exchemist

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.

The bonding of Spock's silicone ears to his head, you mean? 😆

Haha. And then there is this stuff, which keeps coming round at regular intervals..........:

This is begging the question, again. Who says there is “information” that “guides the emergence of life”? Why should life’s emergence be “guided”? And if so, how could that possibly work? How could “information” , whatever you mean by that, physically affect pre-biotic chemistry? How does “information” “flow”, in your opinion? This all sounds as if you are trying the edge the discussion towards “intelligent design” without admitting it.

Haha yes, it’s a bit “pope found to be Catholic”, I realise. But it is not intended as a profound insight. 🙂

Just like that, eh? 😀 Aside from the sheer impracticability of anything so complex, one basic difficulty is that Si is less good at catenation, i.e. forming long chains. Wiki has a nice discussion of catenation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catenation. You will see that although Si can be made to form chains, these tend to be unstable relative to other compounds at higher number of catenated atoms. The valence p orbitals of Si will be more diffuse than those of C because of the higher principal quantum number. This not only makes the Si-Si σ-bond weaker than the C-C bond, but will be especially an issue when it comes to forming π-bonds. So, for instance, any protein-like molecule made from Si in place of C would almost certainly be less stable, not more, than the C-based original. Carbon really does seem uniquely suitable for developing a viable biochemistry.

EXACTLY! The continued refusal to accept abiogenesis as an objective fact implies @Luc Turpin wants to leave the door open to processes other than natural ones, i.e. magic poofing. I note you cannot agree to my point 1. I regard that as a warning light that you may be a creationist, perhaps of the cdesign proponentsist variety. So I'm afraid I continue to suspect you may not be what you say you are. Regarding this "encoding information" tosh, it is still just as meaningless as it was when I criticised you for it before. What are you talking about? How would "information" be transmitted to molecules so as to react them together and organise them into the structures we think are important for biological processes. This is just Chopra-esque hand waving woo.

Yep. We don't have an exact solution to Schrödinger's equation for the electrons in the hydrogen molecule, let alone anything more complex. And I seem to recall we can only get an "exact" solution for the hydrogen molecule cation, with one electron, if we invoke the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Physics is hard because of the maths, but this is fairly simple algebra at the level it is taught to 11-12 yr olds. The qualitative principles, at this level, are fairly clean, simple and logical. Biology is complicated in that there are a lot of facts, but it is largely descriptive of things one can actually see, either directly or down a microscope. So that's fairly easy to conceptualise. But chemistry involves a lot of different liquids, solid or gaseous substances, all looking very much alike and which change into others, according to a complicated set of only very loosely observed rules, governed partly by the Periodic Table, with all its numerous elements, and partly by other rather abstract concepts such as acids and base or, even worse, oxidation states. It's very messy. I don't believe it is a coincidence that chemistry was the last of the main physical sciences to get put on a proper footing, in the c.19th.

Bet he didn't include this though:

As indeed was I, until I read the draft dissertation. My French mother-in-law used to refer to faïence to mean stoneware as opposed to fine porcelain. That is what it seems to mean nowadays in modern French. But it used to be far more specific. The word apparently comes from a town in Italy, Faenza, where tin-glazed ceramics were pioneered in, I think, the early Medieval period, continuing through the Renaissance. Egyptian "faïence" however bore no relation to this. It was sintered glass and seems to have been highly prized in ancient Greece and elsewhere for decorative objects, being found in archaeological sites of palaces and high caste dwellings. They used alkali, e.g. from natron, a soda mineral alkali (from which the Na symbol for sodium comes) mined in places like Wadi El Natrun in Egypt. The alkali lowers the softening point of quartz, allowing the surface of the objects to acquire a glazed impermeable outer layer. Copper compounds gave these objects a green or blue colour. It was an alternative to lapis lazuli. There are, according to his dissertation, signs the manufacturing technique may possibly have been exported to the Levant at some stage, but it is not certain. Quite interesting, actually. The dissertation was all abut the archaeological evidence for the trading and uses of these objects, not the chemistry of manufacture. But when I read it, of course that was the bit that intrigued me, so I started looking it up.

Bit late for that now: he’s in his final semester of reading ancient history. But I was able to pick up a chemistry-related error in the draft of his dissertation, on the trading of Egyptian faïence across the Eastern Med before the Bronze Age Collapse, which was gratifying. All to do with tin glaze - or rather its irrelevance to Egyptian faïence, as opposed to “real” Medieval faïence. Turns out the Egyptian variety was sintered sand, i.e. glass and featured copper compounds to make it blue, whereas it was the Medieval variety which was stoneware with the famous white tin glaze. The Egyptian variety should not really be called faïence at all, though it is, for historical reasons. All rather confusing. So he took out the incorrect references to tin glaze.

This is a science forum. Most of us are a bit beyond chemistry for 10 yr olds. Actually I don’t think chemistry is easy for schoolchildren. There are a lot of facts to learn, about a lot of different chemical elements and their compounds, and it is not easy to visualise what is going on with all these substances. My son found it harder than either basic physics or basic biology and I can see why.

