Last Universal Common Ancestor

[PostmodernProphet]

Agree. A religion sub-forum.

you mean one like our subforum for religion?.....

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

Average is a misleading statistical concept.

The average salary between me, you, and bill Gates is twenty billion dollars. It's my fault for even bringing up the word average.

The key comment in that article is that 'however, there are many more low mass stars' in the observable universe.

Most stars are red dwarfs. Our sun falls on the main sequence at G2. That makes our G2 sun a quite large and massive star compared to most.

Our star is also a solo star. Most stars occur in binary systems, and it seems to me that planetary orbital mechanics might be more unstable in binary systems

Plus wouldn't there be situations where the planets are close to one star but not the other, causing weirdnesses in tidal forces, temperature, etc.?

 

[Commander Dutch]

Average is a misleading statistical concept.

The average salary between me, you, and bill Gates is twenty billion dollars. It's my fault for even bringing up the word average.

The key comment in that article is that 'however, there are many more low mass stars' in the observable universe.

Most stars are red dwarfs. Our sun falls on the main sequence at G2. That makes our G2 sun a quite large and massive star compared to most.

Our star is also a solo star. Most stars occur in binary systems, and it seems to me that planetary orbital mechanics might be more unstable in binary systems

Agreed on misunderstandings of average and the link’s pointing out that smaller stars outnumber larger stars.

Going back to TOW’s post, I’ve found nothing to indicate a difference in the distribution of nova-sized stars is different in larger galaxies versus small. OTOH, there was nothing to positively indicate the ratio is consistent.

 

[Commander Dutch]

Agreed.

But...we may not be able to communicate with life forms almost exactly like our own.

I disagree. We communicate with animals.

Other carbon-based life forms would have similarities. Silicon-based might present different problems but I see no reason they’d be insurmountable. Consider that the physics of the Universe is a constant. That, regardless of life form, Pi remains Pi.

 

[Cypress]

Plus wouldn't there be situations where the planets are close to one star but not the other, causing weirdnesses in tidal forces, temperature, etc.?

I,suppose you are correct. I really don't know that much about the orbital dynamics in binary and trinary systems. I have heard that stable planetary orbits can occur in binary systems, it just seems to me that solo stars would tend to have less instability.

 

[Matt Dillon]

Last Universal Common Ancestor, and the Hard Limits of Knowledge

Around 4 billion years ago there lived a microbe called LUCA — the Last Universal Common Ancestor. There is evidence that it could have lived a somewhat ‘alien’ lifestyle, hidden away deep underground in iron-sulfur rich hydrothermal vents. Anaerobic and autotrophic, it didn’t breath air and made its own food from the dark, metal-rich environment around it. Its metabolism depended upon hydrogen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Most remarkable of all, this little microbe was the beginning of a long lineage that encapsulates all life on Earth.

Using a variety of methods, biologists have mapped out the tree of relationships between living things across Earth’s long inhabited history, which goes back more than three billion years.

Through these kinds of studies, biologists can trace all of life back to a single kind of organism - LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor.. The basic structures of this entity’s biochemistry, including the use of DNA, are what every form of life on Earth today uses.

We do not know much about this creature. We do not have direct fossils of its existence. But we can infer its existence from the tree of life. There must have been a last universal common ancestor that gave root to all life on Earth.

The recognition of LUCA is a triumph of modern biological sciences. But it is also a horizon beyond which we cannot see. Could there, for example, have been more than one origin of life on Earth? Perhaps there were different versions of self-replicators, but the one leading to LUCA won out. What came before LUCA in its own lineage? LUCA, after all, represents the living form we all descended from, not necessarily the origin of life itself. Like cosmologists pushing further back in cosmic history, biologists must be creative as they seek to move further back in the dim mists of time.

The limits of knowledge:
What’s cool about all this is how it reveals something fundamental about science. Horizons exist because evidence comes with constraints we don’t know how to break. That means that not every direct question can find a direct answer. The trail can simply grow cold, or disappear. At that point, the most interesting question of all arises: What do you do next?


https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/looking-for-luca-the-last-universal-common-ancestor/

https://bigthink.com/13-8/limits-of-knowledge-big-bang-origin-life/

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Genesis 3:22

I think it's one of the most remarkable discoveries in biology of the last 30 years: demonstrating that life in all it's variety and complexity descended from a single celled organism that lived 3.5 billion years ago.

I'll bet you can guess what I'm going to do next.

