Stephen wrote, quoting Gearge Wald:
>
>"The important point is that since the origin of life belongs in the
>category of at-least-once phenomena, time is on its side . However
>improbable we regard this event, or any of the steps which it
>involves, given enough time it will almost certainly happen at least
>once. And for life as we know it, with its capacity for growth and
>reproduction, once may be enough. Time is in fact the hero of the
>plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two
>billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human
>experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the "impossible"
>bemes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually
>certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles."
>(Wald G., "The origin of life'. Scientific American, vol. 191 (2),
>August 1954, p.48).
>
Two billion years, HA ;-). My how things have changed in the last 40
years. If I remember correctly, Dawkins throws out the number
one billion years in _TBW_, going on to explain to us poor ignorant
souls who can't grasp what a big number this is what a big number this
is ;-). In a recent paper, Stanley Miller placed the allowable time
for the origin of life at 10 million years max and perhaps much less.
Hey, Dawkins is only off by 2 orders of magnitude ;-).
Brian Harper:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=
"I believe there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,
044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the
Universe and the same number of electrons." Arthur Stanley Eddington
:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=