Origins of Life

Odilon Redon's noirs were produced during a time when European society was first grappling with Darwinian theories of evolution and human origins. In this article I argue that Redon's imagery, especially his 1883 album of lithographs, Les Origines, articulate the melancholic state of the body and self in an evolutionary universe.

Because of the continuous focusing of thermal and chemical energy, ancient submarine hot springs are contenders as sites for the origin of life. But it is generally assumed that these would be of the acid and high-temperature 'black smoker' variety (Corliss et al., 1981). In fact today the greater part of the ocean circulates through off-ridge springs where it issues after modification at temperatures of around 40 °C or so but with the potential to reach 200 °C. Such offridge or ridge-flank springs remind us that there are other candidate sites for the origin of life. Although there is no firm indication of the pH of these off-ridge springs we have argued that the solutions are likely to be alkaline rather than acid. We test the feasibility of this idea using EQ geochemical water-rock interaction modelling codes (Wolery 1983) and find that for a range of possible initial chemistries of Hadean seawater, the pH of issuing solutions at around 200 °C is around one or more units alkaline. Such pH values hold for interaction with both basaltic and komatiitic crust. The robustness of this result suggests to us that alkaline submarine springs of moderate temperature, carrying many hundreds of ppm HS-to the ocean basins, are also serious contenders as sites for the origin of life, particularly as Hadean seawater was probably slightly acid, with a dissolved iron concentration approaching 100 ppm. On mixing of these solutions, supersaturation, especially of iron sulphide, would lead to the precipitation of colloidal gels. In our view iron sulphide was the likely substance of, or contributor to, the first vesicle membranes which led to life, as the supply of organic molecules would have been limited in the Hadean. Such a membrane would have had catalytic properties, expansivity, and would have maintained the natural chemiosmotic gradient, a consequence of the acid ocean and the alkaline interior to the vesicles.

In 1978 I proposed the biocosmological thesis that the form of life's origin and evolution is a cosmological interactive process defined in the cosmic symmetry-breaking at the origin of the universe. With the passage of time, the pendulum has shifted from the improbability of life as a random molecular accident to an awareness that central biomolecules may be cosmologically abundant products of the clouds forming young stars leading to an RNA-era in which both catalysis and replication emerged from one cosmologically derived molecule RNA. This paper unveils the non-linear quantum foundations of biocosmology as the founding science of life.

Lower and Middle Cambrian carbonate rocks of the Çal Tepe Formation, cropping out in the western Taurus Mountains, yielded a large number of microfossil remains. Small shelly fossils from a single level in the upper Lower Cambrian represent a high diversity biota that could be related to the «Cambrian explosion». Microfossil association from the lower Middle Cambrian sediments of the Çal Tepe Formation is taxonomically very reduced and a dominant taxon is Hadimopanella GEDIK. This sudden change could be attributed to a deepening of the basin during the early Middle Cambrian transgression.

Nuestra gran curiosidad es el motor que nos impulsa a dar respuesta a grandes preguntas, una de las más difíciles de responder por mucho tiempo fue el origen de la vida y del ser humano.
Esto se debe a dos fenómenos transcendentales en la historia de la tierra: la abiogénesis para el origen de la vida y la evolución para origen a las especies. En este texto busco explicar de la forma más sencilla las dos teorías científicas que explican cómo se dieron estos dos fenómenos.

Sulphur isotope data from early Archaean rocks suggest that microbes with metabolisms based on sulphur existed almost 3.5 billion years ago, leading to suggestions that the earliest microbial ecosystems were sulphur-based 1-5 . However, morphological evidence for these sulphur-metabolizing bacteria has been elusive. Here we report the presence of microstructures from the 3.4-billion-year-old Strelley Pool Formation in Western Australia that are associated with micrometre-sized pyrite crystals. The microstructures we identify exhibit indicators of biological affinity, including hollow cell lumens, carbonaceous cell walls enriched in nitrogen, taphonomic degradation, organization into chains and clusters, and δ 13 C values of −33 to −46 Vienna PeeDee Belemnite (VPDB). We therefore identify them as microfossils of spheroidal and ellipsoidal cells and tubular sheaths demonstrating the organization of multiple cells. The associated pyrite crystals have 33 S values between −1.65 and +1.43 and δ 34 S values ranging from −12 to +6 Vienna Canyon Diablo Troilite (VCDT) 5 . We interpret the pyrite crystals as the metabolic by-products of these cells, which would have employed sulphate-reduction and sulphur-disproportionation pathways. These microfossils are about 200 million years older than previously described 6 microfossils from Palaeoarchaean siliciclastic environments.

