Abiogenesis and Probabilities

[DrNoGods]

I'm creating a new thread here to continue debate on a post made by EarthScience guy on another thread (Science and Religion > Artificial life: can it be created?, post 17). This post challenged probability calculations in an old Talkorigins article that I had linked in that thread:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

Are the arguments (on creationist views) and probabilities presented reasonable in the Talkorigins article? If not, why not?

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #64]

There is no known mechanism that can form dust into a planetesmal.

Au contraire ... there is a known mechanism to convert dust and other small particles into a Planetesimal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetesimal

Have you ever encountered a "dust bunny" in your house?

But there is something called the 1 km barrier. An object has a 1 km diameter then it will start to pull other objects to it.

And from the same Wikipedia article above:

"Once a body reaches a kilometer in size, its constituent grains can attract each other directly through mutual gravity, enormously aiding further growth into moon-sized protoplanets."

I thought you have been claiming that that this wasn't possible for particles in orbit around the Sun, because of an acceleration vector perpendicular to the direction of motion. The larger an orbiting body becomes the more "stuff" it can sweep out and attach, and when it hits a roughly 1 km diameter or larger gravity just adds to the ability to accrete even more stuff.

I am not sure how CO2 ties into our discussion. Water vapor from volcanic eruptions would be the main oxygen producer in your theory.

I don't have a theory ... I just accept that the current scientific consensus on the composition of the early Earth atmosphere is more likely to be correct than a claim that it was the same as it is today because that is consistent with a religious creation story. My point has been that UV photodissociation of H2O (or CO2) would not produce an atmosphere with 21% O2 on the early Earth, because the cross sections are too low and the UV intensity at the necessary wavelengths is also too low. But if you want to push this idea, you should really like the earlier reference you gave indicating an early atmosphere of 97% CO2 and 3% N2. In this case it is CO2 that you want to form O2, not H2O. Hard to keep the story straight though.

Yes, it is. I am not sure whether he dreamed about it or not. But there is something called the 1 km barrier. An object has a 1 km diameter then it will start to pull other objects to it.

How this relates to objects moving in straight lines away from the Earth I'm not sure, but Walt Brown seems to come up with absolute nonsense when he's fully awake so I'm sure his dreams are nonsense on steroids. This one sure is. Every body in our solar system of any significant mass orbits either the Sun, or it orbits a planet or moon large enough to hold it in local orbit as the combined system orbits the Sun. The Sun represents 99.86% of the mass of our solar system, including all of the planets, their moons, the billions of rocks in the asteroid belt, etc. It is the boss, gravity-wise. Nothing is going to move in "straight lines" away from the Earth (or the Sun) without some external source of power to get both its velocity and distance high enough. The Voyager spacecraft are headed far away over time, but this isn't a natural event:

https://www.space.com/predicting-voyage ... ant-future

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #70]

Thank you for this stimulating conversation in the theory of evolution it was most enjoyable.

[JoeyKnothead]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #70]
Thank you for this stimulating conversation in the theory of evolution it was most enjoyable.

You're very welcome, but I wasn't commenting on theory, just fact.

All the same, I find much satisfaction seeing the smiles of those who've learnt em a new fact.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #0]

Au contraire ... there is a known mechanism to convert dust and other small particles into a Planetesimal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetesimal

Have you ever encountered a "dust bunny" in your house?

Have you ever encountered sand sticking together in the desert to form large rocks?

The sand in the desert comes from broken rock just like the soil in your yard. ... In the desert, there are few plants to hold soil in place and little water. Instead, wind is the main way that the rock pieces are moved around. The wind cannot move all the pieces though, just the small lighter ones, so sand is left behind http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php? ... t%20behind.

I thought you said that gravity was the cause of dust particles coming together? But no bother electrostatic forces will bear no better. Sand can produce static electricity so much so that lighting can be produced in sand storms and the wind in stand storms is stronger because of static electricity. But the problem with this theory is that to have static electricity the sand grains have to be crashing into each other constantly. And it is this constant crashing together that breaks apart sand grains and produces more static electricity. This is how sand breaks down and sand grains become smaller over time in the desert. https://www.science.org/news/2016/07/st ... ust-storms;

I thought you have been claiming that that this wasn't possible for particles in orbit around the Sun, because of an acceleration vector perpendicular to the direction of motion. The larger an orbiting body becomes the more "stuff" it can sweep out and attach, and when it hits a roughly 1 km diameter or larger gravity just adds to the ability to accrete even more stuff.

