherwise would still be producing new forms of life to this day.

[@johnward7925]

Gee ya' think? What he's saying would be my best guess too.

[@rampartranger7749]

Did you decode the RNA? What does it say?

[@xDRAGONSHAGGERx]

It says turn back, death ahead

[@user-gd6oj1yy1s]

thank you alll s.e.t.i. n'all

[@jasmineluxemburg6200]

Fabulous thought provoking , interdisciplinary, opened minded discussion on life’s origins. The right - ie effective questions may get asked and probed in our searches on our planet and elsewhere if informed by such teams. Cross fertilization - literal and intellectual , may be required to come up with viable answers worthy of investigation.

[@DavidFMayerPhD]

Problem with the "warm ponds" hypothesis: During the Late Hadean, the Moon was about 1/6 as distant as it is today. Tidal effects are proportional to the THIRD POWER of the distance between objects. Hence, early tides would be 6 cubed (216) as high as tides are today. Hence, the Earth would have been continually swept by global tsunamis. Warm pools are unlikely to exist under such violent conditions. The principal problem with nearly all concepts of the origin of life is the formation of polymers such as nucleic acids, polysaccharides, and polypeptides. Chemical thermodynamics states that the equilibrium in all of three of these classes of compounds is in favor of DEPOLYMERIZATION. Left alone in water, all three spontaneously hydrolyze into monomers. This is a serious, perhaps fatal, problem in most theories of abiogenesis. The solution to this problem has recently been published: Polyphosphate. There are two critical facts of phosphate chemistry involved here: 1. monophosphate ion in solution is polymerized into polyphosphate by ultraviolet light. 2. polyphosphate reacts with monomers such as amino acids, monosaccharides, and nucleotides to drive condensation reaction creating polymers, with the polyphosphate being converted back into monophosphate. In the primitive oceans of Old Earth, there were many simple organic compounds produced either from UV irradiation in the ocean, or from UV irradiation in space in comets. Many of these compounds are driven to polymerize by polyphosphate which is constantly generated by UV irradiation. Other simple organic compounds such as citrate kept calcium in solution and prevented the precipitation of calcium phosphate hydrate (apatite). The strongest evidence that this mechanism is indeed correct is the fact that organic polyphosphates such as ATP are STILL the energy currency and primary drivers of life even today. What is ATP other than a polyphosphate (triphosphate) with an organic "handle" which permits the cell to transport the molecule to the point where it is needed.

[@littlerocksolid]

Nice! So, if we know how life can happen, what have we created to support that statement? Far from that! Way more complicated, astronomically in deed!

[@zeus44444]

that's what I am working on, you can't steal my idea

[@PaulHigginbothamSr]

probably in the hot chemical bath from deep ocean mantle plumes. Either that or interstellar gas clouds deep in a molecular cloud maybe many light years distant. Probability estimates however favor an ocean on say Europa warmed by gravitational stretching and somehow with some transport of components out from under a deep ice cover to space. Once dna is formed it is remarkably resilient, as shown with Denisovan dna which is either Heidleburgensis, or Homohabilis.

[@kennethphillips4000]

Intelligent life was obviously formed in the UK

[@xDRAGONSHAGGERx]

@Asen Asumani it might have been sarcasm, which of course was developed in the UK by only highly intelligent primates

[@backindawuds1395]

Love this Not sure God wasn’t involved

[@jasmineluxemburg6200]

So many space ‘nerds’ out there and so few responses !

[@papoan8892]

We have always existed. It's just that we don't remember our past!

[@chesterrawers346]

" In the beginning GOD....

[@robertnicholson1409]

Look, she's completely wrong. Life did not originate in warm pools on land. In fact it's very difficult to do organic chemistry in water of any kind. See Professor Tour synthetic organic chemist. It's my opinion that DNA/ life has come from outside the Earth and was introduced.but that is just my opinion.

[@philaypeephilippotter6532]

*Tour* has been shown to know nothing about abiogenesis or evolution = and he has admitted as much.