Observar, contemplar, mirar, son simples acciones que llevamos a cabo incluso sin darnos cuenta, pero que nos permiten saber qué es lo que está sucediendo a nuestro alrededor.

Después de observar algún acontecimiento, solemos cuestionarnos el porqué de éste, y seguimos cuestionando, hasta sumergirnos en un océano de dudas.

Nuestra capacidad de pensar y razonar, nos permite buscar y encontrar una explicación lógica a los fenómenos que se nos presentan. Ahora bien,  gracias al desarrollo y los avances de la ciencia podemos desarrollar  rigurosos estudios y experimentos que nos permitan responder de una manera más acertada aquellos cuestionamientos que surgen de la observación de un fenómeno.

Existen muchas preguntas en torno al origen de los primeros organismos que aún carecen de respuesta y para las cuáles a lo sumo se puede ofrecer una gama de posibles soluciones. A lo largo de esta investigación, se abordan algunas de las teorías que en su momento trataron de explicar el origen de la vida.

Ésta investigación gira y se desarrolla en torno a las siguientes cuestiones:
● ¿Qué es la vida?
● ¿Existe la generación espontánea?
● ¿Cuál es el origen de los seres vivos?
● ¿Cuál es el origen de los compuestos que forman a los seres vivos?
● ¿Se originó la vida por azar en nuestro planeta?
● ¿Qué características tienen los fósiles más antiguos?
● ¿Es posible reproducir en el laboratorio los pasos que precedieron a la aparición de la vida en la Tierra?
● ¿Cómo eran los primeros seres vivos?
● ¿Qué relación tuvo la evolución del planeta con la aparición y desarrollo de las primeras formas de vida?

See, a simple action that we carry out even without realizing, but allow us to know what is happening to our around.

After observing an event, we tend to question why this, and we are still questioning, to plunge into an ocean of doubts.

Our ability to think and reason, allows us to search and find a logical explanation for phenomena that are presented to us. Now, thanks to the development and progress of science we can develop rigorous studies and experiments that will allow us to answer those questions that arise from the observation of a phenomenon in a most successful way.

There are many questions around the origin of the first organisms that still lack of response and for which at most can be offered a range of possible solutions. Throughout this research, dealt with some of the theories that once tried to explain the origin of life.

This research turns and develops around the following issues:
● What is life?
● There is spontaneous generation?
● What is the origin of human beings?
● What is the origin of the compounds that make up human beings?
● did life originate by chance on our planet?
● What are the oldest fossils?
● Is it possible to reproduce in the laboratory steps that preceded the emergence of life on Earth?
● How were the first living beings?
● What relationship did the evolution of the planet with the emergence and development of the first forms of life?

Over the past 10 years, it has become unpopular to talk about definitions of life, under the assumption that attempts at a precise definition are counterproductive. Recent attempts have failed to meet strict philosophical criteria for definitions and have failed to reach consensus. I argue that provisional definitions are necessary for clear communications. Our current knowledge of biology justifies a number of universal claims about the category of life. Whether or not ‘‘life’’ represents a natural category, it maps to a number of important, observable processes. Given the importance of those processes and the extent of our knowledge, plural explicit definitions of life (and related categories) will be necessary for progress in astrobiology and origin-of-life
studies as well as biology in general. I propose concrete categories related to, but not necessarily coextensive with, life for clear communication and hypothesis formation: Woese life, Darwin life, Haldane life. Astrobiology 15, 15–19.

