scholarly journals Chirality and the Origin of Life

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2277
Author(s):  
Ferdinand Devínsky
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Weak Interactions ◽  
Left Handed ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Natural Choice ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Primordial Soup ◽  
The Universe

The origin of life, based on the homochirality of biomolecules, is a persistent mystery. Did life begin by using both forms of chirality, and then one of the forms disappeared? Or did the choice of homochirality precede the formation of biomolecules that could ensure replication and information transfer? Is the natural choice of L-amino acids and D-sugars on which life is based deterministic or random? Is the handedness present in/of the Universe from its beginning? The whole biosystem on the Earth, all living creatures are chiral. Many theories try to explain the origin of life and chirality on the Earth: e.g., the panspermia hypothesis, the primordial soup hypothesis, theory of parity violation in weak interactions. Additionally, heavy neutrinos and the impact of the fact that only left-handed particles decay, and even dark matter, all have to be considered.

scholarly journals The origin of life from primordial planets

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl H. Gibson ◽  
Rudolph E. Schild ◽  
N. Chandra Wickramasinghe
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Space Telescopes ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Primordial Planets ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The Big Bang ◽  
Primordial Soup ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Origin Of The Universe

AbstractThe origin of life and the origin of the Universe are among the most important problems of science and they might be inextricably linked. Hydro-gravitational-dynamics cosmology predicts hydrogen–helium gas planets in clumps as the dark matter of galaxies, with millions of planets per star. This unexpected prediction is supported by quasar microlensing of a galaxy and a flood of new data from space telescopes. Supernovae from stellar over-accretion of planets produce the chemicals (C, N, O, P, etc.) and abundant liquid-water domains required for first life and the means for wide scattering of life prototypes. Life originated following the plasma-to-gas transition between 2 and 20 Myr after the big bang, while planetary core oceans were between critical and freezing temperatures, and interchanges of material between planets constituted essentially a cosmological primordial soup. Images from optical, radio and infrared space telescopes suggest life on Earth was neither first nor inevitable.

scholarly journals Biological Implications of Organic Compounds in Comets

1989 ◽  
Vol 116 (1) ◽  
pp. 439-462
Author(s):  
Joseph N. Marcus ◽  
Margaret A. Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Catalytic Rna ◽  
Organic Chemicals ◽  
Substantial Fraction ◽  
Volatile Elements ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Cometary Panspermia ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The Universe

AbstractOrganic chemicals — compounds that contain carbon — are the substance of life and pervade the universe. Is there a connection between comets, which are rich in prebiotic organics, and the origin of life? Current concepts of biomolecular evolution are first reviewed, including the important paradigm of catalytic RNA. At the very least, impacting comets appear to have supplied a substantial fraction of the volatile elements required for life shortly after the Earth formed. Some impacting material may even have survived chemically intact to directly provide necessary complex prebiotic organic chemicals. For life to originate and evolve in comets themselves, liquid H2O would be absolutely required: arguments for and against 26Al radiogenic melting of cometary cores are presented. Cometary panspermia, if theoretically possible, is not necessary to explain the origin of life on Earth. The Halley spacecraft provide evidence against Earth-type microorganisms in this comet’s dust.

Can stabilization and symmetry breakings give rise to life in the process of the universe evolution?

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-315
Author(s):  
Choong Sun Kim
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Molecular System ◽  
Planck Scale ◽  
Atomic Scale ◽  
Left Handed ◽  
Scale Down ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Universe Evolution

AbstractBiogenesis can be understood as the final process of the Universe's evolution, from Planck scale down to nuclear scale to atomic scale to molecular scale, then finally to bioscale, with the breaking of relevant symmetries at every step. By assuming the simplest definition of life, that life is just a molecular system which can reproduce itself (auto-reproducing molecular system – ARMS) and has such kinetic ability (kineto-molecular system), at least for its microscopic level, as to respond actively to its surrounding environments, we tried to explain the origin of life, taking the final step of the Universe evolution. We found a few clues for the origin of life, such as: (1) As the Universe expands and gets extremely cold, biogenesis can take place by ARMS, new level of stabilization may be achievable only at ‘locally cold places’ (LCPs), such as comets. (2) There must be the parity breaking in the bioscale stabilization process, which can be violated spontaneously, or dynamically by the van der Waals forces possible only at LCPs. (3) The rule of bioparity breaking is universal within the biohorizon. So we will find, e.g. only left-handed amino acids in all living beings dwelling within our Galaxy. (4) The idea of biogenesis through the bioscale stabilization in the evolution of the Universe looks very consistent with Panspermia hypothesis and supports it by providing a viable answer for life's origin at such LCPs.

