"Will Humans and Extraterrestrial Life Share DNA Roots?"

A recent mathematical analysis says that life as we know it is written into the laws of reality.  DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids - the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are thermodynamically destined to occur wherever they can.

For those unfamiliar with thermodynamics, it's the Big Brother of all energy equations and science itself.  You can apply quantum mechanics at certain scales, and Newtonian mechanics work at the right speeds, but if Thermodynamics says something then everyone listens. An energy analysis by Ralph Pudritz, a theoretical astrophysicist and director of the Origins Institute at McMaster University shows that the first ten amino acids are likely to form at relatively low temperatures and pressures, and the calculated odds of formation match the concentrations of these life-chemicals found in meteorite samples.

They also match those in simulations of early Earth, and most critically, those simulations were performed by other people.  The implications are staggering: good news for anyone worried about how we're alone, and bad news for anyone who demands some kind of "Designer" to put life together - it seems that physics can assemble the organic jigsaw all by itself, thank you very much, and has probably done so throughout space since the beginning of everything.

The study indicates that you don't need a miracle to arrive at the chemical cocktail for early life, just a decently large asteroid with the right components.  That's all.  The entire universe could be stuffed with life, from the earliest prebiotic protein-a-likes to fully DNAed descendants. The path from one to the other is long, but we've had thirteen and a half billion years so far and it's happened at least once.

The other ten amino acids aren't as easy to form, but they'll still turn up - and the process of "stepwise evolution" means that once the simpler systems work, they can grab the rarer "epic drops" of more sophisticated chemicals as they occur - kind of a World of Lifecraft except you literally get a life when you play.  And once even the most sophisticated structure is part of a replicating organism, there's plenty to go round.

Early Earth was covered with carbonaceous material from meteorites and comets that provided the raw materials from which first life emerged. In his new book, The Eerie Silence, astrophysicist Paul Davies of Arizona State University suggests that the original cells would have been able to pick and choose from the early Earth's organic cocktail. To the best of our knowledge, he writes, "the twenty-one chosen by known life do not constitute a unique set; other choices could have been made, and maybe were made if life started elsewhere many times."

Posted by Luke McKinney with Casey Kazan

Humans and Aliens might share DNA roots

Image credit: jrtce1's photostream

Comments

[khudran]

Extraterrestrial marriage someday!

[Peter]

It is possible that an ancient spacefaring alien civilization seeded the galaxy with primitive prokaryotes.

[Simon Salosny]

The odds involved are IMMENSE... Just considering the complexity of a Brain universe.

[Boldriks]

this does not in any way exclude the possibility of existence of something we could call God though... Sure it does not correlate with what our silly organized religions tell us, but what do they have in common with God (if it turns out there is one)...

[Jerrell]

Sounds so easy, but happened only once on Earth in 5 billion years.

[Zarkov]

These researchers are only babes-in-the-woods

LIFE is so complicated, that even in 1000 years from now, there will still be more questions than answers..

Let these boffin create a truly intelligent robot first.... an electronic version........ then they can tell me that they may understand a little about the biological version.

Meanwhile >> LOL

[dirk alan]

the universe is a 4d mobius strip

[EvilCosmicMonkeyfrom Knoxville]

Extra - terrestrial DNA ( If it exists )will probably be RADICALLY DIFFERENT from Human terrestrial DNA. Three helixes instead a double - helix. Probably not carbon - based, either.

Something to consider.

[mrG]

It's all well and good to take the great leap of faith to declare the non sequiteur that this precludes any necessity for a God, but all you have done is to rephrase the question. If I know HOW you start your car, does that necessarily mean you do not exist, because the car might (might) start on its own if left to enough random encounters? No. Nor does it mean that the exquisite Lotus Elan that you drive just happened, that it was the natural occurance of auto parts that just happened to fall into place that way, and more importantly, that just happened to have been constructed with that inevitability built-in. That's pretty fantastic if you ask me.

I'd be more impressed if the researchers then applied this simple inevitable situation and handed us a test-tube not of inert slime, but a real viable hunting, living, loving paramecium creature. Then I'd grant that it was as they say and so easy even a child-of-God could do it ;) Seems to me there was just such an experiment done some 50 years back by astrobiologists, the research goo left in an abandoned office all these years and only recently found by grad students needing more space, and there was a burst of media coverage that the tubes did indeed contain 'something' interesting, but then ... silence. So much silence I dare say no one reading this has even heard of this very famous experiment or its modern epilogue.

