exchemist

Agreed on the second part of course. Regarding the first, even if abstract physics were to come up with some new principle that could be shown to play a role, that would still be a natural principle, not a supernatural one. As such it would be a part of a model of abiogenesis, rather than anything beyond it.

It seems to me that since abiogenesis is merely a term for the emergence of life by natural means from prebiotic chemistry, however that may have occurred, the only alternative to abiogenesis would be emergence by non-natural means. In other words by some kind of intervention by a supernatural agency - which would be excluded from science on principle. That is why I asked @Luc Turpin to agree abiogenesis is a fact, something he refused to do.

Ah, but don’t forget, this is not creationism, no indeedy. 🤔

Incidentally, a nice paper was published in Nature Astronomy today, showing the presence of a large array of building blocks for life in samples brought back from the Asteroid Bennu. I've started a separate thread on it: So the progress in abiogenesis research takes another step forward. 😊

I saw a BBC report on this and looked up the paper in Nature Astronomy. It was published today: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02472-9 It seems samples contain not only 14 out of the 21 amino acids (though racemic rather than showing a chiral preference), but also all 5 of the nucleobases found in RNA and DNA. So a lot of nitrogen-rich molecules. The authors suggest this points to reactions occurring in a low temperature regime, possibly one in which ammonia ice was stable, e.g. in the protoplanetary disc from which the planets and asteroids condensed. This supports the hypothesis that many components for life could have arrived from meteorites, rather than necessarily having been formed ab initio on the Earth.

Yup he's getting his placemen into the military, the security agencies and the Dept of "Justice" - and exacting vengeance on people who have crossed him, to make the rest fear retribution if they step out of line. He has also used fear to bring the large media organisations largely to heel, or at least get them to adopt a position of studied - and safe - neutrality. These are the classic steps taken by a dictator who takes power by means of an election - a soft coup. I think he'll now stay in power until he dies or becomes incapacitated. Then we'll see if, as in the USSR, the system will have become well enough entrenched to be self-perpetuating. A lot may depend on how well the Repubicans can gerrymander the electoral arrangements.

This adds nothing indicating any level of understanding on your part, so I have no further comment to make to you, either.

Yes this is one of the Chinese papers.

You are right, I am still adjusting to authoritarian rule. He doesn’t need to worry about votes any more.

But the farmers will be up in arms. And Trump needs the rural vote. I can't see how this can work for him, except in the very short term. It's bound to bite him in the arse eventually, surely? And research will go on in other countries which will become available to the US public, so attempting to control the narrative on things like epidemics is pretty well doomed, I would think. Things have moved on since Stalin.

I've just seen this clip, of a press conference given by Senator Chris Murphy this afternoon, which strikes me as spot-on. Trump is acting like a Stuart era monarch :

Yes, I was referring to your comment about not knowing were in the world this poster is.

I think she's in the land of children's television (click on bottom left where it says watch on YouTube):

The lower explosion limit for hydrogen in air is 4% by volume.

Good point. Whatever happened to Bill Kristol and the rest of the Project for a New American Century crowd? I expect they now find themselves, to their amazement, on what Trumpies regard as the Libtard Left! For instance I see that old walrus John Bolton has just had his security protection (against being assassinated by Iran) removed, purely because he has criticised Trump.

No. I see various references and even a Wiki article, but everything seems to be by researchers with Chinese names. In view of the huge number of bogus and/or bad Chinese papers flooding the science literature these days I would be more convinced if I could see some European or N American researchers were working on it. But maybe someone else here knows about this.

You know, I really, really hate this patronising style, talking down to people as if they are tiny children and full of unnecessary exclamation marks. I do not think even children will find it appealing. I think they will see it as "Trendy Vicar Syndrome" , trying unconvincingly to "get dahn wiv ve kids". https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Trendy Vicar I would advise you, or the owner of the crapbot responsible, to change to a more "straight" style of presentation, one that shows at least a bit of respect to the reader. And just to reiterate what I told you before, this is a science forum, so talking to the readership here as if we are kids that don't know any science is not appropriate.

Heh heh. I have a nitroglycerine spray on my bedside table.😁For medical purposes.

