On Mon, 12 Aug 1996 17:26:54 -0500, John E. Rylander wrote:
JR>..replication of an AP/CNN article about the Bible and Mars.
>This is freely available at:
>http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9608/12/life.on.earth.wir/index.html
>[...]
JR>Martian microbes no shock to seekers of life's origins
[...]
JR>LA JOLLA, California (AP) -- Life on Mars? So what?
>Stanley Miller has spent four decades researching life's origins on
>Earth, and he's not at all surprised that scientists have found what
>look like tiny 3.8 billion-year-old microbes on Mars. After all,
>both planets were barren places with toxic atmospheres back then, and
>under regular bombardment by giant chunks of rock from outer space.
> It's not that he wasn't interested last week when scientists
>announced that a potato-sized meteorite which blasted off Mars 15
>million years ago contains several physical and chemical traces
>suggestive of life. "If it's true, it looks like the origin of
>life is easier than was previously thought," said Miller, a chemistry
>professor at the University of California, San Diego. But the
>discovery doesn't answer a question that some of the world's most
>audacious scientists have pursued for generations: How did life get
>going?
It is amazing how Miller just jumps to the conclusion that it is
evidence of another origin of life and not just a transfer of
existing life.
JR>Evidence shows life arose fairly quickly The earliest direct
>evidence for life on Earth is about 3.5 billion years old. And it's
>a lot stronger than the evidence presented last week, Miller noted.
>Rocks from Australia that are among the world's oldest unaltered
>geologic formations contain microscopic blobs that look almost
>exactly like blue-green algae, a form of bacteria common today.
>That's younger than the meteorite that's thought to contain evidence
>of ancient Martian life. But Gustaf Arrhenius, a chemist at the
>Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, said he
>can push the earliest date for life on Earth back even further.
>At a meeting in France last month, Arrhenius and several colleagues
>presented evidence of biological activity in 3.85 billion-year-old
>rocks from Greenland. That evidence could be the oldest sign of life
>on Earth, Arrhenius said. Finding signs of life nearly 4 billion
>years ago, whether on Earth or Mars, tells researchers that no matter
>how it happened, life arose fairly quickly and was pretty tough right
>from the beginning. Theoretical work already supports the idea
>that complex life forms developed quickly, because the longer life
>remained in intermediate stages, the greater its chances of being
>derailed by something like an asteroid impact or some other
>environmental disruption.
Which contradicts the "hundreds of millions of years" of the previous
CNN web page. But then this is modern cultural mythology, not
science.
JR>Life in a nutshell Basically, all life requires to develop is
>liquid water and the proper chemical constituents. Those conditions
>would have existed on the Martian surface before about 3.5 billion
>years ago. And they may still prevail in some parts of the Martian
>interior today. In order to make life, Arrhenius explained, you
>need to do three things:
>
> . First, combine simple molecules into the more complicated ones
> that perform biochemical functions.
> . Then, link those molecules into long chains. Think DNA.
> . Finally, develop a way for those long chains to reproduce
> themselves and evolve in the process. That's life.
So simple. That's why it has taken 43 years to date! :-)
JR>These days, chemists are trying to figure out ways to perform those
>steps in the laboratory. Although they've succeeded on all three
>fronts, Arrhenius said, they're still a long way from generating life
>in a test tube. But one day it will happen, Miller said. He
>thinks scientists just have to figure out what biochemical sleight of
>hand generated life naturally nearly 4 billion years ago. "After
>you learn the trick it'll be easy," Miller said. "The hard part is
>learning the trick." Though finding signs of microbes on Mars
>doesn't get researchers any closer to the trick, finding possible
>life on another planet does suggest the process is robust. "It's
>an enormous step from one to two," Arrhenius said. And making
>that step brings up an age-old question. For centuries, people have
>wondered whether life is just a lucky accident that happened once, or
>something that develops almost inevitably given the proper
>conditions.
It was "a series of tricks" on the previous CNN web page. Now it's
down to one "trick".
JR>Did life get started on Mars? In recent years, scientists have
>grown more inclined toward the view that life has developed in lots
>of places around the universe. The discovery of Jupiter-like
>planets around a growing number of nearby stars suggests there are
>plenty of places where life could gain a foothold in the universe.
>Most astronomers think it's only a matter of time before planets like
>Earth and Mars are discovered orbiting neighboring stars. Recent
>research also suggests life ought to be able to travel between
>hospitable neighborhoods. In fact, a paper published last spring in
>the journal Science showed that rocks blasted off Mars could
>eventually reach Earth, and vice versa. If fossilized life
>traveled from Mars to Earth, some researchers have suggested, then
>perhaps living organisms could as well. Maybe life got started on
>Mars and then traveled to Earth, where it prospered. Meanwhile,
>deteriorating conditions on Mars would have gradually driven its
>primitive life forms to extinction.
I have no problem with this. There is no Biblical reason why God
couldn't have created first life on Mars (or elsewhere) and then
transported it to Earth via meteorite.
JR>Could we all be descended from Martians? It's an intriguing
>possibility, but probably not true, Miller said. Conditions were
>better on early Earth for the development of life than on Mars, he
>said. So if life did develop on Mars, it probably would have
>developed on Earth, too. It's even less likely life on Earth
>could have seeded Mars, Miller said, because to do that a rock would
>have had to travel outward in the solar system against the
>gravitational pull of the sun. Copyright 1996 Associated Press.
This seems a bit naive. Even I with my layman's knowledge of
astronomy can conceive of an asteroid blasting a rock into space from
Earth, it being captured by the sun's gravity, and then whipping
around the sun and out to Mars (Indeed, I believe that's how the
space probes to the outer planets did it). The planets are all in a
rough plane so the chance of hitting another outward planet would be
quite good:
"Meteorites large enough to make a crater greater than 60 miles
across will cause Earth rocks to escape Earth's gravity. Out of
1,000 such rocks ejected, 291 strike Venus, 20 go to Mercury, 17 hit
Mars, 14 make it to Jupiter, and 1 goes all the way to Saturn.
Traveling the distance with these rocks will be many varieties of
Earth life. Thus there are many reasons to believe that millions of
Earth's minute creatures have been deposited on the surface of Mars
and other solar system planets. Admittedly, conditions on Mars are
unfavorable for the germination of such life except for only the
briefest of moments. A liquid drop of water on the Martian surface,
for example, evaporates in less than a second. Thus, living "adult"
organisms should be quite rare on Mars. But, we should not be
surprised to find considerable quantities of spores and the remains
of biological material." (Ross H., "The Creator and the Cosmos",
NavPress: Colorado Springs CO, 1993, p145)
But even without that, the solar wind would waft biological particles
from Earth to Mars and beyond:
"For more than a decade scientists have known that large quantities
of Earth-life, some even with the potential to germinate, are
transported to Mars by the solar wind and meteorites. These
transports have been moving life or life's remains from Earth to Mars
for at least the past four billion years (a time frame that
encompasses the 3.6- to 4.0-billion-year age estimate for the Martian
meteorite). As I've stated before, we can reasonably expect
scientists to find life or life remains either on Mars or on material
from Mars. Such a discovery would not prove that life spontaneously
generates under natural conditions. Rather, it would testify to how
well God designed life to survive environmental rigors. And, since
conditions on Mars some 3 to 4 billion years ago were more favorable
for life and for the formation and preservation of fossils, we should
expect that the best chance to find life remains will lie in Mars'
most ancient rocks." (Ross H., "Martian Meteorite Shows Signs of
Life On Mars?", Web Page http://www.reasons.org/reasons/meteor.html,
August 1996)
God bless.
Steve
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