Well we can certainly do that, if you are prepared to take on board some of what you have been told by me and others. 1) Do you for example now agree that abiogenesis is an objective fact? 2) Are you also willing to agree that to challenge the science, you need to challenge specific hypotheses about the origin of particular elements of what seems needed for life, rather than just saying it's all terribly difficult? 3) Do you also further recognise that simply referring to "the holographic principle", or to "quantum biology", without specifying how and where you think these ideas may help, is not useful? If you can agree these points and take them on board going forward, we can leave arguments borrowed (whether inadvertently or not) from creationism behind and be more constructive. You must understand that I and others here have had a bellyful of creationist crap over the years, so we have very short fuses when we see these arguments coming up yet again, whatever the reason. Your experience here is a direct result of that. I look forward to your responses on items 1-3.

If you mean evidence, don't say proof, then. The two are quite different. Yes of course the study of abiogenesis is a field of research. But the word "abiogenesis" itself is simply a word for the emergence of life from non-life, however it occurred. This is an objective fact, because without it, we would not be here. As such it makes no sense to speak of challenges to abiogenesis, let alone alternatives to it. Yet you have spoken of both. You are welcome to challenge particular hypotheses that have been put forward to account for some of the steps required in abiogenesis. But you will have to do a lot better than simply point out the difficulties and list all the many things we do not know. If we knew them, we would not need to do the research, would we? So pointing out already well-known difficulties is not "questioning abiogenesis theories". It is an empty criticism to simply point to the rather intractable issues to be resolved and claim that shows science is on the wrong track, when you have nothing to offer that addresses any of these issues. Which you do not as, by your own admission, you know nothing about biochemistry or pre-biotic chemistry. What do you think you are achieving?

Yes this is sort of discussion it would be interesting to have, on all the items of difficulty in @Luc Turpin's list. The interesting thing about this work seems to be the possibility that quite small molecules could replicate. Once you have replication, the Darwinian engine of variation and natural selection can get started. I'll need to look up the paper and see what these molecules look like and how simple, or not, they are. We know where the nucleotide bases could have come from. Obviously.

John John is gone gone, as of 18 Aug last year:

It is nonsense for you to say any of these points is a "challenge to abiogenesis". I have already told you abiogenesis is simply a term for whatever the processes were that led to the appearance of life. It is a perfectly general term, involving no assumptions or preconceptions as to how it took place. It's like the formation of the solar system. We know that happened or we would not be here. So it would be mad to describe some issue as a challenge to the formation of the solar system. In the same way, we know abiogenesis occurred, or we would not be here. This misconception that "abiogenesis" denotes some kind of theory, that can be challenged, is one I have come across before. From creationists. The first item on your list betrays ignorance about how science works. Firstly, it is in my experience only creationists that demand "proof" from science. They do so because they argue disingenuously, wanting to be able to say, "Aha, gotcha, you can't prove it!" Anyone who understands science knows it does not deal in proof where theories are concerned. Science deals in models, supported by observational evidence. Not proof. Secondly, whatever makes you imagine there had to be an "exact transition" from non-life to life? This again betrays a (creationist-style) mindset of expecting magic poofing, at some precise instant of history, to confer life - shazzam! - on previously inanimate matter. But we have today examples of things that cannot be unambiguously classified as alive or non alive. The definition of "life" is notoriously hard to pin down. My son learned that at school, when he was 14. It seems likely the transition was gradual, as various elements of biochemistry came together. Both the demand for "proof" and the demand for an "exact transition" indicate the mode of argument of somebody who is not interested in the science of abiogenesis. Creationists need abiogenesis to be an insoluble mystery, in order to make room for magic poofing by their God. You seem to be the same. If you were interested in the subject, we could have a fascinating discussion about RNA world, bi-lipid membranes, the possibility that chirality is due to adsorption of substances on chirally selective faces of mineral crystals, the discovery of precursors to DNA and RNA bases (heterocyclic aromatic rings) on carbonaceous meteorites and so on. But no. You want it to be an insoluble mystery, don't you? This is obscurantism: the opposite of the scientific attitude.

One of the best-informed and most reliable sources is the International Energy Agency (IEA) but it may not be parochial enough for someone like you.

You are now on my Ignore list.

People like you, because it enables you to hop up and down with comical glee that Trump is socking it to the libtard scientists who warn the world about the need for action to arrest climate change. But it won’t make your oh-so-important gasol-een prices lower.😁

As there is no “theory of abiogenesis”, it is a nonsense to list “challenges” to something that does not exist. All your list does is enumerate some of the issues any theory will have to account for, plus adding in a few ignorant statements showing a lack of understanding of science. Once again, it reads just like a set of creationist talking points. You really are a cracked record, aren’t you? You are in no position to give anybody here lectures about good science. Your ignorance is stunning.

Yawn. Haven’t you already done this, Mr. Sealion?

Passed, not past.

What has this to do with epigenetics?

This is a silly troll thread you have started. Post about something sensible, can’t you? We’ve got better things to do than go over well-worn topics to do with TFG’s personality.