eclecticcowboy

I tried to answer this once and I think I lost my post so will try to answer this again. As I understand your question you are asking if evolution can restart or in other words can organic molecules, i.e. amino acids, be formed by lightning strikes in the ocean say and start a new line of evolution. Well certainly anything that happened once can happen again. However, in the begining, when the first building blocks of life were formed they were free to float around as long as they wanted (to be anthropromorphic) and combine and grow or whatever at their leisure. Now, however, as soon as any proto life spontaineously formed some passing organism would see it as food and gobble it up. So although the probability of new lines of evolution are mathematically possible they are highly unlikely.

This whoe debate is like two people standing in front of a speeding car debating about where the car came from, where it is going, is it speeding up or slowing down and will it turn before it gets to them. The car IS coming and the prudent thing to do is get the hell out of the way and then continue the debate at leisure.

This is something that is starting to rankle my little Newtonian mind. If the universe is expanding in all directions at once like the surface of a balloon shouldn't everything in the universe be expanding as well? Therefore as the distance between stars, galaxies etc. becomes greater the stars and galaxies themselves (as well as atoms, electrons and photons inside them) become larger as well so proportionality is maintained and there is no Doppler effect? Or is it like tracing your hand, because everything expands at the same rate proportion is distorted? In other words because the distance between the stars and galaxies is so large the expansion between the objects in the universe is much greater, proportionally, than the expansion of the objects themselves? I have a headache.