What all this does give us is a much better question: why is our universe specifically designed to assemble itself into the Lotus Elan of matter we call "beings"? How is it possible that quark-soup could find its way not just to becoming an editor of scientific research reviews, but to actually find its way to becoming a factory endlessly and everywhere creating an endless variety of editors?

[R. Joseph W.]

Lets get by the boggle that DNA is composed of amino acids. Proteins are made of amino acids.
DNA is made of nucleic acids.

For life, self replicating entities, to form DNA, a wide variety of peptides and all other critical chemicals need be present at high concentrations, etc. It is not much to say that there are amino acids on asteroids as all carbon and everything else on earth came from space and, as you note, amino acids can be formed on earth in the early atmosphere. A few common amino acids inside a rock is pretty far from life.

It is also worth considering that once life happens, the self replication process will produce an abundance of those chemicals that it knows how to make will and this will quickly swamp out other randomly formed molecules. With improvements in the self replicating entity more probable that spontaneous formation of something new, that first approach to life will take over.

[donald canaday]

this comments or alien extrastrial being,tell them to read old testment,exodus 20"the ten commandments."both species of human or other,no matter how powerfull,in the laboratory or outer space,should read and try understand,those "ten commandments"apply yo each of ours and god willing not extinguish human or other lifeforms...

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[dihydromonoxide]

i see no reason to spread the bible to outer space i would thin =k they have a similar type of teaching they would follow so would you like to learn their bible

i see no problem with them learning our bile if they want an we may wish to lean theirs but we do not need to be pushing it

they made their own mistakes and so on so they should learn from those mistakes above all else then learn from others the same goes for us

by that standard the bible should be an on going book of all our mistakes

the ten commandments are pretty simple and basic but at least one may not apply to an alien race marriage and aldurty

reproductive needs may differ a bit just look at what takes place on earth in the form of insects or fish or even reptiles none of this is a matter of behavior but rather a biological need

now the shall not kill shall not steal pretty basic and universal

the others could be interrupted in many different ways and might be joined together as language may allow for one word to have a double meaning or maybe they never made the same mistakes such as the system of money aka usury

then we have shall not use his name in vein well that is clear one but as we know it that concept it may take half a page of text to explain the meaning of that in ET language

so before we could even think about punishing the bible we should start by pushing Greek and Hebrew on to our selves then on them

sorry english is not gonna cut it lead by example i see no point in pushing the bible like that but its an open book to be shared for all who wish to read it

[dihydromonoxide]

i see no reason to spread the bible to outer space i would thin =k they have a similar type of teaching they would follow so would you like to learn their bible

i see no problem with them learning our bile if they want an we may wish to lean theirs but we do not need to be pushing it

they made their own mistakes and so on so they should learn from those mistakes above all else then learn from others the same goes for us

by that standard the bible should be an on going book of all our mistakes

the ten commandments are pretty simple and basic but at least one may not apply to an alien race marriage and aldurty

reproductive needs may differ a bit just look at what takes place on earth in the form of insects or fish or even reptiles none of this is a matter of behavior but rather a biological need

now the shall not kill shall not steal pretty basic and universal

the others could be interrupted in many different ways and might be joined together as language may allow for one word to have a double meaning or maybe they never made the same mistakes such as the system of money aka usury

then we have shall not use his name in vein well that is clear one but as we know it that concept it may take half a page of text to explain the meaning of that in ET language

so before we could even think about punishing the bible we should start by pushing Greek and Hebrew on to our selves then on them

sorry english is not gonna cut it lead by example i see no point in pushing the bible like that but its an open book to be shared for all who wish to read it

[dihydromonoxide]

i see no reason to spread the bible to outer space i would thin =k they have a similar type of teaching they would follow so would you like to learn their bible

i see no problem with them learning our bile if they want an we may wish to lean theirs but we do not need to be pushing it

they made their own mistakes and so on so they should learn from those mistakes above all else then learn from others the same goes for us

by that standard the bible should be an on going book of all our mistakes

the ten commandments are pretty simple and basic but at least one may not apply to an alien race marriage and aldurty

reproductive needs may differ a bit just look at what takes place on earth in the form of insects or fish or even reptiles none of this is a matter of behavior but rather a biological need

now the shall not kill shall not steal pretty basic and universal

the others could be interrupted in many different ways and might be joined together as language may allow for one word to have a double meaning or maybe they never made the same mistakes such as the system of money aka usury

then we have shall not use his name in vein well that is clear one but as we know it that concept it may take half a page of text to explain the meaning of that in ET language

so before we could even think about punishing the bible we should start by pushing Greek and Hebrew on to our selves then on them

sorry english is not gonna cut it lead by example i see no point in pushing the bible like that but its an open book to be shared for all who wish to read it