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Origin of Life

New Titan Ethane Theory Proposed
October 18, 2006
They wonder where the ethane went (see 09/14/2006 and its links).  The case of the missing ethane on Titan has only gotten more puzzling since the Huygens Probe landed last year and found almost none, when oceans a mile deep were anticipated.  In Nature last week,1 D. M. Hunten (U of Arizona) posited a new […]
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Origin of Life

Europa: The Link Between OOL and SETI
September 30, 2006
Why would searchers for extraterrestrial intelligence be interested in Europa?  After all, despite the movie 2010 command to “attempt no landings there,” no astrobiologist believes it could host anything more than primitive life – certainly no one who could send messages to us.     Cynthia Phillips, a principal investigator for the SETI Institute, explained […]
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Origin of Life

Early Oxygen Fuels Fire in OOL Camp
August 25, 2006
Live Science reported a new claim about oxygen on the early earth appearing far earlier than usually assumed.  A Penn State astrobiologist is claiming that uniformly high oxygen levels existed on earth 3.8 billion years ago, a billion years before previous estimates.     Oxygen’s presence on Earth has been typically inferred from sulfur isotope […]
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Origin of Life

Origin of Left-Handed Proteins Solved?
August 24, 2006
As noted in prior entries here (09/06/2003, 11/19/2004) and in our online book, the origin of left-hand proteins is recognized as one of the most formidable challenges to naturalistic origin-of-life research.  Occasionally researchers develop lab techniques for getting slight excesses of one hand over the other.  Astrobiologists agree, however, that 100% purity in a protein […]
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Astronomy

Stellar Habitable Zones: Don’t Forget the Sunscreen
August 15, 2006
Astronomers concerned with the origin of life on earth have long thought about the “habitable zone” (sometimes called continuously habitable zone, or CHZ) of our solar system.  They’ve discussed this aerobee-shaped zone around our sun – or any star – mainly in terms of locations where the temperature would permit water to exist as a […]
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Origin of Life

Ten Years Later: Mars Rock Was a Useful Lie
August 6, 2006
Almost nobody believes any more that the Martian meteorite ALH84001 contained evidence of life, but the iconic rock launched the science of astrobiology (see 04/17/2006).  So said Matt Crenson for AP (see Space.com and Chron.com) on the tenth anniversary of the highly-publicized NASA announcement that purported to show bacteria-like fossils, magnetites and PAHs thought to […]
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Solar System

More Reasons You Wouldn’t Want to Live on Mars
August 2, 2006
Electric charges in dust devils on Mars may generate toxic chemicals, says a report on Space.com (see also later story posted on National Geographic News). According to two recent reports in Astrobiology journal, “Small dust devils and planet-wide storms – combined with static electricity – may lead to the formation of hydrogen peroxide and other […]
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Genetics

Genetic Code Began by Lamarckian Evolution
July 5, 2006
It takes guts to tackle the origin of the genetic code from a naturalist perspective.  It also takes guts to resurrect Lamarck in the age of Darwin.  Carl Woese and colleagues tried a new hypothesis in PNAS1 that boldly goes headlong into both challenges.  To preserve a natural explanation for the genetic code, they felt […]
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Astronomy

Paper View:  Why SETI Hears Only a “Great Silence”
June 30, 2006
Enrico Fermi posed a curious question in 1950: “Where is everybody?”  If life emerges on planets as a consequence of evolution, there should be other intelligent civilizations out there, and some of them must have colonized other worlds.  He thought there must have been plenty of time for galactic colonizers to achieve technologies far beyond […]
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Dumb Ideas

Can the Origin of Life Be Simplified?
June 12, 2006
Evolutionists looking for a materialistic explanation for the origin of life know that there is a huge gap between a sea of chemicals and a self-replicating cell.  Over the years since the Miller experiment (see 05/02/2003 entry), there have been several approaches trying to bridge this gap.  One has been the RNA World hypothesis, that […]
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Origin of Life

The Porridge Before the Soup: Too Hot?
May 8, 2006
In the evolutionary theory of everything, there is a soup before the primordial soup we normally think of.  It’s the solar nebula, the whirling disk of dust, gas and ice that preceded the planets.  Scientists used to think the nebula was differentiated like chemicals in a giant centrifuge, with the rocks close to the sun […]
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Astronomy

Astrobiology Ten Years Later: Can It Justify Its Funding?
April 17, 2006
Astrobiology just turned ten years old, but is experiencing growing pains, partly due to a starvation diet.  This “science without a subject” (as George Gaylord Simpson quipped about its predecessor, exobiology) is struggling to justify itself at the Congressional feeding trough.  Proponents tout it as the most important subject in the universe.  Why, then, is […]
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Genetics

Isolated DNA Bases Are Destroyed Quickly
April 11, 2006
Without water, DNA bases fall apart quickly.  Any origin-of-life models expecting the building blocks of DNA (nucleotides) to stick around for long are going to suffer, say researchers from Oregon State University.  The molecules can enter a “dark state” in which they are highly vulnerable to UV radiation.  This idea was once considered “scientific heresy” […]
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Origin of Life

“Fertile Imagination” Envisions Life on Titan
April 4, 2006
The dramatic landing of the Huygens Probe on Titan over a year ago (01/14/2005, 01/21/2005, 12/05/2005) is finally getting some overdue notice from the media.  The PBS science series NOVA just aired a new program on Cassini-Huygens, “Voyage to the Mystery Moon” (see your local PBS station for rebroadcast times), and Astronomy Magazine’s May 2006 […]
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Genetics

Minimum Genome Doubles
March 31, 2006
How many genes does a bacterium need to live?  Evolutionists interested in the origin of life have been trying to determine the minimal genome for life.  Those estimates may have been way too low, say researchers from the University of Bath.  Though they did not supply a number, they estimate the required number of genes […]
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