In this weeks New Scientist there is a great article about evidence that life started on Earth far earlier than the current estimate of 3.8 billion years ago.  

 Extract:

 OF THE 200,000 shards of rock that Mark Harrison has retrieved from Australia since the mid-1980s, only one contained what he was looking for. Two flecks of graphite, each barely the size of a red blood cell. Small, perhaps, but capable of overturning everything we know about life on Earth. Harrison, a geologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, remembers thinking to himself: “By golly, they’re a dead ringer for a biogenic origin.” Biogenic means made by life – but how? These graphite flecks were found in a zircon crystal that had lain trapped deep in the Jack Hills of Western Australia for 4.1 billion years. So they seem to imply our planet was inhabited at least 300 million years earlier than anyone had previously imagined.

What’s more, these first living organisms would date from a time before our planet was thought capable of harbouring any life at all. In these early years, Earth was supposedly a molten hellhole racked by volcanism and bombarded by space debris, zinging around a solar system yet to find inner peace. If Harrison’s fossils are all they seem, they wouldn’t only rewrite the history of life and Earth – but the entire solar system’s as well.

When it came to explaining how these things all got started, we thought we had it more or less worked out. Some 4.6 billion years ago, a vast cloud of dust and gas in some corner of an unremarkable galaxy began to collapse into a dense ball of matter. As more and more surrounding material was pulled towards it, the temperature and pressure at its core increased, to the point where nuclear fusion kicked in. This released vast quantities of energy and marked the moment our sun became a star.

Life originated from God

In this weeks New Scientist there is a great article about evidence that life started on Earth far earlier than the current estimate of 3.8 billion years ago.  

 Extract:

 OF THE 200,000 shards of rock that Mark Harrison has retrieved from Australia since the mid-1980s, only one contained what he was looking for. Two flecks of graphite, each barely the size of a red blood cell. Small, perhaps, but capable of overturning everything we know about life on Earth. Harrison, a geologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, remembers thinking to himself: “By golly, they’re a dead ringer for a biogenic origin.” Biogenic means made by life – but how? These graphite flecks were found in a zircon crystal that had lain trapped deep in the Jack Hills of Western Australia for 4.1 billion years. So they seem to imply our planet was inhabited at least 300 million years earlier than anyone had previously imagined.

What’s more, these first living organisms would date from a time before our planet was thought capable of harbouring any life at all. In these early years, Earth was supposedly a molten hellhole racked by volcanism and bombarded by space debris, zinging around a solar system yet to find inner peace. If Harrison’s fossils are all they seem, they wouldn’t only rewrite the history of life and Earth – but the entire solar system’s as well.

When it came to explaining how these things all got started, we thought we had it more or less worked out. Some 4.6 billion years ago, a vast cloud of dust and gas in some corner of an unremarkable galaxy began to collapse into a dense ball of matter. As more and more surrounding material was pulled towards it, the temperature and pressure at its core increased, to the point where nuclear fusion kicked in. This released vast quantities of energy and marked the moment our sun became a star.

To answer your question, first I need to clarify I am not a believer in Intelligent Design. Also, to start the argument one way or the other, the science cannot explain what was before the "Big Bang". After the beginning of our known universe, there are many natural developments in the creation of the four known forces like gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak atomic plus time and matter. So, to say the least, these are the tools nature used to create life. The theology admits these are the tools that Intelligent Design or simply Natural Evolution has had to be using in order to create life. I am leaning toward "Noisy Search" as you define it, or also known as a "Trial and Error". My position is if there was an Intelligent Designer, he/she would have created life long time ago, when the environment for life have been established already. And rightfully so, life was created billions of years ago, but did not survived in its original form. And here we go, there was a number if iterations until the life was created in a stable form as we know it. Some theories say, yes, but you are missing aliens as a factor in replicating life on Earth. Then I say, well who created the aliens. Was it nature or intelligent designer. Again, here is the sequence of events I use to argue my position - creation of the forces and matter, later environment, later life, later design, later intelligence. I cannot imagine it was done in any possible way backwards. Or you may prove me wrong. Hit me back with singularity and Hicks bosoms and I may find a rational why nature made so many failed attempts. 

Dear our colleague, Prof. Bob Skiles, thanks a lot for your question given to all of us!

You asked to us: "How was life originated?"

It is very difficult to give your real answer, because I am between 2 alternatives, and conretelly:

As religion person I can answer you: Life originated from God ...

As researcher I can answer you: Life originated from Nature ...

You are free to say anything to me, but please, you are free to chose between them. Please, don't ask me anymore ... because everything I know about myself ... let's beleive and hope in our future ... for highest progress!

Have a nice choosing and have a nice time everwere in this "small" Globe!

Sincerely, Bashkim

Dear Mr Skiles,

Big bang created a structure from chaos , life originated because elements that  are conducive, water is the prime source for life existence and lotzzzz of trial & error resulting in monkeys  !!!!!!!!!!!

No plan only survival of the fittest, along with mutation (can't say me =monkey). Less than 2% difference between us brings a whole lot of meaning to our existence !!!! 

Universe doesn't care how it evolves , time changes so do life forms ...

... Take the time to enjoy the life ...

Bob,

I think that the beginnings of life on Earth is one of those nearly unfathomable thoughts that ranks right up there with why a black hole is represented by a single vortex, rather than a 3-dimensional hole that sucks in everything surrounding it.

The thought that a chain of molecules could develop the ability to move or influence its surroundings is profound. Even with chemical and electrical stimuli, why should a few chains of molecules develop into life? Floating in a primordial soup of ingredients, associating and disassociating with chemicals depending on temperature, density, evaporation, electrical charge, etc., what purpose does a chain of molecules have?