[@jeremynolan852]

@@philaypeephilippotter6532 you must be one of fake professor Dave fanboys 😂

[@TomHendricksMusea]

This suggests the role of UV and may answer some questions. UV AND ITS ROLE IN THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. Introduction. Life, the origin of life, is more likely to start if it had a 99% chance of starting; then if it had a 1% of starting. So most likely the OOL was 99% likely, not 1%. For me the turning point to the study of the OOL, is that life is not a fluke, but the most stable chemical reaction to the environment. Though this proves nothing in itself, it may adjust the mindset in OOL investigation, that now seems stuck in a rut! ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT AND ITS ROLE IN THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. Paper. Introduction. A number of recent studies suggest that ultraviolet radiation may be a necessary ingredient in the origin of life. Further, one may hypothesize that the daily solar cycle and the Sun's UV radiation were important in all stages of the origin of life on Earth. Moreover, it is suggested that life can be defined as that chemical reaction forced by the energy cycle of the Sun, under very specific circumstances. Evidence. In support of these claims are the following assumptions and lines of evidence: 1. The assumption that all stages of the origin of life took place at or near the surface and close to or on land. 2. The assumption that there was a lower solar luminosity, higher UV flux, and no ozone layer in the period of the origin. 3. The assumption that there was a shorter diurnal, day/night cycle, due to the faster rotation of the Earth following the presumed collision that preceded the formation of the Moon. 4. The assumption that chemical selection was for stability under the Sun heat cycle. 5. The assumption that solar radiation far exceeded all other energy available for organic synthesis, including electrical discharges, shock waves, radioactivity to a depth of 1 km, volcanoes, and cosmic rays. 6. The assumption that there were wet/dry cycles that drove phosphorylation of nucleotides and perhaps other condensation reactions. 7. The assumption that there was at first a primitive, environmentally forced, PCR-like replication process of alternating heat and cold that denatured then annealed RNA paired strands. It is assumed that the Sun cycle (day and night) caused a cycle of primitive denaturing and annealing of paired RNA nucleotide strands [and possibly folded (annealed) and unfolded (denatured) nucleotide strands]. It is assumed that this provided a large number of variations of paired RNA strands with variations of properties, the most stable of which possessed the best Watson-Crick (W-C) pairing. 8. It is assumed that instead of a self replicator, there was at first a primitive, Sun-forced replication process. It is assumed that proof reading would at first have been limited to W-C pairing over non W-C pairing for stability. Note also the assumption that paired bases may have better protected the ribose-phosphate backbones from UV damage. 9. The assumption that the first coded information would have been for that molecule which was most stable in the Sun/heat cycle environment. Note: in Watson-Crick base pairing in RNA there are two sets of nucleotide bases: G bonds to C and A bonds to U. It is assumed that Watson-Crick base pairing is more stable in this environment than non Watson-Crick base pairing. And of the two sets of bases, It is assumed that the G-C bonds would have been more stable than A-U bonds because G-C bonds have 3 hydrogen bonds instead of the 2 of A-U. It is also assumed that A-U would have been more stable than non Watson-Crick base pairing. Further it is assumed that high G-C base pairing would have supported more stability than high A-U base pairing. Additionally it is assumed that A-U base pairing would have supported more stability than non Watson-Crick base pairing, or no base pairing at all. It is also assumed that high A-U base pairing would allow for more variation than G-C base pairing, because A-U bonds are more likely to denature in heat and more likely to denature quicker than G-C bonds and thus more likely to anneal with other RNA strands in cooler temperatures. It is assumed that overall the G-C plus A-U sets of nucleotides would promote both general stability with the G-C set, and variety with the A-U set of nucleotides. 10. The assumption that RNA acted as a receptor and transducer of UV radiation. 