I remember reading Lane's book Oxygen. T'was good.
Another science writer I really like is Peter Brennan. His book "The Ends of the World" (which covers the other end of the spectrum from the topic here) is great and his description of the meteor hitting Earth 65 million years ago is insane.
One more I like for its interest factor is a book by Daniel McShea and Robert Brandon called "Biology's First Law."
And, lastly, Freeman Dyson's "The Origins of Life" is also quite stimulating.
Mr Rothwell, you have an exhausting habit of suggesting fascinating books across many topics. I’ve complained before about my ever-growing to-read list! OTOH, life would be boring without that list and sometimes making headway on it.
I believe this is what Nick Lane and his team, as well as many other scientists around the world, are working on. So far they’ve been able to synthesise a few of the complex organic molecules using the same conditions, which shows it’s possible, but are still working on what comes next. From as far as I understand Lane’s work, I think it’s likely the process in the vents took thousands of years to get to life though, so is hard to reproduce in a lab all at once!
Thank you for replying. Do you not find the idea that life is (just) a matter of complexity fundamentally troubling?
I heard a recording from a science panel once, at Cornell maybe, that I cannot find again, where it was postulated that any kind of movement of any kind of material will form waves, suggesting an organizing force.
For the author or anyone else interested, Eklund made a trilogy of games that stimulate the beginning of life on earth (in the first game, Bios:Origins, you literally play "as" lipids/amino acid/NA)
The second is bios:megafauna which sees the Advent of animal life on a rapidly changing planet, and then bios: origins is a more traditional civ type game where 4 different proto humans vie to become dominant.
They can be chained together for an entire day of brain burning, with one's output affecting the start of the next. They can even be then progressed into the designers game High Frontier where you explore the solar system, and Interstellar where you leave the solar system to seed life elsewhere. A monumental achievement and really quite fun to boot
I don’t think I can adequately convey the hunger with which I devoured this piece. I will buy his book today. I’m so looking forward to your digests in posts 2 and 3. As one who’s spent the majority of her life surrounded by biologists and physicists, a topic like this is oxygen to me. I’m really intrigued by his theory, and wonder whether there’s widespread acceptance or not.
Thanks, Beth! His books are great! Life Ascending is probably the most easy to read but a few bits are out of date now I think, most of this post came from the The Vital Question, while Transformer gets more into the weeds of the power of the Krebs Cycle, and has the most up to date information. All are great reads though!
You're more than welcome, M. E. Your posts are a wonderful way to get my brain switched on in the morning. I'll admit, this morning's was a steeper hill, but so worth the effort! I just watched one of his talks on the Krebs cycle - https://youtu.be/vBiIDwBOqQA?feature=shared - utterly mesmerizing. I've been acquainted with the Warburg Effect for some time (we did this awhile ago for Nature - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYmLQP2M-qo), but I need to bone up on respiration since science does keep marching forward.
And not to keep you, but I'm intrigued by these twin, seemingly disparate paths you're following: ancient history and biology. Seems polymathic to me :) Are there other areas you plan on delving into in future?
Ah yes I watched that same talk on the Krebs cycle, very handy for a summary of this disparate bits of chemistry he’s tying together!
Haha that’s very kind of you. Traditional cosmography contained a bit of everything — geography, history, astrology, zoology, anthropology — so my aim is to write about a little bit of everything really. My only policy is to write about what ever interests me most in the moment, so apologies if it gets a bit erratic in topics at times!
No apologies necessary! I think this is exactly what the world needs - articles that span the entirety of our collective experience. It seems like so much of human thought currently is devolving into silo'ed thinking, and it's essential that someone bridge these different areas and show the connections between them. So, write on! Yours is excellent work.
It depends who you ask. In ‘The Vital Question’, Lane goes through the other candidates and debunks them in quite a convincing way. To my inexpert eye the alkaline vents seem like the most likely scenario as it has all the right ingredients, while others like ponds on land or the old primordial soup hypothesis seem far too energetically inert to give rise to the complex organics required.
I remember reading Lane's book Oxygen. T'was good.
Another science writer I really like is Peter Brennan. His book "The Ends of the World" (which covers the other end of the spectrum from the topic here) is great and his description of the meteor hitting Earth 65 million years ago is insane.