Approaches from the sciences, philosophy and theology, including the emerging field of astrobiology, can provide fresh perspectives to the age-old question ‘What is Life?’. Has the secret of life been unveiled, and is it nothing more than physical chemistry? Modern philosophers will ask if we can even define life at all, as we still don’t know much about its origins here on Earth. Others regard life as something that cannot simply be reduced to just physics and chemistry, while biologists emphasize the historical component intrinsic to life on Earth.
How can theology constructively interpret scientific findings? Can it contribute constructively to scientific discussions? Written for a broad interdisciplinary audience, this probing volume discusses life, intelligence and more against the background of contemporary biology, and the wider contexts of astrobiology and cosmology. It also considers the challenging implications for science and theology if extraterrestrial life is discovered in the future.

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La Terre est née il y a 4,6 milliards d'années (4,6 Ga). Les bactéries fossiles les plus anciennes datent de 3,5 Ga mais des traces chimiques font penser que la vie bactérienne est apparue il y a 3,8 Ga. Mais par quel processus? On a montré en 1953 que des acides aminés pouvaient être produits dans une soupe chimique de la Terre primitive. Depuis, la théorie s'est enrichie de belles découvertes sur les bactéries de l'extrême et les bactéries fossiles, et a été précisée dans ses fondements chimiques. Malgré cela, les chercheurs admettent que ce ne sont que des hypothèses et qu'ils ne savent rien des origines de la vie. Leurs scénarios restent fondés sur un schéma qui s'essouffle en postulant la rencontre aléatoire des molécules et leur sélection naturelle. Seule, la découverte d'acides aminés et de bactéries dans des météorites venues de l'espace annonce un changement de vue. Une nouvelle science s'amorce parallèlement, énonçant que les réactions chimiques et biologiques sont guidées par des champs informationnels électromagnétiques. Cela rejoint les connaissances ancestrales sur la formation des corps célestes et des corps humains par des sons et des codes de géométrie sacrée.

The concept of spontaneous generation is traced from the 17th century up to 2005, summarizing the most recent research from the history of biology.  The concept of spontaneous generation was always debated in a context where its theological implications mattered, notwithstanding denial of this by scientists such as Pasteur.

Many mechanisms, functions and structures of life have been unraveled. However, the fundamental driving force that propelled chemical evolution and led to life has remained obscure. The second law of thermodynamics, written as an equation of motion, reveals that elemental abiotic matter evolves from the equilibrium via chemical reactions that couple to external energy towards complex biotic non-equilibrium systems. Each time a new mechanism of energy transduction emerges, e.g., by random variation in syntheses, evolution prompts by punctuation and settles to a stasis when the accessed free energy has been consumed. The evolutionary course towards an increasingly larger energy transduction system accumulates a diversity of energy transduction mechanisms, i.e. species. The rate of entropy increase is identified as the fitness criterion among the diverse mechanisms, which places the theory of evolution by natural selection on the fundamental thermodynamic principle with no demarcation ...

It can easily be shown that the prior probability of the spontaneous formation of a living system is near zero. The same is true even for the prior probability of the spontaneous formation of a single macromolecule carrying biological information or function.

In view of such low probabilities of nucleation, three explanations of the origin of life have been put forward, each laying a different emphasis upon the respective roles of chance and law in evolution:

(1) the hypothesis of singular chance.
(2) the hypothesis of the vitalistic forces, and
(3) the molecular Darwinian approach.

An analysis based on algorithmic information theory shows that for fundamental reasons the chance hypothesis eannot be proven and that for fundamental reasons the vitalistic hypothesis cannot be disproven. Only the Darwinian approach yields of epistemological standards. The problem-solving capacity of the Darwinian approach is demonstrated with a game-theoretical model.

Upheaval Dome crater is a good example of how the earth looks like on a much larger scale.->This explains his remarkable name. Upheaval Dome is an impact structure, the deeply eroded bottom-most remnants of an impact crater, in Canyonlands National Parksouthwest of the city of Moab, Utah, in the United States. The crater is located in the Island in the Sky section of the park, and is approximately 42 miles (67 km) by vehicle from Moab.