I would rather think that someone provided that spark of life in order to set things in motion. HOWEVER, that then begs the question of who set things in motion for that someone?

Dear Bob:

In my view, it is obvious that the possibilities of creating life were already present in the primordial state of the Universe that led to the Big Bang. So potentially life already existed in the original universe that was no more than physical matter. A full explanation of the origin of life should also address this interesting problem..

We then would not need to appeal to an Intelligent Designer or other metaphysical entity to explain the origin of life more than we would need it to explain the origin of the Universe.

That is, in my view, the question is the same as "was the Universe created by a metaphysical entity or it emerged from (put what you like)? 

I only can say that no hypothesis is falsifiable and any of the best known speculative answers seems to me more intelligible than the others. 

Dear Prof_Dr_Bashkim_Lushaj ! Your answer is absolutely perfect. I wouldn't think of any better way to answer dear Bob Skiles wonderful question.

I expect that no human person knows, with true certainty, how to answer on the origin of life. 

Little do we know ...

If we knew the exact mechanism of how to originate life, we would have unveiled the most profound mysteries of our World, and there would be no more death losses, and eternal life would be ours to keep. (and I might soon loose my job as a medical practitioner ! )

Yes, I may prefer not to know, and to keep living my tiny short life with the happiness and simplicity of those that don't know much of anything.

Thank you for your beautiful question, dear Bob !

I guess all responses are revolving around what is life and how to enjoy life. The question Bob asked is: Was life planted on Earth by aliens (intelligent design) or did it evolved through the billions of years. Another words, was it God or was it Evolution...

Dear Mr. Bob, it is nive question!

Thanks a lot to our colleague, Dr. Maria Bettencourt Pires for evoluation of my real answer given to you, dear Bob!

Thanks a lot to our colleague, Dr. Maria Bettencourt Pires too for her answer given to you, dear Bob!

Thank you for your beautiful question, given to us, dear Bob!

This is a difficult question to answer due to the nature and learning of the many contributors on RG. From the science fraternity the big bang theory would suffice for the to answer how life began. From the religious perspective a belief in a higher being or creator God is the accepted answer. I believe that a higher being of huge intellectual intelligence created this world from pole to pole everything is set out from majestic sea creature to bird that fly. Down to us mere humans the world was gifted to us by a God who's only requirement was that we nurtured and protected it. How we have failed miserably. The level of intellectual intelligence gifted to us while it has made many things achievable we are intent on not only destroying this wonderful planet but ourselves also. Everyday we wake up the sky is blue the grass is green we have the sun to light our days the moon our nights and yes you may argue there are natural disasters that cause grief and pain earth quakes and tornados but we have seed time and harvest a d Four seasons someone of a higher level of intelligence is indeed in control and in general our needs are being met. We have great poverty but where powers of light and truth are at work so to are darker powers of fear and hate grief and pain. For me God is the obvious choice and a personal one for each person this answer is individualistic depending on learning and belief. I am sorry if my answer seems obtuse but my belie in this area is a personal one and each intellect will have their own thoughts on the question.

Dear Bob,

My opinion about this is expressed in my article in 2013. Please see DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-33914-1_6 or https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236163284_Discovery_of_Dozy_Chaos_and_Discovery_of_Quanta_Analogy_Being_in_Science_and_Perhaps_in_Human_Progress

I belive that the origin of life is of not only incidental, but also highly focused nature. This is follows from the chaotic and classical nature of the transient state of molecular quantum transitions and as a consequenсe of all chemical reactions in the processes of self-organization of molecular matter.

Best,

Vladimir

Article Discovery of Dozy Chaos and Discovery of Quanta: Analogy Bei...

Does anyone know who created the being with higher intelligence that created the life on Earth?

Vladimir is right, there is growing evidence that life is inevitable in a system where complex chemical activity takes place.  Organic molecules that are capable of forming into proto-organisms without any DNA or RNA are able to replicate in certain circumstances.  

We are still learning about what life is and as yet we do not really know. What is becoming evident almost by the day is that there is plenty of potential for life out there in the universe.

We will probably soon be in the position of quoting the legendary Vulcan scientist Mr Spock.  "it's life Jim, but not as we know it"

Please forgive my naiveté, but the evidence of so many mutations, so many twists and turns in the development of life questions the very idea of intelligence. I do not quite see the intelligence: mistakes have been too many. The whole affairs seems quite random.

Best regards, Lilliana

I'm not the specialist in the field of the present question but think that the research in or around the direction of the report linked below would someday find the answer.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/03/researchers-may-have-solved-origin-life-conundrum

Not an expert in this field, however, i am very much convinced of life on earth being come from some other place...may it is because of my watching Ancient Aliens on Discovery :-)

Life was not created by or for a purpose. It is the result of physico-chemical natural events. Some crystalline and other compounds tend to move in space to other "competitors". To preserve, these should complexify and as it progresses, life unfolds from relatively simple forms to complicated machines that populate the earth today. This is not a innevitable process, but a highly feasible process where moderate physical-chemical change in nature.

One of the recent publications dealing with the very origin of life is Nick Lane's "Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life." From a review of this book (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/21/science/book-review-taking-on-the-vital-question-about-life.html), we learn the following:

Dr. Lane, building on ideas developed with the evolutionary biologist William Martin, traces [origins of life and biodiversity] to a freak accident billions of years ago, when one microbe took up residence inside another. This event was not a branching of the evolutionary tree but a fusion with […] profound consequences.

The new tenant provided energy for its host, paying chemical rent in exchange for safe dwelling. With this additional income, the host cell could afford investments in more complex biological amenities. The pairing thrived, replicated and evolved.

