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From: Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Ool - out at first base?
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2024 15:30:31 +0000
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On 10/12/2024 23:51, MarkE wrote:
> On 10/12/2024 2:35 pm, Bob Casanova wrote:
>> On Mon, 9 Dec 2024 16:54:56 +1100, the following appeared in
>> talk.origins, posted by MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com>:
>>
>>> We need prebiotic formation and supply of nucleotides for RNA world, and
>>> other models at some stage. The scope of the problem of the supply of
>>> these precursors is prone to underestimation.
>>>
>>> Nucleotides are chemically challenging in terms of the prebiotic
>>> synthesis and assembly of their three constituents of nitrogenous base,
>>> sugar and phosphate group.
>>>
>>> Harder again are the requirements for supply of these building blocks.
>>> You need (eventually) all canonical bases in sufficient concentration,
>>> purity, chirality, activation, distribution, location, etc.
>>>
>>> But the greatest problem I think is this: time. How long must you
>>> maintain the supply described above in order to assemble a
>>> self-replicating RNA strand? And even if you managed that, how much more
>>> time is needed before reaching a protocell capable of self-synthesising
>>> nucleotides? One million years? One hundred million years?
>>>
>>> A hypothised little warm pond with wetting/drying cycles (say) must
>>> provide a far-from-equilibrium system...for a million years...or
>>> hundreds of millions of years. You can’t pause the process, because any
>>> developing polymers will fall apart and reset the clock.
>>>
>>> What are the chances of that kind of geological and environmental
>>> stability and continuity?
>>>
>>> Therefore, the formation of an autonomous protocell naturalistically has
>>> vanishingly small probability.
>>>
>> Please provide the mathematical calculations which support
>> your assertions. In detail, please, with error bars; no
>> "but it seems too long!" whining.
>>>
> 
> At some point this would need to be calculated and quantified, so valid 
> request.
> 
> My discussion at this stage though is a line of reasoning that in 
> principle may significantly reduce the presumed probabilistic resources 
> available for the formation of an autonomous protocell.
> 
> In summary the argument is: if a hypothesised little warm pond (or 
> thermal vent, etc) has virtually zero chance of producing this 
> protocell, then no amount of ponds and planets will help:
> 
> P(OoL) = N_ponds x N_planets x P(protocell) x P(post-protocell)
> 
> If P(protocell) -> 0, then P(OoL) -> 0
> 
> Of course, it remains to be demonstrated that P(protocell) -> 0, but 
> would you agree with the logic of the argument?
> 

Given sufficient trials the occurrence of a low (per trial) probability 
event becomes nearly inevitable. The assertion that "if ... has 
virtually zero chance of producing this protocell, then no amount of 
ponds and planets will help" - if the probability is non-zero the option 
of adding more ponds and planets will generate a near certainty. If the 
probability is sufficiently low, then the number of trials possible in 
this universe can be too low to reach that near inevitability, but you 
should be talking about numbers below around 10^-40. If you asked the 
average person they would say that numbers orders of magnitude larger 
are virtually zero. Add a multiverse and you require even smaller numbers.

-- 
alias Ernest Major