The project investigated the geological setting and biogenicity of microscopic structures in the early Archean 'Apex chert', widely regarded as representing Earth's oldest microfossils. The Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) assisted parts of the field program by supplying a vehicle and field assistant, and by providing geological advice. However, the observations and interpretations in this Record are those of the authors, and are not necessarily the same as interpretations by staff of GSWA. Limited editing to conform to GSWA house style has been undertaken by GSWA.

Book review of a 2016 compilation of essays regarding the historical Adam. Essays range from a variety of disciplines: biology, anthropology, biblical studies, theology, and paleontology (to name a few). The review may also be read at the JBTS website: http://jbtsonline.org/review-of-searching-for-adam-genesis-the-truth-about-mans-origin-edited-by-terry-mortenson/

This is a paraphrased transcription of the conversation between Lennox and Dawkins that can be seen in YouTube with the title “Richard Dawkins vs John Lennox: Has Science Buried God?” (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVEuQg_Mglw&t=3578s), to which I have added my own commentaries included between brackets):

In this article, I attempt to accomplish two objectives. The first is a diagnosis of our contemporary understanding of nature, which I propose to characterize (borrowing a term from Merleau-Ponty) as an ontological diplopia between the view of nature as rigidity and the view of nature as plasticity. Second, I suggest a way to address this situation that combines basic clues from what I call Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the organism, as it can be gleaned from his book The Structure of Behaviour, and Terrence W. Deacon’s autogenetic model of the emergence of life from matter, such as it is set forth in his recent book Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter. I end with some thoughts on how this assemblage of a dialectical conception of the organism and an autogenetic theory of life’s emergence from non-life might enable a reconsideration of the stakes involved in the subversion of rigidity at the hand of plasticity that is underway in our times.

The origin of life can occur in fluctuating conditions of hydrothermal fields associated with volcanism. Wet-dry cycles add  chemical potential that drives polymerization and encapsulation of polymers to produce protocells, the first step toward the beginning of cellular life.

In this spoken discourse, P.R. Sarkar (1922-1990) first proposed the revolutionary scientific concept of microvita. These mysterious living creatures, “smaller or subtler than atoms, or electrons or protons” are, in his view, the carriers of life and creators of minds throughout the universe. There are three broad categories of microvita. The crudest microvita can be seen in powerful microscopes and can cause diseases said to be of virus origin. Subtler microvita are known indirectly through their actions and through conceptions reflected into perceptions. Microvita are creations in the “returning phase” of the cosmic cycle of creation—the phase where individual minds evolve. Microvita travel through physical media or through ideas. According to P.R. Sarkar, research on microvita through physico-psycho-spiritual efforts must be started “immediately without any further delay.” Human beings need to develop control over these microvita if many problems of modern society are to be solved “in a nice way”.  P.R. Sarkar, also known as Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, was the founder and president of the global movement Renaissance Universal (RU) and the Renaissance Artists and Writers Association (RAWA) of spiritually-oriented and socially-minded intellectuals, artists and writers, and the founder of the global spiritual movement Ananda Marga (“Path of Bliss”). He was a spiritual guru and social philosopher.

Urmăresc în materialul de față, câteva chestiuni-limită din câmpul cercetării științifice, care în ultimele decenii au generat dezbateri aprinse, menționând poziții care sugerează că ele ar ascunde discontinuități de fond, ce fragmentează tabloul științific al lumii, descrierea micro- și macro-cosmosului, abordarea lumi vii și a omul. În legătură cu acestea, propun câteva înțelesuri provenite din reflecția teologiei ortodoxe, care aduc în discuție legătura dintre cunoașterea științifică și viața omului.

There are five theories available on the historical origin of the Nagas as appropriated from different sources located in the contemporary Naga society. There theories are (1) mythical origin, (2) originated from Mongolia, (3) originated from China, (4), Originally from Southeast Asia, (5) Present territory origin. The approaches of the study are oral-historical analysis and library works. It takes into consideration the numerous views offered by oral experts, scholars, intellectuals in Naga context. Moreover, the five theories presented are interconnected in several ways therefore to bestow a single theory as a conclusive one is inconceivable at the present stage as the debate on the subject-matter is an ongoing process.