Dear Rakesh,

Like you, I once believed that (at least the initial "seeds" for) life must have come from "out there" (not delivered by aliens driving space ships, but more likely by comets). But with recent findings in biochemistry research (like the report pointed-out by Tatsuo-sama, above), I now think it most likely to have been an "independent invention" of "Mother" Nature, (working "her" seeming magic through, perhaps, the mechanism of "dozy chaos" ... please see the excellent paper of Doctor Vladimir Valentinovich Egorov linked above, or, through a process of "noisy search" ... which Aleš Kralj will explain to us later, here, perhaps tomorrow) on our good Mother Earth.

Thank you for your good humor ... isn't this guy one of the most infuriating "salesmen" you've ever seen? His answer for everything is always "aliens!"

Best regards,

Bob

Hahaha....yeah Dr. Bob ....Giorgio A. Tsoukalos seems to be an infuriating salesman selling pseudo science stories. 

Two days ago, i read in newspapers that NASA is planning to sent a mission on one of the icy moons of Jupiter. I think evidences from these moons covered in ice would throw more light on origin of life but yes ....Biochemistry seems to have the answer to origin of life.

Thanks!

Dear Bob Skiles, 

The origin of life or abiogenesis - the process of turning inanimate nature live; in the narrow sense of the word under the abiogenesis understand the formation of organic compounds, common in nature, outside the body without enzymes. An alternative to abiogenesis, in this sense is the panspermia.

According to current models of life on Earth originated about 3.8-4.1 billion years ago .

According to the theory of the stationary state, the life never arose and there forever; she has always been able to support life, and if changed, it is very small. According to this version, the species also never occurred, they have always existed, and each species has only two possibilities - either the change number or extinction.

Regards, Shafagat

The origin of life is a scientific problem which is not yet solved. There are plenty of ideas, but few clear facts.

It is generally agreed that all life today evolved by common descent from a single primitive lifeform. We do not know how this early form came about, but scientists think it was a natural process which took place perhaps 3,900 million years ago. This is in accord with a philosophy called naturalism: only natural causes are admitted.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life

Dear Bob,

I  quietly pass by such lofty questions, noting that much wiser people than me still trying to reason case (President  Bush among them arguing the creationist  view). In such occasion I  remind myself  what "Rumi" - the best selling dead poet in the world- has said. 

People who reason have clumsy feet. Clumsy feet doesn't let you to walk straight.

I need to resort to reasoning and I am sure I will find myself miles away from the argument.

The origin of life in common sense (i.e. membranes-bonded metabolic one) was precursed by so-called RNA-world. RNA was the first self-replicating molecular pool.  Proteins have originated as RNA-replication catalysts. A central event in life origin was incorporation of RNA and ribozymes into lipoid coacervates, mechanically reproducing on water surface. Later, the DNA has originated  as specialized "archive-like" RNA-derivatives. The origin of first organic molecues is another question and it is simpler issue.

... thank you Mrs. Vera I have no more than you about vote down!

....

Primitive earth was a chemical reactive system that may have triggered a macromolecular evolution by means of an open thermodynamic system, driven by cyclic gradients of temperature, electromagnetic radiation and chemical potentials which sustained life and proto-consciousness in the first life forms driven by the quantum processes. The origin of life is always an intriguing topic but the purpose for finding the cause should never be inclined towards obliterating it; for if that is the case, the further we seek, the farther it will go -

Origin of life: A consequence of cosmic energy, redox homeostasis and quantum phenomenon (In Press)

From the point of view of logic and model theory: the theory of some structures exists independently of the structures. It exists before the structures were realized. It is sufficient, that the theory is consistent (not contradictory) to have models.

Now to life: the genetic code of some living being is just information. In a mathematical sense it existed ever, long before a first physical realisation (supposing that it ever has been a FIRST physical realisation...) The genetic code is a short code which will produce for example a (biologically the same)  cat, anytime when it gets the condition to express itself. 

Also, it seems that for the practical problems, as for example "view", there are not too many solutions. You get the camera eye of snails and vertebrates, or the facet eye of arthropodes (insects). Maybe there are more 3 - 4 solutions which we have not on Earth, but then this was it.

So it looks like life is a manifestation of nature, solving some optimisation problems in a natural way, pre-designed and repeatable. (Pre-designed, because mathematical problems have unique solutions, and not because some designer did it intentionally). Variability and random processes just help those solutions to be realized again and again in new contexts. 

Dear ... ,

... please, who are you, why write us, tell us the cause of vote / votes against to fix the mistake / error for another time, however, we wish you health and goodness! Have a nice time!

Regards, Bashkim and Vera

See ...

Dear Bob,

thank you for your invitation to join this debate. I can answer this question only as a folklorist. In world folklore the first living organisms are often created of nonliving stones, sand, soil, and so on, and I think it to be a very interesting fact, because no one did chemical tests in ancient times, but now we know that there are no special chemical elements in living organisms, all these elements exist in inanimate nature. Alas, as you can guess, I don't know what served as a catalyst for the transformation of non-living into living and what direct meanings of folklore phrases were, when these phrases said that "creators breathe out the life" (smth similar to an artificial life-giving respiration?). I can't understand how this great idea came into human minds! Have people ever seen how to vitalize a non-living object? But folklore collections are overfull of stories about vivified things. Where real roots of animism came from? You see, I have more questions than a good answer.

What an interesting but complex question... I'm really not a specialist for this but that's something I really feel involved in.

I would say, both concepts are true and complementary since famous scientists (astro-physicians) have been able to demonstrate that getting closer to the PLANCK wall was just like facing G.od's face. The universe (ours at least) at that time was so small and so full of an extraordinary energy that something, or someone, had to blow up the whole process which spread out later on into the universe we actually know.