Ha. That guy gave the lectures on my Quantum Chemistry course, in 1973-4. Brilliant lecturer, and he can write, too. I have his Quantum Chemistry book, which contains quite a few unexpected choices of phrase. One of my favourites is, in the middle of a rather dry mathematical derivation, he writes, "We can now make a quick scamper towards one of our goals." Atkins is a short man, so the image of him scampering is rather amusing. 😁

I'm sceptical because smell and taste are almost the same thing, using the same olfactory organ in the nose - apart from the basic sweet, sour, salt, bitter aspects of taste which are detected in the mouth. I suspect anything with a smell will have a roughly corresponding flavour. Although, thinking more about this, there may be some exceptions. I recall the first time I encountered jugged hare, in college, the smell was quite offputting but the taste was delicious. One gets the same thing with other fermented foods, like strong cheese e.g. Époisses. I can't think of any chemical with a smell but zero taste, but then one is not generally encouraged to go around tasting things in a chemical laboratory. I don't know if there is anyone on the forum with experience of food chemistry. That's probably what we need here.

Yeah, actually I didn't mean the deliberate, Bannon-style "Flood the zone with shit", so much as just the junk and bad information that is piling up. I read just the other day, in the Financial Times, about social media being full of AI-generated "slop". It's not just us people on science forums who can see how bad these chatbots are.

Oh marvellous, the end of the US monopoly on chatbots to fill the internet with shit. Now we can have Chinese shit too. Splendid, splendid.

Let's get real here. You are in no position to "remind" me - from your position of almost total ignorance - of approaches to abiogenesis that do not exist. Nobody, I mean nobody sane, is trying to apply string theory, let alone the holographic principle, to abiogenesis. That's because neither has anything to offer. I have just told you what string theory is concerned with: attempts to develop a mathematical structure to support a theory of quantum gravity. It is obvious that a theory of quantum gravity (if it is ever developed) has no bearing on the study of abiogenesis. Nor are you in a position to make judgements about the likelihood of success of abiogenesis research. You do not acknowledge the very simple reason why it is a hard problem, even though I have explained it to you. And you seem determined to ignore or belittle the progress that has been made, preferring instead to sit on the sidelines and whine stupidly about nobody having made life in a test tube. But I think you are now reaching the stage of just repeating these empty assertions of yours. I for one have had enough of your stubbornly ill-informed opinions on abiogenesis. We'll see what others think.

You have not demonstrated any relevance of this highly speculative notion to abiogenesis. And it is not a “model”. There is no tested scientific theory that makes any use of this idea. It is an entirely speculative idea that some string theorists play with. String theory itself is not, so far at least, a scientific theory, as it makes no testable predictions about observations. These mathematical conjectures are related to attempts, so far unsuccessful, to develop a theory of quantum gravity. In fact, some well informed people, like Peter Woit and Sabine Hossenfelder, think it has become a self-sustaining cottage industry going nowhere: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/ There is absolutely no reason whatever to think this idea can be fruitfully applied to the study of abiogenesis. It is a useless suggestion.

Yes indeed, my pleasure! Your remarks about childhood ideas about God and Pavlov's dogs are uncalled for. (I can't speak for other contributors but I happen to be a practising Catholic.😊) What I and others have been objecting to is that @Luc Turpin has been firstly misrepresenting abiogenesis research and secondly using that misrepresentation as an excuse to introduce very ill-defined concepts, without any indication of how they could be relevant to scientific study of abiogenesis. In one of my posts on this thread I took the trouble to say I see value in considering aspects of human experience beyond the physical world. What I object to - in line with Cardinal Newman's sound advice from over a century ago - is the attempt to look to things in nature that science currently can't explain as evidence that only something beyond science can explain it. That is bad logic, because science progresses. Furthermore, it is utterly pointless to witter on about "the holographic principle" and suggesting "complexity emerges from information encoded in the universe" without explaining WTF that means, what evidence for it might look like and how it could actually be applied in abiogenesis research. Science works by clarifying - demystifying - what seems to be going on in natural processes. Trying to get all mystical, woolly and vague in a discussion about abiogenesis is the polar opposite of a scientific approach.