11. The assumption that there was a cyanobacteria-like lifestyle for the earliest confirmed true organisms so far, and that this earliest remnant of life is very near the likely origin of life. 12. The assumption that there was a pyrimidine dimer impact on the genetic code. It is assumed that because of the high UV during this period, UV-caused pyrimidine dimers would also be highly likely. This further assumes that this would not favor any code with adjacent pyrimidines that would lead to the likelihood of pyrimidine dimers. This further assumes that the most likely first codons would be either purine / pyrimidine / purine, or pyrimidine / purine / pyrimidine; coding that prevents adjacent pyrimidines and thus pyrimidine dimers. Later it is assumed that this would lead to information coding beginning in the 2nd position, or middle position, the most protected position of the 3 base codon and anticodon. It is assumed that this initial coding may have been limited to 2 classes or sets of amino acids; hydrophilic (XAX with "A" in 2nd protected position) and hydrophobic (XUX with U in 2nd protected position). There is also the assumption that there was a pyrimidine dimer impact on tRNA which, it is further assumed, was one of the earliest forms of RNA. 13. The assumption that the Miller / Urey experiments are seen as an illustration of a heat cycle, "energized by a cyclical electrical discharge apparatus to represent UV radiation from the Sun." 14. The assumption that the first mechanism that used sunlight energy to remove hydrogen from water may have been UV radiation on ferrous ions. Magnetite, a mixed oxide of ferrous and ferric iron found in banded iron formations (BIF) may be remnants of that process. This hypothesis avoids problems in competing theories. 1. The problem that heterotrophic lifestyles rapidly deplete the soup of nutrients, thus forcing an implausibly rapid invention of photosynthesis. Instead it is assumed that life started out on a phototrophic path, rather than having to invent it in such a short span of time. 2. The problem of self replication. It is assumed that RNA would not at first replicate on its own, and would need some kind of environmental energy forcing it to replicate. It is assumed that the Sun cycle would provide planet wide forced energy daily. It is assumed that it would provide stable but variable energy that could force into existence a replicating chemical system by denaturing paired RNA strands in high temperatures, then annealing single RNA strands in low temperatures. 3. The problem of UV as a major detriment to the origin. It is assumed that UV would no longer be seen as a detriment to the origin of life but instead as a necessary component of the origin, and a necessary part of the selection process during the origin. 4. The two problems that hydrothermal vent scenarios have: a. no assumed necessary dry phase component for condensation synthesis; b. no assumed necessary UV component. The Sun is a more stable, longer lasting, energy source than any vent, especially if the origin occurred during part of the long bombardment phase, a bombardment that would have upset the constancy and stability of most vents. Also the Sun does not sterilize the water through high temperatures like the vents do. 5. The problem of how the complex mixture of necessary molecules for the origin of life, came about. James Lovelock has said this regarding the claim that ultraviolet would have been detrimental to the origin of life: "This belief that ultraviolet radiation is unconditionally lethal to life on Earth has sustained a distorted view of the Archaean ... And it is a view still deeply entrenched in scientific thinking. I found it to be common among the scientists who sought life on Mars. I could not help wondering how they could think that there was life on the intensely irradiated surface of Mars and at the same time believe that the land beneath the thick and murky Archean atmosphere of Earth was sterile. How could they fit into their minds two such contrary ideas?" Conclusion. It is suggested that experimenters in prebiotic chemistry look to how chemicals react to a Sun / heat / UV cycle in ways that lead to life processes as a response to that forced energy. References Mulkidjanian, A. Y., et al. "Survival of the fittest before the beginning of life Selection of the first oligonucleotide-like polymers by UV light." BMC Evolutionary Biology. Riziq et al. "Photochemical Selectivity in quanine-cytosine base-pair structures." www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/1/20. Senanayake and Idriss et al. "Titanium dioxide Crystals Might Have Helped Trigger Life on Earth." www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2006/January/18010601.asp. Buccino, A. P., Lemarchand, G. A., and Mauas, P. J. D. "UV Radiation Constraints Around the Circumstellar Habitable Zone." arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0512291. Miller, S. L., and Orgel, L.E. The Origins of Life on the Earth Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1974. Encyclopedia entry for Miller-Urey. Braterman, P. S., et al. Nature 303 and Borowska, Z. K., et al. Origin of Life 17 Dworkin, Jason P., David W. Deamer, Scott A. Sandford, and Louis J. Allamandola. "Self-assembling amphiphilic molecules: Synthesis in simulated interstellar/precometary ices." www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/98/3/815

[@sevenn7pure]

From the Engineers 😉

[@criscormero8738]

They should invite James Tour in this events.

