Origin of Life (Pt2) (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, December 29, 2009, 17:50 (5239 days ago) @ David Turell


> > Be careful... too many books to read, lol. Which should I tackle first, Shapior or Foster?
> 
> Shapiro first, certainly.
> >
> > Massimo Pigliucci--and evolutionary biologist--flat out stated that it isn't a question of concern for biology, to paraphrase "because evolution only works when describing life." 
> 
> Right. Life comes only from life is our only experience. 
> > 
> > What could be more practical than building a quantum computer capable of running these kinds of simulations? This is from the mind of a computer guy however, so take that as it is.
> 
> I'll give you the quantum computer. Then what? We have no idea what to put into it to start a program to study the origin of life. Your computer will have to run 800 million years, subtrating 4.5 billion, start of earth, to 3.7 billion, start of life, to discover the chance processes that came by. You will be studying 10^80 atoms, or 10^88 protons. Perhaps I'm wrong about time required. How long do you think it will take?-You clearly don't understand the power Quantum computing delivers; no offense. -Why will quantum computing render all current cryptography obsolete? Because modern RSA keys require large prime numbers, the largest known complete factorization was a key that was 2^663 bits long, which factors to about 10^21. This certainly didn't take 10^21 years to accomplish, and this was done with standard digital computers. It was done on a supercomputing cluster that would take a 2.2Ghz opteron (your home Desktop PC) 75 years to find a solution for. The source number was 200 digits long--10^200, more than twice the total number of particles in the cosmos. -A quantum computer would factor this at the speed of light, and it is THAT fact that has chemists (especially in pharmaceuticals) foaming and drooling at the mouth. The difference is that although we can model quantum systems digitally, it's a translational process--standard computer logic likes 0's and 1's, not 0's, 1's, and BOTH 1 and 0 at the same time. It is that last part that keeps us from fully modeling quantum physics on digital machines. It takes alot more processing power to handle the probabilistic nature of quantum physics--but photons do it naturally, thus the intense draw towards building such a wonderful device. -It is also this fact that has even some biochemists here at UNO stating that biochemical complexity is going to be solved by mathematicians and physicists, not by biochemists. (Hence the work already underway on our cluster.)

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"