Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Primordial Soup Rejected



"You know we receive an education in the schools from books. All those books that people became educated from twenty-five years ago, are wrong now, and those that are good now, will be wrong again twenty-five years from now. So if they are wrong then, they are also wrong now, and the one who is educated from the wrong books is not educated, he is misled. All books that are written are wrong, the one who is not educated cannot write a book and the one who is educated, is really not educated but he is misled and the one who is misled cannot write a book that is correct." -- Edward Leedskalnin, stone mason, 1936

Machines Like Us: New research rejects 80-year theory of 'primordial soup' as the origin of life. (Hat tip: Quantum Flux)

For 80 years it has been accepted that early life began in a 'primordial soup' of organic molecules before evolving out of the oceans millions of years later. Today the 'soup' theory has been over turned in a pioneering paper in BioEssays which claims it was the Earth's chemical energy, from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, which kick-started early life.

"Textbooks have it that life arose from organic soup and that the first cells grew by fermenting these organics to generate energy in the form of ATP. We provide a new perspective on why that old and familiar view won't work at all," said team leader Dr Nick lane from University College London.

5 comments:

Quantum_Flux said...

I'm pulling for the "primordial abiotic oil" theory of mine instead.

KV said...

What does this mean?

...the one who is not educated cannot write a book and the one who is educated, is really not educated but he is misled and the one who is misled cannot write a book...

So, how does one get "educated", by protecting young girls from having sex?

OilIsMastery said...

KV,

One becomes educated by unlearning what one has been taught.

Since you never learned anything to begin with it should be easy for you.

john bailo said...

This theory of life is proposed in "The Deep Hot Biosphere" by Gold.

(Amazingly, since it's just of one many spinoffs mentioned along the way of presenting the whole theory...oh, origin of life...sure...here it is...)

I'm surprised they don't credit Gold in the article!

Quantum_Flux said...

Haha, lol!!!