[@philaypeephilippotter6532]

Why?

[@jeremynolan852]

@@philaypeephilippotter6532 why not?

[@farazahmad7229]

@@philaypeephilippotter6532 to show what rubbish he is talking, fooling the masses.

[@marisabeltran3084]

Can someone animate this?

[@phantomwalker8251]

why.?.to try & make it interesting.?.waste of print..if you know nothing,then this might be interesting,but,im bored..it tells you nothing.&,darwin was wrong.

[@jaeyang9540]

Here is a thought for you guys at SETI, imagine humanity is capable of space flight, what do you think we will do when we travel to the stars. What plant life, animal life etc will we take and adapt or genetically modify to suit our new environment. If you look at recent data about space, micro gravity, X-rays and gamma rays genetically altering human DNA sequences in space, you will come to some interesting conclusions. If your wondering why your SETI budgets got cut, it is because aliens have already arrived and are on Earth. Why search up there when we can find them down here. Do you want to interact with some fossilized bacteria from a meteorite sample or people that are capable of space flight. Bad news is more than one group are vying for control and influence upon humanity. One group wishes to use their advance technology to portray themselves as gods, while other groups wish to elevate human consciousness so we can take our place among the stars. So when they tell you it will break down the fabric of society, who’s lies does it break down? My God creator doesn’t need a spaceship to travel around in.

[@pulsar22]

Life does not fight entropy. Life arises specifically because of the need of elements under the influence of gravity to follow the laws of entropy.

[@marshallwebb7050]

The origin is on his throne.

[@lrvogt1257]

Haha. Superstition knows no bounds.

[@SyriusStarMultimedia]

There is a possibility that life is a mistake. What is the point of evolving just to become the best eater?

[@MountainFisher]

Where's Dr. James Tour? Organic synthetic chemist, the dude builds molecules that drive or seek out bacteria. Oh he says it is impossible for life to build itself so I guess he wasn't invited.

[@paulgarrett4474]

Why would he be? He says alot but publishes nothing.

[@jeremynolan852]

@@paulgarrett4474 has published 100 papers 😂

[@violadan]

Thank You for an outstanding presentation of science . For the haters out there , may I quasi quote a dead comedian , " So you think there is an invisible man in the sky that sees everything you do and is going to judge you on a 10 point scale ?? " The competing theories that were presented are not listening because they have a pre - constructed concept that is just about as plausible as the invisible man .Darwin was innovative and he was also not completely right . Complete honor for his effort to move us towards the truth . Give up your prejudice and just move towards the truth as it can be explained with what has been presented . We never stop looking for answers . Prove a different answer that is fully supported with evidence over the time scale in consideration and we will all listen to you with the same intense awe .

[@LuckyInCards]

Did life originate on Earth only once? Could there have been more than one LUCA? More than one tree of life? If life could have originated more than once, must it necessarily have been DNA/RNA based? Could there have been another means of heredity and evolution? Why aren't there new trees of life "originating" now?

[@spatrk6634]

because life eats other life. so any complex molecule forming would instantly get devoured by already existing life.

[@hainetkorea]

The Origin of Life is Chemical Synthesis.Marine algae(green seaweed):Cellulose is a cell

[@mikemichaels6753]

Life didn’t come from a speck of junk by the sea. Lol

[@simonsimon2888]

The 'chicken & egg' question with chicken comes first to lay an egg. No chickens, no eggs to scramble for breakfast.

[@ivyrose779]

How do you get a chicken without an egg?

[@spatrk6634]

no egg no chicken

[@Okieshowedem]

May Father YAHweh bless your understanding

[@82spiders]

Urey Miller + comets + half billion years.

[@Seawolfaka]

Within 2 min ! Creating a novel what