Theoretical origin of life; 4.2 billion years ago? (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, September 27, 2016, 04:46 (2979 days ago) @ David Turell

Finding of Carbon-12 isotope in zircons raises the possibility:-http://3tags.org/article/was-earth-born-with-life-already-on-it-"After all, it's not like you can just go back in time and look at what was present then; the only evidence we have is the little bits and pieces that survive from back then, and almost all of what survives has changed over that time.-***-"But in the decades since, we realized something: even though the fossils themselves may no longer be discernible to us today, the remnants of organic matter leave a particular signature in the form of carbon. You may be used to “carbon dating” in the form of measuring the carbon-14 to carbon-12 ratio in organisms, since both forms of carbon are absorbed into organic matter, with carbon-14 being created in the upper atmosphere by cosmic rays and decaying with a half-life of around 5,700 years. As long as you're alive, you breathe in and ingest both forms of carbon; when you decompose, the carbon-14 decays and isn't replaced by any new carbon-14. Hence, if you can measure the carbon-14 to carbon-12 ratio (carbon dating), you can know roughly, with an error of a few thousand years, how long ago a particular organism died.-***-"But there's another form of carbon we don't talk about in the same breath: carbon-13, which, like carbon-12, is stable, and which is about 1.1% as abundant as the other forms of carbon.-"Living organisms?—?as far as we've been able to biologically observe?—?seem to prefer to uptake carbon-12 to carbon-13, due to metabolic enzymes reacting with carbon-12 more efficiently. If you find an ancient source of carbon and it's enhanced with carbon-12 as opposed to carbon-13, that's a good indicator that it's the remnants of an organic life-form. By looking for graphite, a form of pure carbon, deposited in otherwise highly metamorphosed rocks (things like zircons), we've been able to push back well beyond that 1-2 billion year barrier, and had placed the emergence of Earth-life all the way back to 3.8 billion years ago, or just some 750 million years after Earth formed. But as of 2015, we've done even better.-***-"By finding graphite deposits in zircons that are 4.1 billion years old, graphite deposits that show this carbon-12 enhancement, we now have evidence that life on Earth goes back at least 90% of Earth's history, and possibly even longer! After all, finding the remnants of organic matter in a certain location means the organic matter is at least as old as the location it's buried in, but it could still be even older. This is so early that it might make you think that perhaps this life didn't originate here on Earth, but that Earth was born with life. And this could really, truly be the case.-***-"When meteorites land on Earth, like the Murchison meteorite, shown below, we can analyze what's present inside. Yes, we find all sorts of interesting organic molecules, but what's perhaps most interesting is the amino acid content. While there are only about 20 amino acids that play a role in life processes here on Earth, there are nearly 100 unique amino acids found in this meteorite, a strong indication that the ingredients for life are ubiquitous throughout the Universe. We even find amino acids on the Moon, indicating that whatever brought these ingredients to Earth did so before the formation of the Moon, less than 100 million years into the age of our Solar System! (He forgets, or ignores, only eight amino acids were in the 20 essential for life group, and handedness was both right and left, not just left s in life)-***-"Well, if the ingredients are there, why couldn't some primitive form of life be there as well? If all life on Earth has a universal common ancestor, couldn't it be that there are many forms of ultra-primitive life in the Universe, and the type that came to Earth that was best adapted to the early Earth's environment was the type that thrived, evolved, reproduced, and out-competed all the others? We don't have enough evidence to favor this hypothesis over any other, but if we continue to push this limit back earlier and earlier: 4.3 billion years, 4.4 billion years, 4.45 billion years… it's going to be harder and harder to argue that this life didn't come to Earth already alive in some sense."-Comment: He is pushing the old idea of panspermia. Still doesn't settle the issue of the origin of life.