Emlyn, you sez:
>The really big jump, I think, is from non-replacing chemical soup to
>replicators. I'd like to hear some pontificating on this from someone
>knowledgable, if any of you are reading this. After the replicators exist,
>however, it all becomes a lot more stolid, marching forward from generation
>to generation. Now, from pond scum to us,
Did you catch the ABC radio Science Show yesterday? Pretty good summary and
up-to-date; Paul Davies as talking head in 2 parts of a BBC series, `The
Genesis Factor', with a few Aussies and major league world eggspurts.
Transcript will be (when series finished) at:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s223723.htm
Paul's current case is that life starts as a self-bootstrapping clay-like
crystal [a Kauffman autocatalytic set] deep under the rocky surface, many
kilometres down and safe from the repeated hammeroids scorching the earth
in the first hemigigayear. Certainly there's increasing evidence for staxa
the little buggers' descendents still down there now, and hugging the black
smokers in volcanic vents on the deepest ocean floors near plate boundaries.
Damien
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:19 MDT