Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
Under plasma-friendly conditions, inorganic dust can organize itself and behave like DNA.
An international team has discovered that under the right conditions, particles of inorganic dust can become organised into helical structures. These structures can then interact with each other in ways that are usually associated with organic compounds and life itself. [...] They can, for instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours and they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma. [...]
"These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter," says Tsytovich, "they are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve."
Plasma-friendly conditions occur in space and on earth during lightning strikes, which offers a plausible mechanism for abiogenesis.
Intriguing, but has the international team "discovered" anything, or simply been playing with a computer model and found interesting results?
Posted by: TokyoTom at August 20, 2007 12:30 AMOf course we can learn alot by thought experiments, including those conducted with the aid of computer models, especially for certain classes of problems for which it is difficult to conduct real world experiments.
For example, we've only got one world to muck up with our ongoing "climate change" experiment, but we can fortunately glean some insights into where we may be headed by tinkering with computer models.
Posted by: TokyoTom at August 20, 2007 10:45 PMMaybe WE are in a computer simulation, or are in the simulation of a disembodied Boltzman Brain...
OR not.
Posted by: Jon at August 21, 2007 07:35 AMUm, it's pretty hard to see how plasmas (which typically exist at temperatures of thousands of degrees) could have much to do with the beginnings of carbon-based life.
Also, this article is from Wired. Dude.
Posted by: lemuel pitkin at August 21, 2007 04:27 PMLemuel's right, and the physicists in their paper were fantasizing about possible nonorganic "life" within plasmas. What were those Wired guys smoking?
Posted by: TokyoTom at August 21, 2007 11:16 PMthis article is from Wired
It's from the New Journal of Physics (about which I know nothing). Wired's blog was just where I found the link to it.
Posted by: apostropher at August 21, 2007 11:44 PMAh, both the physiscists and the Wired guys are speculating about "inorganic living matter", made of plasma and inorganic dust. So who smoked up the supposed abiogenesis connection?
Posted by: TokyoTom at August 22, 2007 04:42 AM