There's one philosophy that removes the burden of this kind of heavy speculation and inquiry from those of us who embrace it.

The emergence of matter, however it transpired, permanently and for eternity perniciously infected the perfection of nothingness, the total void.

There is no foreseeable recovery from this phenomenon, so enduring it --the existence of somethingness--over the length of a human lifetime is all that we really need to learn to do.
Efforts at anything else will obviously be futile.

So what do I do next? Make a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. You should try it.

I'm glad that for once they didn't give it some Biblical name.

I dunno. Sounds a bit too much like a feminine hygiene product.

Couplets within the early books of the Bible are not uncommon. Same with Noah.

Source

Oh boy. Another boring thread on religion.

The God bacteria.

The Earth is only about 4.5B years old so LUCA came along relatively early in its existence.

An SF story I once read (Larry Niven?) wrote about spacefarers landing on a sterile planet for repairs and then dumping their biological waste before leaving. They wondered what the planet would look like in a few billion years.

A Biblical version of that story would be “And lo! God sent angels from Heaven to descend upon the Earth where they lifted their robes and gave life to the Earth”.

Don't forget the lox

Makes me a card-carrying member of the ACLU.

He certainly LISTS THE NAMES a lot.

Yes, Cypress thinks writing a name means he understands what that person was talking about.

And Cypress embarks on yet another expedition to the far ends of the earth and horizons of reality in his neverending quest to deny God.

 

[Commander Dutch]

And Cypress embarks on yet another expedition to the far ends of the earth and horizons of reality in his neverending quest to deny God.

Disagreed that anything Cypress has posted is pro or anti-religion.

Jank accuses Cypress of being a theist, you accuse him of being an atheist. Why haven’t you gone after the avowed atheists, Matt?

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

And Cypress embarks on yet another expedition to the far ends of the earth and horizons of reality in his neverending quest to deny God.

Why does that bother you so? If you're going to Heaven (doubtful), wouldn't it be more pleasant there for you without people who endlessly ask questions and don't bore God to death with their harping?

 

[Matt Dillon]

:rolf2:

Disagreed that anything Cypress has posted is pro or anti-religion.

Jank accuses Cypress of being a theist, you accuse him of being an atheist. Why haven’t you gone after the avowed atheists, Matt?

Ofc, bcuz you're stupid.

 

[Commander Dutch]

Ofc, bcuz you're stupid.

Do you take whiskey in your morning coffee, Matt, or vodka in your orange juice?

 

[Commander Dutch]

Why does that bother you so? If you're going to Heaven (doubtful), wouldn't it be more pleasant there for you without people who endlessly ask questions and don't bore God to death with their harping?

Matt isn’t a Christian by virtue of the fact he never acts like one.

 

[Matt Dillon]

Why does that bother you so? If you're going to Heaven (doubtful), wouldn't it be more pleasant there for you without people who endlessly ask questions and don't bore God to death with their harping?

You know all about harping, huh, Harpy?

The Harpinatress.

Lemme know how praying for the forgiveness of your sins to teh FSM works out for you!

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

Matt isn’t a Christian by virtue of the fact he never acts like one.

He's certainly not alone in that around here, is he?

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

You know all about harping, huh, Harpy?

The Harpinatress.

*whoosh* Guess that pun flew right over the tinfoil hat on your head.

 

[Matt Dillon]

Matt isn’t a Christian by virtue of the fact he never acts like one.

7 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

https://www.biblegateway.com/passag...-3&version=KJV#:~:text=7 Judge,thine own eye?

You better pull that log outta your eye, dumbass.

 

[Matt Dillon]

*whoosh* Guess that pun flew right over the tinfoil hat on your head.

Well, I reckon self realization is an honest trait.

 

[Commander Dutch]

He's certainly not alone in that around here, is he?

Correct. The only member who consistently acts like a Christian is Jade…and the followers of the Dark Lord constantly harass him for it. Sad.

 

[Commander Dutch]

You better pull that log outta your eye, dumbass.

QED, Matt. Thanks for proving my point so quickly.

 

[Matt Dillon]

Do you take whiskey in your morning coffee, Matt, or vodka in your orange juice?

Do you kick your cat and beat your wife before or after breakfast?

 

[Cancel 1 2023]

And Cypress embarks on yet another expedition to the far ends of the earth and horizons of reality in his neverending quest to deny God.

Cypress defended God elsewhere. He even called me an antisemite for attempting to discuss the theological difficulties in the Old Testament around God's behavior there.