I'm interested in reading about your hypothesis/theory (keep it nice and short)
Hi Bio Man, sorry for the late reply. I forgot all about this forum and I never received any email telling me there were replies. In any case, thanks for the search link you've provided.
My hypothesis is extremely difficult to condense into a short synopsis. Although I can try. But I'm not sure if it will make any sense without laying out the groundwork first.
A Tiny Bit of Groundwork:There are many different approaches to theories of abiogenesis. As Oldy points out the Millery-Urey experiment was one of the first attempts to show how the molecular building blocks were naturally synthesized via common chemical reactions and processes. I'm already confident that those type of approaches can be dealt with fairly easily and are indeed a large part of the process of explaining abiogenesis.
I'm personally not too worried about those types of explanations because having a good understanding of chemistry I don't really see there being any major roadblocks in those kinds of explanations. I think chemistry is versatile enough that the natural evolution of molecular building blocks is not going to be a problem.
Where abiogenesis gets interesting for me is how these molecular building blocks ultimately become basically a functional "computing machine". So I'm willing to accept the existence of the molecular building blocks as a "given" (since I'm confident that their natural evolution can be easily explained),
Therefore my focus is on attempting to explain how these natural building blocks then came together to basically become "computing machines". And so that is where my hypothesis begins.
In short, my hypothesis begins by accepting the
premise that all the necessary molecular building blocks already exist via natural chemical processes. I would only worry about explaining how the building blocks came to be after I've got a working model of biological "computing machine".
The Biological Computing Machine:This is where my hypothesis begins. I accept that the basic molecular building blocks are in place and then work out what configurations those existing building blocks would need to be in to produce a "computing mechanism".
- Precisely what I mean by this term would require more explanation that you had asked for. I'm trying to keep things simple here.
In any case, what I have come to realize is that there may be very few possible configurations that will serve a a viable "bootstrap" to get the computing mechanism started. This is why I would like to find other researchers who might be looking at this same sort of hypothesis (if any such researchers even exist). My idea may possible be unique. I'm not seeking to make a name for myself, but I really do have a lot of faith in this hypothesis.
There are quite a few very interesting things that follow from this hypothesis if it is indeed correct.
First, it could explain why all life on earth has the same basic genetic structure without the need to hypothesis that all life came from a single cell or single ancestor. In other words, if my hypothesis is correct about there only being a very few possible "bootstrap configurations", that could explain why all life that evolves on Earth would appear to have the same basic genetic code. Not necessarily because they were all originally related, but because the only way that life can start is via a very specific "bootstrap configuration" and that results in the evolution of basically the "Same Programming" at least in the early stages as the program evolves.
Secondly, and even more exciting, is that
if my hypothesis is correct, this may mean that life elsewhere in the universe may be extremely similar to life on earth for the very same as stated above. In other words, even on alien planets it may be the case that only this same "bootstrap configuration" will work. If that's the case, then life that evolves on other planets may potentially be very similar to life on Earth. Although we need to be careful about expecting to see "humans" on other planets, because even as life on Earth has shown us, there are almost infinite possibilities for complexity even beginning with a single ancestor (or bootstrap configuration).
In Summary:
What makes me so excited about this hypothesis is the previous two predictions that comes out of it. Of course we can't know about life on other planets. But the explanation for why all life on earth appears to have a common ancestor without the actual need for that to be the case is quite exciting for me.
In any case, despite my chosen screen name for this forum, I'm not really an abiogenesist. I do have a lot of knowledge of chemistry, biology, and computer architecture though, so I can see how this could all fit together. What I would like to do is find other researchers who are actually working along these same lines (if any exist at all). If they don't exist, then maybe I need to write a paper to see if I can encourage anyone to look into this hypothesis.
It's certainly not something I personally have the time or resources to explore. I'm 67 years old, and basically retired on a very limited budget. Plus I'm working on my hobby of building robots. I'm not working on solving the problem of abiogenesis. Still, I would like to get my idea out there for whatever it's worth. Someone ought to be looking into the feasibility of this hypothesis. I think it's well worth exploring.
Quick Reply
