>
> Since abiogenesis has nothing to do with "the origin of life" as you describe it (whatever that phrase means), your point is relevant. However, if I may play Devil's advocate for a moment and argue from your point of view, since life itself is complex, we should not be looking for a single, simple origin. A number of abiogenetic mechanisms might have been working simultaneously -- atmospheric gas reactions, hydrothermal vent reactions, cometary/meteoric impacts, thermal copolymerization, solid-state catalysis, etc. -- in a number of different ways to create first biomolecules, then metabolic systems, then replicating systems and finally life. To claim that only one mechanism could do it all is like claiming that only natural selection or only genetic drift or only saltationist events are needed to explain the whole of evolution.
I suspect you are right.
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> By the way, thanks for the references.
>
Here's another I've just come across, a new book:
Thermophiles: The Keys to Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life?
Taylor & Francis publioshers. Ed. Juergen Wiegel and Michael W. Adams.
Publishes information first presented at a workshop on the University of Georgia
campus in 1996.
See: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/11/981117080705.htm
Regards,
/Gary