{"id":16549,"date":"2010-07-27T18:42:45","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T22:42:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wormholeriders.com\/blog\/?p=16549"},"modified":"2022-04-03T16:57:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-03T23:57:00","slug":"how-did-we-get-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wormholeriders.org\/science\/?p=16549","title":{"rendered":"Through The Wormhole: How Did We Get Here?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello science lovers,\"Image<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In the next chapter of \u201cThrough the Wormhole\u201d\u00a0 Morgan Freeman asked the ultimate question, “how did we get here?”\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDid the first earthlings rise from a chemical soup bubbling in a primordial pond, or did the seeds of life crash down from outer space?\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Through<\/a><\/p>\n

The accepted theory for years has been that we arose from this chemical primordial soup.\u00a0 As we gain more understanding of our universe, we begin to expand on that theory.\u00a0 We may still have evolved from this chemical soup, but did this chemical soup have its origins on planet Earth?\u00a0 We have yet to find out how these chemicals evolved into something that is alive.\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Freeman said \u201cTo solve the mystery of our genesis we have to rewind evolution.\u00a0 Go back to the time and place the first living beings came to be.\u201d\u00a0 He takes us back to our solar system 4 billion years ago to the Hadean.\u00a0 It is named the Hadean because it was \u201chell on Earth.\u201d\u00a0 This was the time of the Late Great Bombardment\u00a0where comets and asteroids were smashing into Earth at thousands of miles per hour.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Professor Stephen Mojzsis <\/a>with the University of Colorado geology department believes that it was possible for life to live during the Hadean period.\u00a0 He paints a picture for us of what Earth would have been like 4 billion years ago during the Hadean period.\u00a0 The sky would have been red instead of blue, the moon would have been bigger in our sky because it was closer to the Earth, and the seas would be green with high concentrations of iron.\u00a0 This Earth would have been incapable of supporting human life, but Professor Mojzsis is certain that some life could have survived during the Hadean period. There are environments on earth that life flourishes in extreme environments.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