So it was really amazing to me to discover that both evolutionism and creationism were in fact non-antagonist principles and that there was a possibility of a scientific form of creationism, whatever it is: G.od, unknown physical principle, ...

Then, there was for sure a creation - whatever it was and wherever it came from - that gave later on a good path to evolutionism.

For a believing scientist, as I feel I am, it's a reassuring and more comfortable position...

Not sure that this answer will be of any help but I would like to thank you for asking.

I wish you all the best and will follow the question!

Simon Conway Morris wrote Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe giving a superb evolutionary/philosophical overview of the emergence of life on Earth to the point of sentience of humanity.  I strongly recommend this book even though I do not fully agree with its often pessimistic conclusions.

 The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language by John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry is also a must read and contains some excellent descriptions of why complex chemistry is the prime mover to the emergence of life..

 Both books look at the now presumed inevitability of life emerging in a large variety of environments involving dynamic chemistry, not restricted as it was believed until recently to the Goldilocks Zone theory. 

May be life-nature is God and God is life-nature

in the sense that all is a part of Gods "energy" and purpose

in all kind of waves we know or not

Please see...

"The origin of life is one of the great mysteries in the Universe.  To determine the origin of life, scientists are investigating the problem in several different ways.  Some scientists are studying life on our own planet. Some scientists are seeking out life or fossil life on other planets or moons in our solar system.  And other scientists are trying to detect life in other solar systems, either by measuring life's effects on the atmospheres of distant planets or by measuring artificial radiation like radio signals that may be produced by advanced life.

Thus far, the most fruitful approach has been to examine life on our own planet.  However, even in our own backyard, it is difficult to determine life's origins because it began at least 3.5 billion years ago.  We know that life began at least 3.5 billion years ago, because that is the age of the oldest rocks with fossil evidence of life on earth.  These rocks are rare because subsequent geologic processes have reshaped the surface of our planet, often destroying older rocks while making new ones.  Nonetheless, 3.5 billion year old rocks with fossils can be found in Africa and Australia.  They are usually a mix of solidified volcanic lavas and sedimentary cherts.  The fossils occur in sedimentary cherts.

Chemical traces of life have also been detected in slightly older rocks.  In Greenland, a series of ancient metamorphosed sediments have been found.  Analyses indicate the sediments were deposited about 3.8 billion years ago.  They also revealed carbon isotope signatures that appear to have been produced by organisms that lived when the sediments were deposited.

In all cases, life as we understand it must have water.  This general rule is true on Earth and is thought to be true elsewhere in the solar system.  Currently, life is being sought on Mars where water may have once flowed on the surface and Europa where a subterranean sea of water may exist beneath its icy surface...."

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/science/kring/epo_web/impact_cratering/origin_of_life/

Please see

"How did life begin on Earth? Though no one is ever likely to know the whole story, virtually everyone has wondered at one time or another, how life on Earth began.

There are at least three types of hypotheses which attempt to explain the origin of life on Earth. The first and oldest of these hypotheses suggest that life was created by a supreme being or spiritual force. Most cultures and religions have their own explanations of creation that are passed down from generation to generation. Because these ideas cannot be proved nor disproved, we consider them outside the boundaries of science. For that reason, they will not be pursued here and are left to each individual to decide.

The second set of hypotheses suggest that life began in another part of the universe and arrived on Earth by chance, such as with the crash of a comet or meteor.

The third, and most common hypothesis in the scientific community, is that life began approximately 3.5 billion years ago as the result of a complex sequence of chemical reactions that took place spontaneously in Earth's atmosphere. In the 1950's, two biochemists conducted an experiment which showed that certain molecules of life (amino acids) could form spontaneously when the conditions of Earth's early atmosphere were recreated in the lab. It is assumed that over time, these molecules interacted with one another eventually leading to the earliest forms of life."

http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Life/origins.html

@ Aleš Kralj,

I greatly appreciate your having provided a preview of some of the novel ideas relating to the origination of life (which will be revealed fully in your forthcoming paper).

I eagerly await being able to read the "whole story" when your paper shall have been published.

My best regards, and wishes for inspiration and success,

Bob

The question was how, not when. When appears to have been roughly 1 billion years after our solar system formed, which is not very long in geological time. The ingredients needed were organic molecules (with enormous potential for diversity), to create amino acids, RNA, and so on. But still, the intriguing point is that we don't yet know "how." Having the ingredients does not automatically result in a loaf of bread, although one might argue that a combination of fortuitous events, with consistent infusion of energy, might just result in that loaf. I'm confident that we'll create that Frankenstein sooner or later.

Finding life on some other celestial body will be a huge milestone for mankind. Duplicating the event in a lab would be rather astronomical. These are events that will revolutionize our ideas of who we are.

The great William of Ockham knew nothing of planetary evolution or of the biology of the origins of life.  I am sure however he would have concluded, based on what we know now that life on other planets is a certainty.  

We may never actually get close enough to see it but in a universe this big it simply has to be there.  If by any chance that was wrong, that Earth was the only lump of rock in billions of other lumps of rock that contained life well, that would be an even bigger conundrum than the one in Bob's question.

It is not easy to answer such question, overlapping and you may not initiate imposed religions. I don't agree with you because a lot of things have been explained in the different religions for the emergence of the land and creation. I was hoping to not limit a certain look in your question, may you have reason to avoid religion arguments.

Barry,

William of Ockham in Oxford did consider the possibility. “God could produce an infinite [number of] individuals of the same kind as those that now exist,” wrote Ockham, “but He is not limited to producing them in this world.”

