This probably shows is that there’s a large number of ways for RNA fragments to form. RNA may have been produced by multiple sources in early Earth.
No details of the experiment are mentioned. Did the researchers make protect against picking up existing RNA from the environment?
I’ve expected the origin of life would turn out to be something simple and inevitable, ever since hearing about the Miller-Urey experiment when I was a little kid in the 50s. Maybe not that, maybe not this, but something.
Still have quite a ways to go to get from RNA to single cells. I do hope they were very clean in their experiments.
The distance from RNA to cells may not be as big as all that, since nonliving cell-like things exist and spontaneously arise in nature (bubbles, for example, are cell like). Much of what’s in existing cells are what were once free-living organisms that colonized the cell. Chloroplasts. Mitochondria. Etc. There’s a lot we don’t know about the early Earth. Probably a lot more than we do know. The attraction of panspermia is, the origin of life only has to happen once. The other end of that spectrum is a universe where life arises easily.
This probably shows is that there’s a large number of ways for RNA fragments to form. RNA may have been produced by multiple sources in early Earth.
No details of the experiment are mentioned. Did the researchers make protect against picking up existing RNA from the environment?
I’ve expected the origin of life would turn out to be something simple and inevitable, ever since hearing about the Miller-Urey experiment when I was a little kid in the 50s. Maybe not that, maybe not this, but something.
Still have quite a ways to go to get from RNA to single cells. I do hope they were very clean in their experiments.
The distance from RNA to cells may not be as big as all that, since nonliving cell-like things exist and spontaneously arise in nature (bubbles, for example, are cell like). Much of what’s in existing cells are what were once free-living organisms that colonized the cell. Chloroplasts. Mitochondria. Etc. There’s a lot we don’t know about the early Earth. Probably a lot more than we do know. The attraction of panspermia is, the origin of life only has to happen once. The other end of that spectrum is a universe where life arises easily.