A 1 km diameter rock is huge. If it has a density of 2.8 g/cm3. Then it would have a mass of 1.5E12 kg. If it hit the Earth it could destroy an entire city.

And as well respected Wikipedia is I think I might be a little more inclined to believe the Journal of Geological Science which says again.

Today we know that this classic picture of planetesimal growth has severe problems (illustrated in Figure 2).
When silicate grains grow to a size of about a millimeter, they start to bounce off each other instead of accreting [Zsom and Dullemond, 2008; Güttler et al., 2009]. In the icy part of the disk, particles can grow up to a few
decimeters in size before starting to bounce. This is called the bouncing barrier. At these sizes, particles migrate
rapidly in the disk toward the star due to gas drag. This radial drift produces large relative velocities among
particles of different sizes and hence disruptive collisions. Even if collisions were not disruptive and particles
could continue to grow, eventually meter-size boulders would migrate so rapidly to be lost into the star before
they can grow significantly further [Weidenschilling, 1977]. This is the well known meter-size barrier (referred
to as the “drift barrier” in Figure 2) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com ... 16JE005088

So a particle could never reach the size of 1 km because of the drift barrier.

I don't have a theory ... I just accept that the current scientific consensus on the composition of the early Earth atmosphere is more likely to be correct than a claim that it was the same as it is today because that is consistent with a religious creation story.

I have not quoted answers in genesis once in this discussion or any religious documents. I have only mentioned scientific papers that have been peer-reviewed by scientists that believe as you believe. If there are those that do not stay up on the current theory that is not my problem.

My point has been that UV photodissociation of H2O (or CO2) would not produce an atmosphere with 21% O2 on the early Earth, because the cross sections are too low and the UV intensity at the necessary wavelengths is also too low. But if you want to push this idea, you should really like the earlier reference you gave indicating an early atmosphere of 97% CO2 and 3% N2. In this case it is CO2 that you want to form O2, not H2O. Hard to keep the story straight though.

I also asked where did all of the CO2 come from when today most of the gas produced in a volcanic eruption is water vapor. So where is the water vapor in those percentages it should be a major? You also said earlier that the gasses produced did not have to have the same concentrations of gases as they do today. But you failed to describe why that would be the case especially with the indication from very early zircon crystals that there was liquid water on the surface 4.4 billion years ago.

How this relates to objects moving in straight lines away from the Earth I'm not sure, but Walt Brown seems to come up with absolute nonsense when he's fully awake so I'm sure his dreams are nonsense on steroids. This one sure is. Everybody in our solar system of any significant mass orbits either the Sun, or it orbits a planet or moon large enough to hold it in local orbit as the combined system orbits the Sun. The Sun represents 99.86% of the mass of our solar system, including all of the planets, their moons, the billions of rocks in the asteroid belt, etc. It is the boss, gravity-wise. Nothing is going to move in "straight lines" away from the Earth (or the Sun) without some external source of power to get both its velocity and distance high enough. The Voyager spacecraft are headed far away over time, but this isn't a natural event:

https://www.space.com/predicting-voyage ... ant-future

There was a source of power the fountains of the deep which was supercritical water. A layer of supercritical water that used to be around 50 km below the surface of the earth.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #73]

Care to share why you think evolution is a fact? Because I think I missed that part.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #70]

A thousand pardons I did not see this robust explanation of evolution.

We see it in our own families - where we can observe similarities and differences. We're roughly half one parent, and half the other'n in appearance, and of course genetics. So we see the changed genetics.

Oh, you mean like Bradskii and his wife are 0.1% different.

Incidentally, the genetic differences between any two individual humans is already 0.1%. According to you, it seems there's a 3.5 million year difference between my wife and myself. I should maybe check her date of birth. as per Bradskii

Do you mean like this?

[JoeyKnothead]

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #73]

Care to share why you think evolution is a fact? Because I think I missed that part.

Facts are things that're true. Evolution's a fact.

Evolution's descent with modification, and can be observed simply by looking in our own families. Notice junior looks similar to his folks, but not an exact mirror of either one. Thus, junior's been through the process of descent with modification.