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/humans-have-pondered-aliens-medieval-times

This is the most difficult question to answer.

Although many theories do exist, I cannot agree with any as no evidences are provided. Hence, all religions assume that there is a mighty force that established this world and life. Whatever you call such mighty force, it is the greatest force that exist. I think this is the most acceptable answer to your question as no one can provide evidences on any other suggested theory.

Of course it is difficult to get everyone agree with my opinion, however, I hope that everyone respect others opinions.

Best regards. 

Pierlorenzo,

''how likely is it that something as complex and wonderfully organized as life has originated in a totally random way? ''

Even the most simple forms of life that exist today are far far more complex than the earlier forms of life.  The key to understand how life originated is to find out the path of this evolution.  This path cannot have a a astronomical step in complexity from non-life form to life form.  Stepping over such astronomical step in complexity is astronomically unlikely.  So since we know that life did evolved on this planet and that has evolved and that we are now an intelligent form of life reflecting on its own origin, then it would be stupid for us to say it did not happen because I cannot figure it out.  It would also be ridiculous in these day and age to assume that it was created by a designer God.  I do believe in God but I do not think that God would be proud of so-called intelligent animal that instead of trying to understand say : God did it.  No God would be ashamed of such lazy creature.  God gave us an intelligence and he certainly think: Thy shall use your intelligence.  That Shall not say  God did it.  God is the Creator but God relies of its creatures to create and in our case it is our job to investigate our origin.  

Well God must be entangled on a quantum level , doesn't care about command or control and let things happen !!!

I agree partially with Dr, Briignoli.

I have no problem conceiving of a primary Intelligence or Force that divides itself into different forces to govern its creation. I feel it is when people put a name to this force is when everyone gets a bit jittery. I also feel that this primary  force is not separate from creation itself. but that creation is an expression of it in another form - or in multiple forms. For me the whole of creation is sacred.

Dear Pierlorenzo,

''The fact that primordial life was extremely simple isn't proof of the absence of a "supernatural" creative entity. This entity, which we can call God, may have given an imprint of universal rules, without necessarily intervene directly whenever you need to create a life form in some corner of the universe.''

I agree that science may not allow us to understand everything about the origin of life.  The science of today does not yet know a lot but it knows much more than the science of three hundred years ago.  The fact that it has progressed , that it is progressing now is a good indication that it will continue to progress for a long time.  This is not a proof that science will eventually know everything about our origin but it indicates that we will know more.  Knowing more also increase our knowledge about the magnitude of our ignorance.  We simply do not have prophetic capacities to forcast if at one time in the future we will reach a level of understanding about the origin of life on earth where we will be able to say we scientifically have solved this problem.  Maybe we will reach such a  point but maybe instead we will realize that there is a total scientific epistemic gap between what we can know scientifically and the nature of this origin.  But one thing is sure, it is and will be the job of the scientists to find out what can be find out scientifically.

The end of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century were time where mathematics was trying to give itself very solid logical basis where logical contradiction could not arise making the formal system self-consistent.  Then in 1931, Gödel demonstrated two incompleteness theorems   The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the relations of the natural numbers (arithmetic). The second incompleteness theorem shows that such a system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.  So  Gödel demonstrated within the logic onto which arithmetic are based the very limitation of this logic and its intrinsic inadequacies regarding the project of founding mathematics on a solid logical basis.

My conjecture is that it will be eventually be possible within a rigurous description of the epistemic scientific framework to demonstrate the intrinsic limitation of this framework to solve the question of the origin of life and of the origin of the universe. This remain to be demonstrated but I think that there exist a scientific epistemic theorem of incompleteness regarding the question of orgin of life.

Life is god's given gift .Our arrival on this mother earth will be biological reason but with our birth we bring our mind & all the physical body ,part ,for the purpose of carrying out our action of our life.

We know with our birth our identity caste,creed ,& religion gets established thru our parents .This important norm were we can observe the entire humanity with different code of actions .

We are aware that with our birth we have brought the resulting fruits of our previous action of our previous lives & this is the same fruit of our earlier action which make the life of every human beings .

This is the basic root of the origin of the life .This is personal opinion 

The answer to question is relatively simple. However, it easy to understand if you have a little amount of specific but a wide range of very diverse knowledge, otherwise the statement "mind is a fractal" majority of people perceive as esoteric.

There is no mystery, only the problem of demarcation in the (natural+formal) science. After all, I'm talking only about the scale-invariant processes in dissipative nonlinear dynamic system. The process is deterministic as the periodic system of elements. There are some very problematic details that require revision of the current state of physics. Because it is about the anthropic principle. Transfer of some things into the falsifiable category is a matter of short time.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%B6rster_resonance_energy_transfer

Is a molecular level energy transfer mechanism (protein - protein interaction)

not an expert  (in biology) , read it and understood why I loved resonator circuitry !!!!!!!! 

PS: machines vs monkey Mr Skiles !

Its all about frequency AND energy ...

Coincidentally, I ran across this article today. Basic calculations that I did myself, even long before we discovered for sure that there are any exoplanets (seemed kind of obvious that there would be).

http://www.rochester.edu/news/are-we-alone-in-the-universe/

One interesting point in the article is to wonder how long a planet can sustain intelligent life, before the intelligent life destroys the ecosystem. So possibly, many intelligent life forms have existed, at various time windows, in the past 13 billion years. But no, it doesn't address how life begins, after all the necessary ingredients are available.