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The grinding and wearisome Spirit of War, a perversion of the oft-lamented but inescapable Struggle for Existence, is suddenly unmasked as the pathological reflection of the Soul of the World and its Infinite Life. Concrete and wide-ranging evidence in modern physics and neuroscience shows how it embroils the Life of Man, leading to ever-greater moral malignancy and a Final Crisis.

Compare on this page independent discussions of the immanent Final Crisis and evidence for it:

https://www.academia.edu/44692464/The_Antichrist

https://www.academia.edu/44275896/Thematic_Apperceptions_Surrounding_Max_Picards_Human_Face_1930_With_Ancillary_Illustrations

https://www.academia.edu/41144933/The_Last_Day_Illustrated_Essay_

The discussion within 'The Spirit of War' ranges widely and steps into the Paleolithic, the Holocene, the Neolithic, the Bronze Age, 5th-century Classical Greece, and 17th- and 19th-century Germany, finally emerging into the global forum of modern brain science.

Classical German Idealism is shown in intimate relation to the highest (pythagoric) reaches of Greek philosophy in order to dissect the problem of Trifurcated Man through novel approaches within the philosophies of mind and nature, theology, paleontology, ontology of animal development, the fascinating neurology of Left and Right, and the once alluring goal of an integral psychology.

Lastly, the grimacing Visage of Man--a three-fold cliche of modern life--is exposed as an aesthetic failure contemporaneous with the very birth of Mankind and the onset of continuous psychophysical war within Man himself. (Note: Fair Use and Quotation freely granted to world scholarship.)

A new, consciousness-first scientific paradigm, incorporating Supreme Consciousness, Cosmic Mind and subtle sub-atomic cosmic intelligence agents called microvita, can replace the present materialist paradigm. The new paradigm can provide new insights into the origin and nature of living beings and the observed upward evolutionary trend of life in the universe. In the new paradigm, a Cosmic Cycle of Creation starts from unexpressed infinite Supreme Consciousness and creates a Cosmic Mind and within it the universe containing matter, individual living beings, and human beings with developed minds. Each human mind ultimately completes its Cosmic Cycle by finally merging with unexpressed infinite Supreme Consciousness to spiritually fulfill the goal of human life, according to spiritual guru Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. According to P. R. Sarkar, life is the “ceaseless fight to restore an unstable equilibrium.” Prominent in different phases of the Cosmic Cycle are the actions of microvita—subtle sub-atomic living beings emanated from the Cosmic Mind, that act as evolutionary cosmic intelligence agents. They move the Cosmic Cycle forward at every step, starting within the formation of fundamental physical particles from microvita. Microvita produce the anti-entropic or upward evolutionary trend of the universe that is currently unexplained. This upward evolutionary trend continues inexorably despite the current laws of physics, especially the second law of thermodynamics, which predicts that the universe as a whole is continually moving from a lower to higher state of entropy or disorder. Microvita participate in upward evolutionary processes from the formation of subatomic particles and atoms, to producing complex biochemical molecules life and minds, to forming new species including human beings, causing and curing diseases, to helping human civilization to advance, and to composing Divine Grace that helps human beings complete their spiritual journey. Scientific research on microvita is urgently needed at all levels, to the discover the natural laws that describe all these actions of microvita, so that many urgent problems facing humanity today can be solved in ways that are beneficial to all.

These three propositions revolutionized humankind's concep-tion of the universe. Obviously, they were truly vast in their implica-tions. Yet they were not fully agreed to by all astronomers until the early decades of the twentieth century. There is some debate whether ...

A deep research in the philosophical (between phenomenology and new metaphysics) anthropology of Zubiri looking for how the human person connects and grows with others from metaphysical root until social development, studying love as personalist connection. Origin, embryo ontological status and death are also studied.

