Water As The Co-Partner Of Life

[Moontanman]

HB, all you are doing is stating the obvious and asserting things have to be that way, that is dishonest, we don't know if life has to be identical to earth life, the only thing we can assert with some surety is that life has adapted to take advantage of the properties of water, I would be amazed if life didn't do that, as i keep telling you is life adapted to other conditions I would expect it to utilize every possible advantage those conditions allowed for. 

 

You keep repeating the puddle analogy over and over as though it is a valid premise...

 

And you have yet to explain how random has anything to do with the chemistry of life..  

 

Really! Water feels? Water has wants? 

 

The water, on the other hand, feels somewhat trapped in the non polar or "oil" core and feels the need to separate. It was lured by the hydrogen bonding but is now trapped. This needs of this water to avoid and separate helps to keep the insides loose, because water and oil don't want to remain mixed, due to the water.

 

[HydrogenBond]

HB, all you are doing is stating the obvious and asserting things have to be that way, that is dishonest, we don't know if life has to be identical to earth life, the only thing we can assert with some surety is that life has adapted to take advantage of the properties of water, I would be amazed if life didn't do that, as i keep telling you is life adapted to other conditions I would expect it to utilize every possible advantage those conditions allowed for. 

 

You keep repeating the puddle analogy over and over as though it is a valid premise...

 

And you have yet to explain how random has anything to do with the chemistry of life..  

 

Really! Water feels? Water has wants? 

 

 

Life does not just appear, fully assembled, and ready to adapt to new conditions, like you suggest. Life had to evolve from scratch, from basic chemicals. The solvent or the continuous phase plays a role in that early process, before life appears.

 

Evolution, by definition, starts at replicators, which could be your pitfall. Abiogenesis is defined as a separate thing and represents all the steps that lead to replicators; evolution. Defining abiogenesis as separate from evolution, tends to distort reality. I see these as one thing with the solvent there from day one to the present. That is a one pillar of life that stays the same; alpha to omega. 

 

If we started with life, already set up, and we might be able to switch the solvent, and life might adapt. But if life need to start from scratch, there is not yet  any life. The solvent sets the stage for what is possible; building blocks from which life will emerge. In the Miller experiments, water , which is the solvent is also one of the reactants used to form animo acids. How do we integrated methane or ammonia into reactions from scratch, and what do we get if we leave out water? I think further back in time than you, and don't use a convenient middle level starting point to define evolution. That tricks the mind. 

 

It is like a family of 100 generations reaches point where one of the sons becomes a billionaire. I suppose we can start the story there but that would be misleading to the 100 generations that came before. The were not always the top family in the hood, but one might get that impression. 

 

The solvent, from day one, sets the conditions as to what can dissolve and what will precipitate out. This is define by chemistry and not me. Ions and minerals are useful to life on earth, so do all solvents allow these? If not, how do you replace these? Is pH really that necessary to life if so w=how does your solvent do this? The solvent also impacts reaction kinetics, while defining the shape of larger dissolved materials, all before life emerges. 

 

Protein, RNA and DNA were all around way before life emerged on earth. It was not life that defined these but these were tuned to the solvent or they would not persist. These resulted from the conditions created by and within water. This is why these all make use of hydrogen bonding. Once the first protein appears, by any method you choose, water is causing it to fold into a unique fold. This action is not being defined by life, but by the interaction of water and the protein. However, this unique fold, induced by water, may well be a prerequisite to life, since random or average folds don't allow enzyme trains to coordinate very well. Each step will be bottlenecked until the dice fall properly. 

 

I used the term, water feeling, to help other visualize at the nanoscale. The feeling is not emotions but more like a tactic sensation due to force/pressure. I will get into entropy, pressure and enthalpy later to clarify this. 

 

When I speak of evolution I am starting at day one of abiogenesis and not the arbitrary point a billion years late  to make the model appear to work in a way that can ignore how all the main parts were tuned to water, even  before life emerged. 

Edited April 29, 2015 by HydrogenBond

[HydrogenBond]

The theory of evolution is concerned with changes in life, after life is already viable. Darwin's thesis was called the Origin of Species, implying viable multicellular living things, and not the precursor chemicals of life. His thesis has been extrapolated further backwards into time to include single cells and even replicators, which have the capacity to alter the path of pre-life.