Albert,

Within a few decades a few large telescopes will be put in services and are being constructed right now and that will have all the detection capacity of the composition of atmosphere in the exoplanets in our galactic neighborhood and will definitively provide us with the capacity to detect the presense of life on these planets.  Some projects will be able to even detect forest on such exoplanets.  I am totally convinced that a lot of life will be detected,  For the detection of intelligent life, I think that we are not enough intelligent to detect it yet. Maybe there are million of intelligent life that are in direct and instantaneous communication in our galaxy right now and we are simply too primitive to discover the communication channel going through the earth at every second.  You are simply to primitive to tune in to the really intelligent life level.  We are still at the level of killing each other and about wandering about our own survival helpless to control our own population and  being almost poisoned in our own waste.  There is a cosmic principle about intelligent life: you are intelligent when you are intelligent enough to communicate with intelligent life.

 Life is linked with consciousness. living things will have consciousness and non-living things will not have consciousness. 

First of all consciousness has to be verified. 

Grand Unification is incomplete without the concept of consciousness. Since consciousness only can define observer and observation. (complete physics dependent on observer ,observation and reference frames.)

Big bang on which some people are starting their imagination is not full truth .It is a partial truth since complete grand unification not yet concluded.

Origin of life starts when a non living matter by which all the matter created changes its density. Now it may be a speculation but it gives a scope to think in different direction other than the presents conclusions expressed by some of the friends....

Hello Bob,

I thank you for your question. I have been milling over it for days. I have come to the conclusion that your question has various questions rolled into one (the answer of Siva Prasad helped with this realization)  

Question 1 What is the Principle behind creation (if there is one)? 

Question 2 what is the origin of the physical Universe?

Question 3 what is the origin of life?

When you separate them out, then you have the wonderful jigsaw puzzle of finding how they all fit together…….

Tina,

We should add another important origin question:

Question 4:  What is the origin of humanity?

Yes dear Louis, Know Your Self - has entertained many philosophers throughout the ages.....when you know this, you know your origin,,,,,

Tina,

What IS and Origin are the same.  

What is the origin of life is the same as What is Life?

What is the origin of humanity is the same as What is to be human? And trying to answer it is trying to know thyself or as John Lukacs said: Know thyself can only be a Know Thy History.

And Thy history includes all the history of all these origins including Know Thy Life and its origin and so Know Thy Family, Thy Nation.  So the Know Thyself include the Know Thy Universe.

A key ingredient for life on Earth may have crash landed here from space

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/08/a-key-ingredient-for-life-on-earth-may-have-crash-landed-here-from-space/?tid=ss_tw

Dear Louis - Namaste.......

Bob, this is somewhat similar to the immutability of species that God or nothingness created even single being on this planet...in this case it crash landed from space...Darwin maybe turning in his grave now thinking why did I ever write the origin of species

Dear Mr Skiles ,

Even I read somewhere , if we are aliens (ok, beautiful ones ) then why isn't there life out there !!!!! for  many many light years (not seen by Hubble) . I guess it must be an environmental ingredient that concocted us (benefit of the doubt -may be amoeba  ). As I always say , life is a gift and for once complication(s) are good.

Contzen,

That article provided by Bob is not really report of new theories.  We know for a long time , at least from the middle of the 18th century that the earth and the other planets and the sun were formed from a primordial nebula.  Even the ancient greek atomists hypotized that.  But in the middle of the 18th century, all scientists knew about that and so it was obvious from this that if even earth did not always exist then life too, it had to have evolved after the planet cool down and formed a rocky surface.  Buffon even calculated the time it would take for this cool down.  People were looking at rock strata and it was evident that some of them had been formed layer by laryer at the bottom of ocean since they had sea creature fossil into them and were then in mountain area.  Leonoardo Da Vinci observed it.  Estimating the age of the earth had to take a long time. We know for a long time that most of earth material came from the primordial nebula, water from comets and comets are filled with organic material.  The spectra of light from far away light in the galaxy reaveal that very complex amino acid are circling all these far away suns.  Now Kepler has revealed that most stars have planetary systems and most of them similar to the solar systems.  That article privileged the RNA world scenario.  It is an interesting one but there are many competing other abiogenesis scenarios and at the present time none of them can provide us a a good abiogenesis scenario that would really be convincing and for which we could identified clear markers in the existing form of life.  Too much emphasis has been put on DNA and RNA which are closely related with genetic and not enough research have been done at the more primitive level, scenarios such as the lipid world.  

Nick Lane and his work is the one of the best known studies that hypothesize the originof life in hydrothermal vents.               

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/public-engagement/projects/nick-lane

Dear Ales,

I suspect that your explaining the paramount importance of "fitness," as the reigning directive of life, to someone who is not a sociobiologist (or an "honest" mathematician who understands how probability really works through the vastness of time), has been a very difficult task ... tantamount to the very difficult task of archaeologists in making people (often even highly educated scientists) understand the great depth of time ... that in just a thousand years (a time long enough to even see the effects of natural selection on the human physiology), every culture will have changed ... evolved or devolved ... in response to its "fitness" (and it does not take too much study of history to see that a vast number of "civilizations," or cultures, the great majority of those that have ever existed, have failed the test of fitness, and lie buried underneath the dusts of time ... just as the bones of the dinosaurs lie embedded in the limey mucks of the Cretaceous ... now silenced but still most eloquent witnesses of their own "unfitness")... "fitness" an "over arching definition," a natural law (as valid and pervasive, perhaps even more so, than, for example, "gravity"), which does not change through time, but the results of applying its algorithm with the input of present/instantaneous variables, changes constantly throughout time (with modern human society, now, one needs to control a seemingly endless number of variables to even begin to grasp an inkling of what may be transpiring from an anthropological perspective ... or even decide what direction the majority of mankind may be going ... whether evolving or devolving ... but the one certain thing we can know, is that the progenitors of each living person, today, through-out an unbroken chain-of-years, have not only met the  tests imposed by the natural law of "fitness," but have also met the "fitness" criteria of THEIR specific cultures and times.

