Replies to Cosmic Ancestry, 20125:09 AM: Hi Brig. Elsewhere, long long time ago in far far away Galaxy, I read this quote. I couldn't better explain but … It sounds familiar to me … Ciao, Gabriel Manzotti | Monza "I love you sons of bitches. You're all I read any more. You're the only ones who'll talk all about the really terrific changes going on, the only ones crazy enough to know that life is a space voyage, and not a short one, either, but one that'll last for billions of years. You're the only ones with guts enough to really care about the future, who really notice what machines do to us, what wars do to us, what cities do to us, what big, simple ideas do to us, what tremendous misunderstanding, mistakes, accidents, catastrophes do to us. You're the only ones zany enough to agonize over time and distance without limit, over mysteries that will never die, over the fact that we are right now determining whether the space voyage for the next billion years or so is going to be Heaven or Hell."
— Kurt Vonnegut, "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" 11:28 AM: Dear Brig Klyce, ...In studying panspermia and cosmic ancestry, it seems to me that some questions can be answered with some degree of confidence and other questions remain difficult to resolve. I'm not hung up over the question of bacterial life traveling between planets, and it seems reasonable to suppose that bacterial life existing in cometary bodies in dormant form is the transport mechanism that mediates the distribution of life throughout the galaxy. It seems that given enough time and a population of comets at higher temperatures in the past, where liquid water could have existed (and don't we know from the presence of clay minerals in comets now that there must have been liquid water?), life finds a way. There also seems to be even more room for transport at the gene level by non-living cells. But naturally one has to turn to the question of the origin of life in the galaxy/universe. Does Fred Hoyle's metaphor of the 747 assembling itself spontaneously hold water as an accurate metaphor? Can any amount of time solve the problem of abiogenesis? from: Brig Klyce | 12 Jan | 6:03 PM: Me, I think not. Origin-of-life research has considered every imaginable possibility, and has demonstrated little or nothing. I'm troubled by this question. My tendency has been to think that on some planet or comet, somewhere, there was a primordial soup and perhaps an "RNA world" or a clay/organic world or some as yet unknown precursor chemistry where life could have progressed through pre-cellular evolutionary stages. In other words, I'd like to believe in the possibility of a completely non-creationist origin of life story, just displaced from Earth to allow more time. But now I'm not so sure. What if Hoyle is essentially right, that there simply is no pathway from organic soup to life, no matter how much more time you add to the mix (even in a static universe, having given up the 13.7 bya Big Bang theory). I once asked Fred how long it would take for life to originate. He answered, 10 to the 17th power years. I'm sure he was pulling my leg. I was being deferential and did not followup. I am wondering how your ideas have progressed over time. In some places on the Cosmic Ancestry web site, you seem to suggest that life may have always existed. In some places, Hoyle said that it must have been created by someone, somewhere. But if so then who or what created the intelligence that created life? It seems that these questions lead either to and infinite regress of extraterrestrial creator gods, or a traditional creator of some sort. I have concluded, after long thought, that life must come from eternity. I hope I do more than suggest this. I have even said that cosmology should be made to conform to this principle, rather than biology conforming to the big bang. I doubt that Hoyle was a creationist in any sense. Infinite regress is avoidable, but complete, sure knowledge is probably not possible. Definitely not, in my undestanding of Goedel. I suppose these questions are so beyond our current state of knowledge, that we can only speculate, but even so, what limits do we currently have on these speculations? What can be ruled out at this time, and what is still a possibility? I'm not trying to rule out anything, but to have the strong version of panspermia ruled IN, as a theory with merits, worth considering. I'm also very interested in "psi" -- there is a lot of good work that has in many minds demonstrated that telepathy and remote viewing are real phenomena. These ideas are not, in my view, explainable by a physical mechanism but are hints and clues that mind is fundamental, perhaps more fundamental, than matter. Evidence for psychokinesis hints to ways in which the power of attention and intention acts on the material world. A friend suggested to me that it is worth considering whether mind can have acted as a self-organizing principle to get life started. He actually felt that it was more reasonable to suppose that mind over matter explains the origin of life on Earth than that life came from space. I disagree with that, but I think it's reasonable that patterns in the mind preexisted physical life, and maybe are a way of overcoming the statistical hurdles associated with abiogenesis. I'm tempted to propose an origin for life in the distant past somewhere in the universe that involves mind over matter over the course of billions of years. However, at this point I suppose it's just explaining one mystery with another mystery. But, I thought I'd ask if you had given any thought to this. I am a strict materialist. Nothing comes from nothing. But why are we trying to explain the origin of life, when we have never witnessed it. We take it on faith in a very flimsy new theory (the big bang). My other question is where you stand regarding directed panspermia. Most of your focus seems to be on genes and maybe endospores being the primary unit of transport between planetary biospheres. But, if higher-level civilizations are supposed to exist with capability to travel throughout the universe, or at least send probes or drones, then maybe life forms perhaps larger than bacteria could possibly have been transported or delivered to the Earth. Perhaps it's simply more acceptable to reason about bacterial transport since the putative extraterrestrial visitors would inevitably raise the spectre of UFOs. Directed panspermia seems possible, but costly and unnecessary. I touch on this issue on my page titled "How Is It Possible?" Any response you might provide will be considered private and off-the-record unless you specify otherwise. :) Heck, tell everyone! Point them to Cosmic Ancestry! Thanks for your interest. 6:29 PM: Happy New Year, Brig. If you feel like taking a break from reporting on microbiological bench-lab research, here's a development from the other end of the biological spectrum, in case you missed it. The November 2011 issue of The Atlantic magazine carried a profile of Edward O. Wilson, essentially a promotional piece for his upcoming book, "The Social Conquest of Earth." In the book, Wilson challenges the traditional evolutionary model of social behavior. That model, called "kin selection," says that complex societies evolve by natural selection in situations where an individual assisting, or otherwise sacrificing for, a close relative promotes the reproductive advantage of their shared genes. The article comments, "Wilson believes that this whole theory has been a wrong turn intellectually and that this bedrock concept, with major implications for understanding our own nature, is overdue for radical revision." So what radical alternative does Wilson propose? First, he points out that complex social behaviors do not depend on the participants being closely genetically related. He give examples. According to the article, he and his collaborators conclude that, rather than relatedness being the key factor, "a very small number of species simply seem to be genetically 'spring loaded,' or 'strongly predisposed' to the development of eusociality in conditions where natural selection favors it." Later in the article, the operative genes are called "trigger genes." And later the article paraphrases Wilson as attributing sociality to an accumulation of such pre-adaptations. So, if Wilson is right, then the evolution of societies; whether insect, human, or other; depends on spring-loaded, pre-adaptive trigger genes. In other words, genes that happen fortuitously to be present already when circumstances arise such that they become beneficial. Why they remain preserved prior to that time, who knows? The new book will provide a more thoroughgoing explanation, I'm sure, such as distinguishing between prosocial and eusocial behaviors, but the evolution of social behavior per se seems to be a case of social genes predating societies. An analog to metazoan genes predating metazoans? Best, Ken
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Metazoan Genes Older Than Metazoa?