Did Life Evolve in Ice?, page 1
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Topic started on 3-2-2008 @ 06:18 AM by smans

Did Life Evolve in Ice?


discovermagazine.com
One morning in late 1997, Stanley Miller lifted a glass vial from a cold, bubbling vat. For 25 years he had tended the vial as though it were an exotic orchid, checking it daily, adding a few pellets of dry ice as needed to keep it at –108 degrees Fahrenheit. He had told hardly a soul about it. Now he set the frozen time capsule out to thaw, ending the experiment that had lasted more than one-third of his 68 years.
(visit the link for the full news article)


reply posted on 3-2-2008 @ 09:07 AM by C.H.U.D.
Originally posted by broli

Begun? According to the logic of this, life must have gotten as advanced or more than ours.


Not necessarily. The conditions which make life more likely to form, are probably quite different to those which encourage life to evolve. There is a distinct difference in these two processes, and they would require different sets of conditions to run efficiently.

For instance, the building blocks of life might come together more efficiently under cold conditions, but for the primitive life to progress and evolve might require warmer conditions. I'm only theorizing here that it might be this way around, but we know well that there are many examples in the natural history of our planet where energetic catastrophe's/extinction events have resulted in massive increases in biodiversity. In other words, evolution is ramped up when it's given a kick-start.

This discovery definitely lends weight to the Panspermia theory. The building blocks of life and possibly even very primitive life may be stored in the cold freeze of space waiting for the opportunity to seed suitable environments like Earth where life can continue to thrive and evolve at an increased rate.

I also agree, this has massive implications for the drake equation, and I suspect it will now have to be re-written to take into account these new findings. Extraterrestrial life just became a whole lot more likely!

Thanks for posting OP - great find! Starred and flagged!
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