We study life that existed thousands of years ago by studying fossils, but rocks that survived the Hadean period are hard to come by.\u00a0 Professor Mojzsis has found an outcrop of Hadean rock in Greenland.\u00a0 In the rock from this outcrop, he found something very interesting.\u00a0 He found a carbon life signature.\u00a0 Freeman explained carbon 12 and carbon 13 or heavy carbon.\u00a0 Carbon is all around us and in us, but how do geologists differentiate between geological carbon and carbon that is found in living organisms?\u00a0 Carbon that is found in life is made up of carbon 12 only.\u00a0 It discriminates against carbon 13.\u00a0 The carbon that was found in these 3.8 billion year old rocks was made up of carbon 12 only.\u00a0 Professor Mojzsis has a computer simulation of the late bombardment and it shows that life could have survived.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What actually caused life to start on Earth?\u00a0 That is the next question Freeman asked.\u00a0 In 1953 Stanley Miller and Harold Urey performed an experiment that would simulate how life may have\"\"<\/a> begun on early Earth.\u00a0 In one flask they put the gases methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water.\u00a0 They then ran an electrical current through the system that would be like lightning on early Earth.\u00a0 \u201cPerhaps inspired by the book of Genesis they left their experiment to run for 7days.\u201d The flask that represented the ocean began to slowly change to a brown sludge.\u00a0 In this brown sludge they found amino acids.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jennifer Blank<\/a> of SETI<\/a> believes that life \u201ccame from the sky at 20,000 miles per hour.\u201d\u00a0 In 1999 Stardust voyaged to a comet to get a sample of the comet.\u00a0 Thee samples that they retrieved showed complex amino acids.\u00a0 She has performed experiments to see if these building blocks of life could survive the entry into the atmosphere along with the impact.\u00a0 She found that if the comet came in at just the right angle it could survive the impact.\u00a0 She took a bullet and filled it with 2 amino acids and fired it with just enough power to simulate an impact on Earth.\u00a0 What she found was exciting! She found that the 2 amino acids that she had in the bullet actually combined to make even more complex amino acids.\u00a0 \u201cThey helped amino acids join together.\u00a0 Perhaps, even forming primitive proteins.\u201d\u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did the tree of life grow in the first place?\u00a0 To solve that mystery we have to find the seed.\u201d\u00a0 We are then\u00a0given a\u00a0lesson in biology.\u00a0 Every living organism on Earth shares something in common.\u00a0 We all have a cell that is surrounded by a membrane.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dr. Jack Szostak <\/a>is a professor at Harvard\u2019s school of medicine and a recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in physiology.\u00a0 He explains that cells have to be surrounded by a membrane or everything inside would diffuse out.\u00a0 Dr. Szostak is in search of what primitive cell membranes would have\"\"<\/a> looked like, and he turns to the common soap bubble for comparison.\u00a0 Soap bubbles are made up of fatty acids.\u00a0 Dr. Szostak recreated the conditions of a geyser in his lab because he believes that the hydrothermal vents could have binded the molecules to make fatty acids.\u00a0 He then mixed them in with water, salt, and amino acids.\u00a0 The result of this experiment was tiny hollow bubbles formed.\u00a0 The chemicals formed membranes, and this could be how the first cell membranes formed.\u00a0 This may be how the first cell membranes came to be, but as Freeman points out, there can be no life unless cells can grow and divide.\u00a0 Szostak shook the membranes and the membranes started to expand and grow. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo be truly alive those cells need one vital ingredient, genes.\u201d\u00a0 DNA determines everything about life and how it looks.\u00a0 As Freeman points out, every time a gene divides it places a copy of itself in both cells.\u00a0 Scientist believe that early life could have originated with RNA which is a single stranded molecule.\u00a0 RNA is made up of sugar molecules and nuclear molecules.\u00a0 Scientists for years were unable to reproduce the condition in which sugar and nuclear molecules could have come together.\u00a0 Finally scientist recreated what early Earth would have been like and were able to produce 2 of the 4 basic building blocks of RNA. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paul Davies <\/a>is a cosmologist and he believes that we are not the only forms of life on Earth \"\"<\/a>present day.\u00a0 He believes that simple life forms as well as complex life forms co-exist on Earth today, and that life has formed many times on Earth.\u00a0 Paul Davies coined the term \u201cshadow biosphere\u201d, and this is simply a biosphere on Earth that we wouldn\u2019t normally search for life.\u00a0 It is a microbial biosphere, and the microbial world has not been studied as in depth as our own.\u00a0 The theory is there may still be living organisms that consist of RNA, and they may go undetected because they do not contain ribosomes.\u00a0 Ribosomes are used today to detect living organisms. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Felisa Wolfe-Simon <\/a>is studying mud and searching for \u201cshadow biospheres\u201d.\u00a0 In 2009 Dr. Wolfe-Simon took a sample of mud from Mono Lake in California, and she found a very high levels of \"\"<\/a>arsenic.\u00a0 She searched and found the microbe that is able to withstand these high levels of arsenic.\u00a0 Arsenic resembles phosphorus and it\u00a0tricks our cells into exchanging one for the other.\u00a0 The result is fatal.\u00a0 However, these microbes were able to take in high levels of arsenic, and this would make these organisms seem alien to life on Earth.\u00a0 Freeman states \u201cThey do not fit on our tree of life.\u201d\u00a0 These bugs could be from a separate genesis from our own.\u00a0 This would show that life has happened more than once on Earth. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Is life a \u201ccosmic norm\u201d?\u00a0 Where do the seeds of life come from?\u00a0 Freeman says the answer \u201ccould be out of this world.\u201d\u00a0 Planetary scientist Benjamin Weiss <\/a>has pieces of Martian rocks and \u201che\"\"<\/a> believes that microscopic Martians may have hitched a ride on some of them.\u201d\u00a0 One Martian rock, ALH84001, is a Martian meteorite that was knocked off of Mars and landed on Earth in Antarctica during the last great bombardment.\u00a0 The rock is magnetized, and this means that there must have been a global magnetic field on Mars 4 billion years ago.\u00a0 Our own magnetic field protects us from the sun.\u00a0 Weiss believes that 4 billion years ago Mars had an atmosphere which would have supported life.\u00a0 Mars is smaller than Earth so it would have cooled faster than Earth.\u00a0 Life on Mars could have evolved faster than life on Earth.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Freeman leaves us with these thoughts; \u201cYou and I are the latest chapter of a story that has been unfolding for billions of years.\u00a0 How that story begins is still unknown.\u00a0 Did comets seed the Earth with the raw ingredients of life.\u00a0 Was Mars our original birthplace before we jumped to a new planet, or are we the Earth\u2019s second or third incarnation of life. Aliens might be living among us.\u00a0 We might all be Martians.\u00a0 In the end, the stuff of science fiction might lead us to a cosmic truth, and answer that eternal question how did we get here?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you for reading about this episode of “Through the Wormhole”.\u00a0 Please feel fr<\/span><\/span>\"Click<\/a><\/span><\/span>ee to leave comments or suggestions.\u00a0 The next episode Freeman talks about what we are made of, and it delves into particle physics.\u00a0 It is sure to be a blast to write about! <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Feel free to leave a comment here or click my avatar to visit me on Twitter. Thank you.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

RedOne68<\/a> (Sandra)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hello science lovers, In the next chapter of \u201cThrough the Wormhole\u201d\u00a0 Morgan Freeman asked the ultimate question, “how did we get here?”\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDid the first earthlings rise from a chemical soup bubbling in a primordial pond, or did the seeds of life crash down from outer space?\u201d The accepted theory for years has been that…<\/p>\n

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