Origin of life # 3456: Okay, admit. We lost count.
August 16, 2011 Posted by News under
Here, New Scientist proclaims the origin of life to the loyal readers. (Michael Marshall, “First life: The search for the first replicator,”15 August 2011):
The Gospel according to New Scientist:
This was the dawn of evolution. Once the first self-replicating entities appeared, natural selection kicked in, favouring any offspring with variations that made them better at replicating themselves. Soon the first simple cells appeared. The rest is prehistory.
The New Scientists really believe and cling to this stuff.
Gather round: “Life must have begun with a simple molecule that could reproduce itself – and now we think we know how to make one”:
So the evidence that there was once an RNA world is growing ever more convincing. Only a few dissenters remain. “The naysayers about the RNA world have lost a lot of ground,” says Donna Blackmond of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. But there is still one huge and obvious problem: where did the RNA come from in the first place?
The actual story is like this: That doesn’t really work, but Nothing else could even possibly work.
The issue isn’t entirely solved yet. … Many questions remain, of course…. Another idea is that … maybe it all happened in ice. … Right now, there’s no way to choose between these options. …
When in doubt, reject the lot.
uncommondescent.com
uncommondescent.com |