Best regards,

Bob

Aleš,

'' The longer lasting (more resistant) is a winner.''

Not necessarily.  The winner in one niche is the one with the faster rate of reproduction; But the one that will migrate to other niche, winner in niche expansion, will the one whose variability in reproduction is greater.  Since life originate in a very small niche, in the first phase of life evolution, forms that privilege variability in reproduction had to dominate that first phase of life evolution.  I like the lipid world type of approach because reproduction is a by product of growth and arise simply out of the instability of a membrane past a certain size.   If there is a variety of forms then it also mean the the winners will be those that cooperate and that the winner will not be one type of life form but cluster of cooperating life forms.  These clusters at some point may evolve their cooperation so much that they coalescent into symbiotic forms which later become complex life form then also cooperating at higher levels.  

The notion of fitness is not well adapted to describe what will favor a reproduction rate.  It assumes a fixed environment to which the organism adapted to.  But most of the so-called environment is not a physical fixed environment but the other living organisms.  Any change in one automatically reverberated on the whole cooperative network.  So organism do not adapt, they are niche builder like us when we build house, we do not adapt to the climate but change it locally , we build the niche: house, culture. 

Well , it is very very clear in the name of evolution , we have come far away and fail  to appreciate the obvious evidence(s) of what we are !!!!!!

Destiny: "Determinism" Versus "Free Will" Which one is it?

by Graham Collier

"A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance." So replied Benjamin Disraeli, the distinguished British statesman and writer, when asked which of the above two life-directing factors had played a major role in determining his destiny as a politician and statesman. If asked the same question as to the course of your own life, how would you respond? Well, the Greek philosopher Hippocrates’ answer to the question was: "Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult." Which is really just another way of saying "It’s a hell of a psychological conundrum…and what can one do about it anyway?"

Of all the psychological and philosophical reasoning that human beings have conjured up to try and explain, and justify, their brief hold on life on this planet…one early supposition in the early Greek world of the Odyssey—say, somewhat before 500 B.C.—was that the pattern and inescapable destiny of each individual life is preordained by the supernatural powers known as the "Gods." However, during the later years of Classical Greek philosophy—while lip service may still be paid to the belief that the Gods had a hand in influencing one’s personal fate—other more worldly factors were seen to play the major role. After the influence of scientific philosophers such as Democritus and Aristotle, a more rational view prevailed, based on the theory of Determinism: which held that human being—like all forms of being in the Universe—is just one phenomenological manifestation of existence…in a continuous series of ongoing cosmic creations taking place on this planet…all the result of sheer causal necessity in an evolving Universe.

In other words You yourself—in all your physiological and psychological complexity—are just a part of such a cosmogony…one (perhaps unique) bio-living entity occupying the earth. As such, the course of your life will basically be Determined (i), by the positive or negative factors built-in to your genetic inheritance; and (ii), by the good and bad consequences of everything that happens to you as you go through life.

So what’s all this then about Free Will—those impulses of thought and feeling that allow one to make choices, decisions, directly affecting, shaping the course of one’s life…and this in the face of all the Deterministic factors at work? For without this inner psychological authority of self-determination that releases one from both the mechanistic tyranny of biological determinants…and from every random happening that the world can throw at us, we would have but little chance to shape our own Destiny.

Some years ago, Professor George Steiner (essayist, critic and fiction writer: The Death of Tragedy, etc), and Distinguished Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, stated in a public lecture: "There is too much of our cortex. We could do with far fewer cells and synapses and still have an excellent information system. Something much deeper is going on. Man has a marvelous excess of invention. He can say ‘No’ to reality." During the writing of What the Hell Are The Neurons Up To? I corresponded with George Steiner, and he concurred that this "something much deeper…" was more a psychical manifestation of the creative energy loosely thought of as the human ‘spirit,’ rather than than the physiological workings of biology—that to describe someone as a free spirit, is just another way of saying he or she exercises a strong Free Will. Psychologically, I’ve always considered that the force we call the Will, is the operational side of the force we think of as spirit: that they are partners in a mental process operating beyond the normal sensory and rational workings of consciousness. The human spirit yields insights of surpassing importance, while the Will provides the drive to act.

Sir Ernest Shackleton remains for me the supreme example of a man threatened by overwhelming events…Determined by natural events over which he had no control, yet who managed to accomplish the seemingly impossible. On his 1914 Expedition to Antarctica his ship, "Endurance", was crushed by the ice and sank. He kept his 27-man crew alive and hopeful for well over 122 months living on unstable ice floes, before getting them off in two small lifeboats to a remote strip of beach on desolate Elephant Island some 400 miles to the Northwest. Leaving 22 men on Elephant Island, he and four others set out in one small lifeboat to sail for South Georgia—in the roughest storm-wracked seas in the world—where there was a whaling Station in the South Atlantic some 800 miles to the Northeast. The story of this epic voyage is now legend: not to mention his scaling of the Allardyce Range on South Georgia, from West to East, never before accomplished. (A more complete account is given in the Neurons… book previously mentioned.)

Writing "in appreciation for whatever it is that makes men accomplish impossible," Raoul Amundsen, the first man to reach the South Pole, said of Shackleton: "…his name will for evermore be engraved with letters of fire in the history of Antarctic exploration. Courage and willpower can make miracles. I know of no better example than what that man has accomplished." [emphasis added]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-consciousness-question/201402/destiny-determinism-versus-free-will

Finally , Forester resonant energy transfer (for RNA growth !!)

