Hi All:
In my view life is a component of the fastest path to heat death
(equilibrium) in universes that have suitable thermodynamics. Thus there
would be a built in "pressure" for such universes to contain life. Further
I like Stephen Gould's idea that complex life arises because evolution is a
random walk with a lower bound and no upper bound.
The above "pressure" will always quickly jump start life at the lower bound
in such universes by rolling the dice so to speak as much as necessary to
do so.
Hal Ruhl
At 10:13 PM 5/31/2005, you wrote:
>Norman Samish wrote:
>
>[Responding to Russell Standish]
>>This article, as you point out, asserts "that the rapidity of biogenesis on
>>Earth suggests that life is common in the Universe." This assertion is
>>shown to be probably correct with some reasonable assumptions. One of the
>>assumptions is that if life occurs here, it must also occur on other
>>terrestrial planets. However, the part that I have trouble with is figuring
>>out exactly how that first living organism was created. ("Living" means it
>>has the ability to take in energy from the environment and transform the
>>energy for growth and reproduction.) "Living" requires a highly organized
>>and complex mechanism - that humans, so far, have not been able to create.
>>I can't imagine how such an organism could occur accidentally. I would call
>>that first living organism a miraculous circumstance.
>
>I don't see how anyone could say that life is or isn't common in the
>Universe on the basis of current evidence. It taxes astronomers to the
>limit at present to discover the existence of enormous gas giants orbiting
>stars relatively close to Earth. Even in our own solar system, how could
>we possibly know whether simple or even relatively complex lifeforms are
>not living in, for example, the huge and hugely complex atmosphere of Jupiter?
>
>--Stathis Papaioannou
>
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Received on Wed Jun 01 2005 - 16:28:28 PDT