From there it's a reasonable and logical conclusion that given enough juniors, and enough juniors of juniors, and enough juniors of juniors of juniors, that eventually there'll be a junior that is him so descentually modificated, he'll be him a senior.

Evolution's as irrefutable a fact as wimmin fussing about putting your feet up on the coffee table.

Evolution ain't bound to one's inability to make the probabilities, or the math work.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #75]

Have you ever encountered sand sticking together in the desert to form large rocks?

This has no analogy to orbiting particles in an accretion disk clumping together over millions of years to form larger bodies like asteroids and planets. There are only 8 official planets in our entire solar system, 5 IAU-recognized "dwarf" planets, and nearly a couple of hundred moons among the 146 IAU-recognized moons in our solar system and those awaiting confirmation.

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file ... ograph.pdf

There are billions of rocks in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, so these larger bodies are relatively rare. There are several hypotheses for how planets formed, and most involve a mechanism of particles sticking together by some mechanism, even if not the standard core accretion model:

https://www.space.com/35526-solar-system-formation.html

What is your alternative to the mechanisms in the above article?

I thought you said that gravity was the cause of dust particles coming together? But no bother electrostatic forces will bear no better.

I said once the body gets large enough it can attract particles more readily in addition to sweeping out smaller particles in its path. But gravity does work on all mass scales.

So a particle could never reach the size of 1 km because of the drift barrier.

Your article link didn't produce a paper, but again, how to you propose the planets and other bodies in our solar system formed after the Sun formed? They do exist and had to form somehow. This article discusses several other ideas including aid from vortices formed within the accretion disk of the star. Exoplanets are plentiful as well, so whatever the exact mechanism of planet formation it is pretty common:

https://www.americanscientist.org/artic ... ets-easily

I have not quoted answers in genesis once in this discussion or any religious documents. I have only mentioned scientific papers that have been peer-reviewed by scientists that believe as you believe. If there are those that do not stay up on the current theory that is not my problem.

Did you not mention Walt Brown and his "Hydroplate" idea (post 29), and his idea that amino acids somehow got to asteroids and comets via Noah's flood? This is not peer-reviewed science. And I don't know of any peer-reviewed papers discussing "the great deep." You also referenced bible stories (eg. post 33) ... is that not a religious document?

I also asked where did all of the CO2 come from when today most of the gas produced in a volcanic eruption is water vapor. So where is the water vapor in those percentages it should be a major? You also said earlier that the gasses produced did not have to have the same concentrations of gases as they do today. But you failed to describe why that would be the case especially with the indication from very early zircon crystals that there was liquid water on the surface 4.4 billion years ago.

It was your comment in post 33 from an article I had linked to that quoted 97% CO2 and 3% N2. Is your entire argument for a high O2 atmosphere on Earth 4 billion or so years ago is that it came from photodissociation of H2O? The very formation of lots of O2 would stop the process due to O2 (and O3) absorption below 200 nm, but photodissociation of H2S below 200 nm produces mainly H + OH.

There was a source of power the fountains of the deep which was supercritical water. A layer of supercritical water that used to be around 50 km below the surface of the earth.

Good thing you are sticking to peer-reviewed science papers only. Do you have a link to such an article so I can learn more about the "fountains of the deep"?

[JoeyKnothead]

Delete the one that got all messed up

[JoeyKnothead]

Edit for clarititious reasons...
Got tag issues, retry...

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #70]
A thousand pardons I did not see this robust explanation of evolution.

We see it in our own families - where we can observe similarities and differences. We're roughly half one parent, and half the other'n in appearance, and of course genetics. So we see the changed genetics.

Oh, you mean like Bradskii and his wife are 0.1% different.

I make no arguments regarding someone else and him's pretty thing's family matters.

Care to rephrase?

Incidentally, the genetic differences between any two individual humans is already 0.1%. According to you, it seems there's a 3.5 million year difference between my wife and myself. I should maybe check her date of birth. as per Bradskii.

Do you mean like this?

I make no moral judgements regarding you marrying a chick so much younger than yourself, cept to hope she was of a legal age when ya did.

As I mentioned in a post before I got to this'n, evolution ain't it the least bit fussed about your inability to make the numbers work. It's muley like that.

But using your numbers, had your marriage - condolences by the way - occurred within that 0.1% percent window, none shoulda stood up at your wedding to object, whether cause of evolution, or y'all being kin somewhere there along the way.