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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.

>>abioge+(OP)
Did you read Nick Lane's "The Vital Question: Why Is Life The Way It Is?" It's all about this and it's great. Also take a look at https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-t...

>>abioge+(OP)
This question interests me as well, and I've done some thinking about it over the years. In particular, what I'm interested in is a hypothetically simplest object that can reproduce in a solution of simpler components, along with some differentiating characteristic. For example, maybe you have toroids that pick up particules, grow the torus until its too big, and then splits - and the ends of both halves click together, forming a total of two toroids. Another characteristic that very simple life must have (I believe) is some level of circularity in the sense that the element is an "accumulation of experience" - we might say a reduction of its environment. In the same way Schordinger was interested in life thermodynamically[1] I am interested in speculating about the simplest possible mechanisms in the beginning. (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.)

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F

>>javajo+k9
> 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?

>>outlac+13
On Nick Lane's "The Vital Question":

I gifted myself The Vital Question in 2015 December. While Lane writes effectively without any mind-numbing jargon, the book still has quite a bit of technical chemistry (understandably). After the excellent first 80 pages, it took me a lot more will power to plough through. (I paused at page 112 to get back later.)

Once when I was reading the book on a plane, a seasoned biologist happened to be sitting next to me. When I told that it's the first book of Nick Lane that I picked up, he said: "I'd rather suggest you to pick up Laine's other book, Life Ascending, and only then get back to The Vital Question."

PS: FWIW, I've previously mentioned the above in an older thread, where an ex-biochemist chimed in to confirm the above advice: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18714115

>>abioge+(OP)
Not an expert but the Wikipedia on it is quite good on the various schools of thought.

Edit - I just lost 20 mins reading the start of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world which is interesting on that stuff

>>abioge+qf
>Wouldn't we then be able to witness abiogenesis?

It may happen quite infrequently, and only because it happened in a large, lifeless (but 'nutrient' rich bath) did it have a chance to amplify. What's interesting to me is that it only has to happen once.

Yes, Earth's specialness is interesting, too, and counts for what I believe are the best reasons to believe in God. Earth has so many amazing qualities: it is a cozy distance from the Sun (temp), tilted quite a bit (seasons), with a molten core (cosmic ray protection) and a huge moon (tides, nocturnal light). All of these may be necessary conditions for life to arise, and they are all, as far as we know, quite rare individually, and astronomically unlikely in combination.