The Modern Synthesis explains the evolution of life at a mesolevel by identifying phenotype–environmental interactions as the locus of evolution and by identifying natural selection as the means by which evolution occurs. Both micro- and macroevolutionary schools of thought are post-synthetic attempts to evolutionize phenomena above and below organisms that have traditionally been conceived as non-living. Microevolutionary thought associates with the study of how genetic selection explains higher-order phenomena such as speciation and extinction, while macroevolutionary research fields understand species and higher taxa as biological individuals and they attribute evolutionary causation to biotic and abiotic factors that transcend genetic selection. The microreductionist and macroholistic research schools are characterized as two distinct epistemic cultures where the former favor mechanical explanations, while the latter favor historical explanations of the evolutionary process by identifying recurring patterns and trends in the evolution of life. I demonstrate that both cultures endorse radically different notions on time and explain how both perspectives can be unified by endorsing epistemic pluralism.

Recently reported signs of liquid water on early Mars and volcanic activity suggest that Mars’s subsurface could harbour traces of microbial life, making the tracing of life on Earth’s subsurface even more compelling. Caves on Earth host an especially interesting variety of mineral-utilizing microorganisms and biological processes, which may be recognized as biosignatures. Subsurface filamentous fabrics, fossil bacteria preserved in minerals, mineralized nano-sized structures and biologically generated textures have been some of the proposed models for extraterrestrial biosignatures. Intriguing filamentous structures consisting of long reticulated filaments rich in C, Ca, Mn, Fe or Si have been found concealed within speleothems in limestone caves and lava tubes all over the world. They were characterized as mineralized hollow filaments with hexagonal and diamond-shaped  chambers resembling honeycombed structures. In this study, microscopy techniques, such as FESEM-EDS, TEM-EDS, CLSM, and ancillary chemical and mineralogical techniques were conducted to recognize biominerals, microbial fabrics or fossil bacteria as possible biosignatures valuable for astrobiology. We focused on enigmatic reticulated filaments found in Ardales cave (Spain), a granite spring water tunnel in Porto (Portugal) and four lava tubes from Canary Islands (Spain), Easter Island (Chile) and Galápagos Islands (Ecuador). Although TEM analyses revealed that in some cases, the mineralized reticulated filaments contain bacterial cells, extensive culturing and molecular biology analyses were elusive to identification. A great research effort is needed in order to ascertain either the affiliation of these sheath-forming microorganisms and their metabolic capabilities, most likely related to the oxidation of mineral compounds, for tracing biological processes on early Earth.( p. 15)

The term biology is of Greek origin meaning the study of life. On the other hand, chemistry is the science of matter, which deals with matter and its properties, structure, composition, behavior, reactions, interactions and the changes it undergoes. The theory of abiogenesis maintains that chemistry made a transition to biology in a primordial soup. To keep the naturalistic ‘inanimate molecules to human life’ evolution ideology intact, scientists must assemble billions of links to bridge the gap between the inanimate chemicals that existed in the primordial soup and anatomically modern humans. Even though the proponents of a natural origin of life expressed much optimism for providing their theories, presently there is a detailed compilation of information seriously questioning this doctrine. This reductionistic ideology has always failed to answer two simple questions: (1) What is the minimum number of parts that are essential for a living organism to survive? (2) By what mechanism do these parts get assembled together? Evolutionists say a series of prebiotic processes and developments guide networks of dynamically linked small molecules and amphiphiles to form biological macromolecules, membraneous compartments, and finally primitive cells. However, none of these proposed pathways to life appears to be credible. The continuous advancement in various fields of science are not only providing major challenges to reductionistic ideology but are supplying increasing evidence for a systemic concept of life as an organic whole. Several leading researchers in the field of ‘origin of life’ are continually concluding that there are major scientific problems attached with all existing naturalistic ‘origin of life’ hypothesis. Only by taking into account all biological activities collectively as a system can a satisfactory elucidation of the living state be realized. In this present paper an attempt has been made to present a few significant challenges to the theory of abiogenesis based on the peer reviewed scientific literature. Subsequently, a non-reductionistic concept of life as a system is proposed as an alternative for resolving some of the problems inherent in origin of life research.