A New Theory to Explain How Life Began

Scientists don't know how life on earth got its start, but they have ideas. The most popular to date is that a bolt of lightning or other power boost energized a soup containing all the necessary chemicals to get things going. But now a young MIT physicist has a different idea, based on the second law of thermodynamics.


The reaction from other scientists is what you'd expect -interest, ranging from excited to skeptical, with a "wait and see" attitude. The next step is to run experiments to see how the theory stands up. Rather complicated experiments, I would guess. Read more about England and his ideas at Quanta magazine. -via Digg

(Image credit: Katherine Taylor for Quanta Magazine)

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So, beyond the nature of the path, is the origin of life just the consummation of a peculiar electromagnetic bond, the last step in a logical and finite recipe? Equally, is a cell or a body just an organic machine, a set made of pieces? If it is, can machines be born and die? What is to be born or die apart from acquiring or losing certain qualitative configuration? But, is there a qualitative leap detached from raw matter-energy transformations, a sort of magical doorway that living beings go through two times? Therefore, is there a beginning or it would be as finding a cut in the material history of the universe, an infinite void that human language patches now for convenience? In the same way, is there death? If not, what are we without beginning and ending? What is life apart from knowledge and its technology, apart from evolving to some sort of complexity? Along these lines, there is a peculiar book, a short preview in http://goo.gl/rfVqw6 Just another suggestion in order to freethink for a while.
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