 

The theory of evolution tricks the mind, because it does not start from day, zero, which is before life, before replicators, and even before any biomaterials were present. Day one is when all we have is a hot and stormy earth with water, gases, minerals and nothing but the potential for life. 

 

A parallel to this is we define human life, when the baby is born, not when the baby is conceived. This uses the same arbitrary zero point learned from evolution. Conception and early fetal development is all part of the same story of any human life, but these are treated as two separate things. This is not due to science, but more for a legal technicality to support political arguments. This is not how science treats this, since changes in the womb can impact the final human well into adulthood. This is an arbitrary line drawn for political purposes not science purposes. 

 

This entry is not about abortion, other than evolution appears to have the legal right; by definition, to abort the past, before the time it wishes evolution start, so it does not have to deal with difficult science questions like the importance of water.

 

The difference between me and the consensus is I am not afraid to do real science instead of use a time based political convenience. This arbitrary and subjective zero point is why the subjectivity of random is needed.  I challenge the status quo to up its game by defining t=0 at the beginning. 

 

The analogy would be, say human life was defined at conception, now more willpower is needed because one cannot just allow random irrational impulse, since it will get you in trouble with the laws of science. Things will need to be more planned. 

[Moontanman]

Life does not just appear, fully assembled, and ready to adapt to new conditions, like you suggest. Life had to evolve from scratch, from basic chemicals. The solvent or the continuous phase plays a role in that early process, before life appears.

No one with real scientific knowledge much less evidence has ever suggested such a thing

 

Evolution, by definition, starts at replicators, which could be your pitfall. Abiogenesis is defined as a separate thing and represents all the steps that lead to replicators; evolution. Defining abiogenesis as separate from evolution, tends to distort reality. I see these as one thing with the solvent there from day one to the present. That is a one pillar of life that stays the same; alpha to omega.

You need to show some support for this, it is not part of mainstream science. Again I must remind you we have one example of life and one example of a solvent, if you have never seen anything but white swans would that justify saying all swans are white?

 

If we started with life, already set up, and we might be able to switch the solvent, and life might adapt. But if life need to start from scratch, there is not yet any life. The solvent sets the stage for what is possible; building blocks from which life will emerge. In the Miller experiments, water , which is the solvent is also one of the reactants used to form animo acids. How do we integrated methane or ammonia into reactions from scratch, and what do we get if we leave out water? I think further back in time than you, and don't use a convenient middle level starting point to define evolution. That tricks the mind.

A different solvent would have different results, why can you not wrap your mind around that?

 

It is like a family of 100 generations reaches point where one of the sons becomes a billionaire. I suppose we can start the story there but that would be misleading to the 100 generations that came before. The were not always the top family in the hood, but one might get that impression.

Meaningless drivel...

 

The solvent, from day one, sets the conditions as to what can dissolve and what will precipitate out. This is define by chemistry and not me. Ions and minerals are useful to life on earth, so do all solvents allow these? If not, how do you replace these? Is pH really that necessary to life if so w=how does your solvent do this? The solvent also impacts reaction kinetics, while defining the shape of larger dissolved materials, all before life emerges.

Again a different solvent would result in life that is different from life as we know it, why is that so difficult for you?

 

Protein, RNA and DNA were all around way before life emerged on earth. It was not life that defined these but these were tuned to the solvent or they would not persist. These resulted from the conditions created by and within water. This is why these all make use of hydrogen bonding. Once the first protein appears, by any method you choose, water is causing it to fold into a unique fold. This action is not being defined by life, but by the interaction of water and the protein. However, this unique fold, induced by water, may well be a prerequisite to life, since random or average folds don't allow enzyme trains to coordinate very well. Each step will be bottlenecked until the dice fall properly.

Can you give a citation that says RNA and DNA were already present before life got started?

 

I used the term, water feeling, to help other visualize at the nanoscale. The feeling is not emotions but more like a tactic sensation due to force/pressure. I will get into entropy, pressure and enthalpy later to clarify this.

Please do so

 

When I speak of evolution I am starting at day one of abiogenesis and not the arbitrary point a billion years late to make the model appear to work in a way that can ignore how all the main parts were tuned to water, even before life emerged.

Then you are incorrect...

Edited April 30, 2015 by CraigD
Fixed quote tags