Quantum - has measurement discrepancies...

Heisenberg is right !!!!

There is nothing to be gained from discovering how life 'originated'.  In the universe it is inevitable. 

Barry,

Since we do not know how life ''originated'' then we cannot know that there is nothing to be gained from knowing.  It is in our DNA to desire to know that , maybe there is a reason for this desire.

Louis

I agree it is a human trait to seek knowledge.  The seeking of knowledge has been the making of us and of our undoing.  Yet another one of life's paradoxes we will never understand.

We have the remarkable capacity to imagine things we cannot understand and occasionally make the mistake of thinking that it is only a matter of time before we do.  

People today are no more intelligent than they were 10,000 years ago (or more) We make the mistake of believing that our technological world is evidence of an increase in capacity for thought, it is an illusion.

Our distant ancestors asked the same questions we do today, they looked at world around them and could not understand it fully so they invented religion.  We look around us and look to science.  Where science cannot give us the answer we improvise, inventing imaginary universes and 'theories of everything'.

We should every so often take a step back and consider that our intellects are limited not infinite.  We will never find a chimp that can write music or build an aeroplane because they don't have the physical or intellectual capacity to do so.  We must accept that while our remarkable minds can concoct any number of imaginary wonders we will never know the answer to everything because we do not have the capacity to do so.

We should be thankful, what kind of hell would it be where there was nothing left to discover?  

Barry,

''People today are no more intelligent than they were 10,000 years ago''.

This is the wrong focus of attention.  Humanity is unique in the biological realm because it is a shift from organic evolution to cultural evolution and the later do not need more intelligent human beings for taking place.  If you look at the cells in the body of the human being, they are not more evolved as the cells in the body of any other animals.  Human being are cells into social body and what evolve are not the cells but the social bodies.  There is no need for evolving cells in order for complex bodies to evolve.  The social bodies need different cultures, connection between human bodies, this is what is evolving and it is where the focus of attention has to be in order to see what is going on.

Louis

I am afraid I have to disagree.  Societies are not cellular bodies however much that might be an attractive analogy.  

The species Homo Sapien Sapien has a unique intelligence but as an organism we have evolved very little in the last 70,000 years and there is no indication that our evolution is always going to be in a single positive direction.  

Evolution has never worked that way and it is a simplistic version of Darwinism that assumes that a future human species will be more intelligent, faster, have better eyesight etc.  It could be that we are at our apogee and it is almost certain that we have limitations as has every other species on the planet.   

We are talking about AI here, if we are to consider building machines that are 'smarter than us' we need to consider some other human traits.  We need to build a machine that can lie, that is deceitful, that is vain, that has a god complex and is therefore ever so slightly unbalanced.

Human social evolution is not the product of our intelligence alone it arose out of some of our less endearing characteristics.   We cannot even understand intelligence as things stand.  We might be able to build machines that can mimic it but, we have been able to do that for thousands of years.

The illustrious Professor Hawking need not worry about malevolent computers murdering us in our beds at night.  Sadly the likelihood is that such an event, if you are unlucky enough to experience it would come not from a 'clever machine' but from a very dumb human.

Barry,

It is obvious that human babies are the same today as they were 10000 years ago with the same intelligence.  What has tremendoulsly change since 10000 years ago is culture and it also entail material cultures and all our evolution is on that side.  Some very rare societies living in remotly locus of the earth have managed to keep the culture of 10 000 years ago , hunter gatherer but everybody else are now living in fast changing socieites for the best and for the worst.  If we look at the evolution of life on this planet, it took about a few hundred million year for the abiological process to create the first autonomous living prokaryotic cells (Bacteria and Archaea) and it took about 2.5 billion years to create complex Eukaryotes which are complex and plastic enough to associate to each other and create gigantic colonies of thousand billion of these cells and forming multi-cellular organism operating at the spatio-temporal scales that we live.  THen it took a few hundred million years since then to create a multi-cellular organism complex enough and plastic enough to create a single societal organism on this planet, and this is the homo sapiens. Already the mammals were operating at the herd level for a while and primate even more and this lead naturally to the flexible nervous system that is necessary to laugh the global level Gaia level of being.  We are not totally there and the social crisis and wars we are experiencing for a few thousand of years are a testimony of the difficulty of the task which may fail.  As Einstein said,

 “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Louis

I too am fascinated by Eukaryotic cells and spent a few years looking a number of them. I suppose there is sort of similarity between humans in a society and cells in an organism.  

The cells I was interested in were absolutely intent on killing the host organism to the extent that they send signals to their neighbours to switch on efflux pumps so they can expel chemotherapeutic drugs.  This renders the chemotherapy ineffective and eventually results in the patient's death, the great irony of course is that the malignant cells die too in an act of suicidal and wanton destruction.

The cells in apoptosis if you like, were carrying out the altruistic  deed of 'dying for their brothers and sisters' so they could go on and spread secondary tumours in other parts of the host organism's (human patient that is) body.  

I think that is probably enough anthropomorphism for now.

No one quite knows why cells would want to kill the host and by definition doom themselves.  The question of how life originated is indeed a fascinating one.  Perhaps if one day we can communicate with these malevolent little sods they might tell us. 

Dear Barry,

"No one quite knows why cells would want to kill the host and by definition doom themselves.  The question of how life originated is indeed a fascinating one.  Perhaps if one day we can communicate with these malevolent little sods they might tell us". 

I cannot resist but point out there are some sticking similarities between some human behaviour on this wonderful planet called earth (our host) and the cells you studied. Maybe we should ask ourselves why we act the way we do and then we  might also understand the cells you studied.

with a compassionate smile - tina