Text 742, 78 rader
Skriven 2004-11-10 17:26:00 av Tinyurl.Com/uh3t (1:278/230)
Ärende: Re: First Mutation Was Bi
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> From: tomhendricks474@cs.com (TomHendricks474)
> there is no reason yet found for a replicator to happen except fluke,
> magic, etc.

You write as if you haven't the slightest concept of statistics, in
particular the expected behaviour of extremely large numbers of events
all following some statistical model.

The Earth is a very small target as viewed from the Sun. If a photon
heads out from the Sun in a random directly, most likely it's going to
miss the Earth. There's only about one chance out of a billion (10**9)
of any given photon hitting Earth instead of going out in any other
direction and missing Earth. So there's no reason for a photon from the
Sun to ever strike the Earth, it's just too unlikely to happen. Yet
photons from the sun *do* strike the Earth. Why? Because there are very
very very very very many of them leaving the Sun, and about one out of
every billion of them are heading the correct direction to strike the
Earth. Out of the very very very very very many photons leaving the
Sun, one out of a billion is still a rather large number, quite enough
to keep the surface of the Earth a nice medium-warm temperature.

The same logic can be applied to any process where large numbers of
experiments are happening, only a small fraction of which are
successful, but the number of experiments is so incredibly large that
even with a tiny chance of success there are lots of successes. For
example, consider the following model for abiogenesis:

Let's say 10**33 UV photons from the Sun strike the Earth every second.
Specifically each such photon strikes some molecule and breaks some
chemical bond, leaving the molecule either broken apart (atoms split
apart and going their separate ways) or ionized (one electron dislodged
leaving behind a positively-charged ion). Let's say there's no ozone
layer because this is very long ago before there was any free oxygen,
so nearly all the UV strikes the surface of the Earth, usually the
surface of the ocean. Now each such disrupted molecule is moving around
and bumps into some other molecules, and reacts with them to form some
new chemicals. From the cascade of such reactions from each single
UV-disrupted molecule, let's say only one out of a hundred contains a
reaction product that has some catalytic activity. that's 10**31
catalysts produce per second. Let's say only one out of a hundred of
these catalysts manages to catalyze a new chemical reaction that
produces another catalyst. That's 10**29 chains of catalyst -> catalyst
per second. Let's say only one out of a hundred of these second-step
catalysts manages to catalyze a reaction producing a third catalyst.
That's 10**27 two-link (3-catalyst) chains per second. Continue these
same statistics as the chains get longer:
  10**25 3-link (4-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**23 4-link (5-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**21 5-link (6-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**19 6-link (7-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**17 7-link (8-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**15 8-link (9-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**13 9-link (10-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**11 10-link (11-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**9 11-link (12-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**7 12-link (13-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**5 13-link (14-catalyst) chains per second.
  10**3 14-link (15-catalyst) chains per second.
  10 15-link (16-catalyst) chains per second.
Now suppose there are only 15 different kinds of catalysts that can be
produced in this way. So whenever a 16-catalyst chain is produced, at
least two of the catalysts must be of the same type. So that means
about ten times per second a brand new catalytic-type-loop is produced
by the cascade from one of these UV photons from the Sun. Now any
particular such catalytic-type-loop is a fluke, but because there are
such a large number of UV photons total, even with such small chance of
any particular UV photon causing the formation of a
catalytic-type-loop, in fact about ten such catalytic-type-loops are
created every second that the Sun continues to shine.
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