Origins of life on earth

posted by Admin on Mon, 01/12/2014 - 17:15
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Life

(3.800 Million years ago: the year 024 on the 100 year time-scale)

The emergence of life on earth is directly related and seemingly stimulated by the process itself by which the planet was formed. Even the oldest known rocks on the planet, of some 3.800 million years old, already show traces of organic impact, proving at least the existence of some form of the building blocks of life.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q71DWYJD-dI

 

(3.600 Million years ago - year 28 on the 100 year time-scale)

Both cosmic as organic evolution are actually "no more" than many tiny steps (and sometimes even larger jumps, it seems) towards an ever growing complexity. 
After millions of years of chemical and physical experimenting at a certain moment the a combination of elements emerged, that had the ability to reproduce itself. The first step to life.

 

How first life could have emerged

(at 0:33) The puzzle is this: for the first billion years or so life on earth consisted entirely of simple single cells like bacteria and archea. And the suddenly, around two billion years ago complex cells appeared [...] and it seems they appeared out of the blue.

How life began

It appears that life came from relatively simple chemical reactions. Processes that add greater organic complexity are proven in the laboratory. Somehow these more complex compounds were copied using a template such as clay or silicon. Each gradual succesful step became the staring point for the next step. Until the complexity increased to a particular point where we would classify it as life...

 

More selected vids

Increasing complexity can lead to "emergence", something like more than the sum of the parts, which actually happens a lot in the universe and could have led to life.

 

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