I've often wondered, whatever caused life to spring into existence, why has it only occurred once [i]or[/i] has it occurred more than once?
If it has, what happened to this second strain of life? Did it integrate into or was it absorbed by the original strain? Or, being a more primitive form of life, was it destroyed by the more developed original strain?
Also, if it has occurred more than once, how often are new strains created? The answer may give us a better idea of the likelihood of finding life beyond Earth.
I'm not expecting actual answers, just throwing it out there for the sake of discussion.
English
-
google the Miller-Urey experiment, it might help. in the conditions that earth would have been in its younger years life would actually be quite likely to occur, and it's complexity is even better with other materials that could quite likely have been prevalent. it's also possible that life could still naturally be created today, though these chances are VERY low if I recall rightly and even if they did, they would have to compete for food sources and preditors, so they don't have much of a chance of evolving into anything significant.
-
Interesting, thanks for the information on the Miller-Urey experiment.
-
It has most likely occurred somewhere in the universe. And when I say most likely I mean like.. 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% Chance
-
Edited by LahDsai: 5/10/2015 6:29:45 AMAt this point it's pure speculation. Whether it's 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% or .00000000000000000000000000000001% the fact remains, [b]we[/b] exist to pose the question. Astronomers estimate there are about [url=http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/ignoring-500-billion-galaxies-mathematics-vs-common-sense-in-the-debate-about-the-probability-of-ext.html]50 quintillion[/url] habitable planets in the universe. As matter cannot be created or destroyed, that's a pretty finite number. If we could prove that life has been created more than once on Earth, that would greatly increase the chances of findings life elsewhere. If it has only occurred once, however, that [i]may[/i] suggest life is more of a fluke than an inevitability, given that life spawned roughly 500 million years after the earth's creation but not again in the next 4 billion years.[spoiler]I agree that there is probably life or there, I just like playing Devil's advocate. It helps me to try to see things from both sides.[/spoiler]
-
Quite possible that the well established forms of life simply out competed anything that had something other than DNA.
-
That's be my guess as well, survival of the fittest.
-
Edited by Kilo Bacon: 5/8/2015 6:52:18 PMCould be that these new strains of life were viruses and because they didn't meet the scientific requirements for being considered alive, they simply weren't.
-
Meaning they just broke down shortly after their creation, as they were incompatible with current life?