One more I like for its interest factor is a book by Daniel McShea and Robert Brandon called "Biology's First Law."
And, lastly, Freeman Dyson's "The Origins of Life" is also quite stimulating.
I’m reminded of life being breathed into Earth and our planet as a Mother.
Perhaps quite literally, it seems? Am I understanding this correctly!
Seeing as the raw hydrogen bubbled up directly from the earth’s mantle, I think that metaphor has legs!
Wild.
Mr Rothwell, you have an exhausting habit of suggesting fascinating books across many topics. I’ve complained before about my ever-growing to-read list! OTOH, life would be boring without that list and sometimes making headway on it.
Might we recreate those vent conditions to see if they would produce "life" or is this strictly theoretical?
I believe this is what Nick Lane and his team, as well as many other scientists around the world, are working on. So far they’ve been able to synthesise a few of the complex organic molecules using the same conditions, which shows it’s possible, but are still working on what comes next. From as far as I understand Lane’s work, I think it’s likely the process in the vents took thousands of years to get to life though, so is hard to reproduce in a lab all at once!
Thank you for replying. Do you not find the idea that life is (just) a matter of complexity fundamentally troubling?
I heard a recording from a science panel once, at Cornell maybe, that I cannot find again, where it was postulated that any kind of movement of any kind of material will form waves, suggesting an organizing force.
Good balance between overly technical and overly brief. That's a tough balance to strike!
For the author or anyone else interested, Eklund made a trilogy of games that stimulate the beginning of life on earth (in the first game, Bios:Origins, you literally play "as" lipids/amino acid/NA)
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/98918/bios-genesis
The second is bios:megafauna which sees the Advent of animal life on a rapidly changing planet, and then bios: origins is a more traditional civ type game where 4 different proto humans vie to become dominant.
They can be chained together for an entire day of brain burning, with one's output affecting the start of the next. They can even be then progressed into the designers game High Frontier where you explore the solar system, and Interstellar where you leave the solar system to seed life elsewhere. A monumental achievement and really quite fun to boot
Well I now know what I’m going to do with my day today!
I don’t think I can adequately convey the hunger with which I devoured this piece. I will buy his book today. I’m so looking forward to your digests in posts 2 and 3. As one who’s spent the majority of her life surrounded by biologists and physicists, a topic like this is oxygen to me. I’m really intrigued by his theory, and wonder whether there’s widespread acceptance or not.
Thanks, Beth! His books are great! Life Ascending is probably the most easy to read but a few bits are out of date now I think, most of this post came from the The Vital Question, while Transformer gets more into the weeds of the power of the Krebs Cycle, and has the most up to date information. All are great reads though!
You're more than welcome, M. E. Your posts are a wonderful way to get my brain switched on in the morning. I'll admit, this morning's was a steeper hill, but so worth the effort! I just watched one of his talks on the Krebs cycle - https://youtu.be/vBiIDwBOqQA?feature=shared - utterly mesmerizing. I've been acquainted with the Warburg Effect for some time (we did this awhile ago for Nature - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYmLQP2M-qo), but I need to bone up on respiration since science does keep marching forward.
And not to keep you, but I'm intrigued by these twin, seemingly disparate paths you're following: ancient history and biology. Seems polymathic to me :) Are there other areas you plan on delving into in future?
Ah yes I watched that same talk on the Krebs cycle, very handy for a summary of this disparate bits of chemistry he’s tying together!
Haha that’s very kind of you. Traditional cosmography contained a bit of everything — geography, history, astrology, zoology, anthropology — so my aim is to write about a little bit of everything really. My only policy is to write about what ever interests me most in the moment, so apologies if it gets a bit erratic in topics at times!
No apologies necessary! I think this is exactly what the world needs - articles that span the entirety of our collective experience. It seems like so much of human thought currently is devolving into silo'ed thinking, and it's essential that someone bridge these different areas and show the connections between them. So, write on! Yours is excellent work.
Good quick write-up. So are alkaline vents the dominant thesis right now?
It depends who you ask. In ‘The Vital Question’, Lane goes through the other candidates and debunks them in quite a convincing way. To my inexpert eye the alkaline vents seem like the most likely scenario as it has all the right ingredients, while others like ponds on land or the old primordial soup hypothesis seem far too energetically inert to give rise to the complex organics required.