Trilairian
Registered Senior Member
Since not everyone agrees on what constitutes life, I must define what I mean by it. In chemical evolution there is a transition from chemical components that no one would accept as being alive to oganic forms that anyone would accept as being alive. This is the case whether you accept the truth of natural evolution or cling to the myth of genesis wherein creatures were molded out of dirt. Early biochemists sought to reproduce early earth conditions to observe how the first prokaryotes formed. The mixed ammonia and methane and water and hit it with electrical shocks in simulation of lightning strikes and found that amino acids formed. Unfortunately they were not in the early years able to produce anything more evolved than that. So, the creationists of the time and even still today clinging to the outdated information would parade about exclaiming that scientists could not even create the simplest single cell. Creationists therefor proposing that as the line to draw between alive and not alive have inspired the definition that I use for the most fundamental form of life. Following their lead, I will define the simplest form constituting a living organism as the simplest cell on the condition that it reproduces, or divides in their case, and will even go so far as to give it the additional requirements that as a living cell it must be osmotic and be able to cluster into a colony or group.
What the early biochemists lacked in their early experiments was heat, or alternatively a catalyst which in this case is certain acid. If for example a pool of boiling down amino acids on a volcanic island where washed out to sea suddenly cooled in the ocean water something called proteinoid microspheres would form. Dr Sidney Fox has been producing these in the lab since the fifties. They are the simplest form of cell, with an outer wall, osmotic behavior clustering into groups as well as budding, reproduction by division and even have streaming movement of internal particles which facilitates the internal chemical evolution so that they could form a nucleus in a billion years. As such, by my definition which was inspired by the argument of creationists, they are alive. This fact offended many religious media and even students of his which then put additional requirements on their personal definitions of life in order to close their eyes at the fact that he had proven natural evolution by creating life in the lab in recreating early earth conditions. After years of haggling with such semantics he finely started to say that they were at least protoalive which is ambiguous enough to satisfy everyone. But he had done it and in fact artificially fossilized microspheres are indistinguishable from the earliest known microfossils that date back to about three and a half billion years ago. Either way, by the reasonable definition which I gave, they are indeed alive. For more info do a google search on +”proteinoid microspheres”
What the early biochemists lacked in their early experiments was heat, or alternatively a catalyst which in this case is certain acid. If for example a pool of boiling down amino acids on a volcanic island where washed out to sea suddenly cooled in the ocean water something called proteinoid microspheres would form. Dr Sidney Fox has been producing these in the lab since the fifties. They are the simplest form of cell, with an outer wall, osmotic behavior clustering into groups as well as budding, reproduction by division and even have streaming movement of internal particles which facilitates the internal chemical evolution so that they could form a nucleus in a billion years. As such, by my definition which was inspired by the argument of creationists, they are alive. This fact offended many religious media and even students of his which then put additional requirements on their personal definitions of life in order to close their eyes at the fact that he had proven natural evolution by creating life in the lab in recreating early earth conditions. After years of haggling with such semantics he finely started to say that they were at least protoalive which is ambiguous enough to satisfy everyone. But he had done it and in fact artificially fossilized microspheres are indistinguishable from the earliest known microfossils that date back to about three and a half billion years ago. Either way, by the reasonable definition which I gave, they are indeed alive. For more info do a google search on +”proteinoid microspheres”