Reconstructing the Crime

Impact! ◽  
1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerrit L. Verschuur
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Diversity ◽  
Blast Waves ◽  
Meteor Showers ◽  
Rapid Succession ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
Cretaceous Period ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Mind's Eye ◽  
The Universe

Just what happened to the dinosaurs? In the mind’s eye, travel back to the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago. First, land in a region of the world that will someday be called Oklahoma. You are in the era of dinosaurs, although there are no longer as many species about, worldwide, as there were ten million or so years before. In all, 23 species roam their individual parts of the planet. It is their lack of spatial diversity that will make them vulnerable to the catastrophe that is about to befall the earth. So imagine you are there, together with triceratops, stegosaurus, velociraptors, and tyrannosaurus rex. Mostly they live off the land, and some of them live off each other. On this day none of the animals on earth can possibly have any awareness that they are about to disappear. Such a luxury will only be granted to a conscious species that has learned to explore the universe. For those who survive the initial impact explosion and its immediate consequences, the coming months will mark a terrible example of one of Cuvier’s “brief periods of terror.” In rapid succession, all life will be subject to a holocaust of staggering proportion, horrendous blast waves, searing winds, showers of molten matter from the sky, earthquakes, a terrible darkness that will cut out sunlight for a year, and freezing weather that will last a decade. The ozone layer will be destroyed, and acid rain will make life intolerable for species that survived the first few months after the impact. You are there and you have been observing an odd phenomenon in the sky. For thousands of years a great comet has loomed, repeatedly lighting up the heavens with its glorious tail and then fading away to reappear a few years later. Long ago it was seen to break into fragments, each of which was a spectacular sight in its own right. Sometimes one of those fragments seemed to loom ever so close to the earth. For thousands of years, spectacular meteor showers have been seen whenever the earth passed through the tail of one of those comets, and sometimes dust drifted down into the atmosphere and disturbed the climate.

The Origin of Life on Earth and in the Universe

2006 ◽  
pp. 147-198
Author(s):  
Jordi Llorca ◽  
Malcolm E. Schrader ◽  
Pasquale Stano ◽  
Francesca Ferri ◽  
Pier Luigi Luisi
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Life On Earth ◽  
The Universe

General discussion after session V

1988 ◽  
Vol 325 (1587) ◽  
pp. 611-618 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Organic Chemical ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Origin Of Life ◽  
Emergence Of Life

N. C. Wickramasinghe ( Department of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy, University College, Cardiff, U. K. ). The question of the origin of life is, of course, one of the most important scientific questions and it is also one of the most difficult. One is inevitably faced here with a situation where there are very few empirical facts of direct relevance and perhaps no facts relating to the actual transition from organic material to material that can even remotely be described as living. The time perspective of events that relate to this problem has already been presented by Dr Chang. Uncertainty still persists as to the actual first moment of the origin or the emergence of life on the Earth. At some time between 3800 and 3300 Ma BP the first microscopic living systems seem to have emerged. There is a definite moment in time corresponding to a sudden appearance of cellular-type living systems. Now, traditionally the evolution of carbonaceous compounds which led to the emergence of life on Earth could be divided into three principal steps and I shall just remind you what those steps are. The first step is the production of chemical building blocks that lead to the origin of the organic molecules necessary as a prerequisite for the evolution of life. Step two can be described in general terms as prebiotic evolution, the arrangement of these chemical units into some kind of sequence of precursor systems that come almost up to life but not quite; and then stage three is the early biological evolution which actually effects the transition from proto-cellular organic-type forms into truly cellular living systems. The transition is from organic chemistry, prebiotic chemistry to biochemistry. Those are the three principal stages that have been defined by traditional workers in the field, the people who, as Dr Chang said, have had the courage to make these queries and attempt to answer them. Ever since the classic experiments where organic materials were synthesized in the laboratory a few decades back, it was thought that the first step, the production of organic chemical units, is important for the origin of life on the Earth, and that this had to take place in some location on the Earth itself.

How Did It All Begin?: The Self-Assembly of Organic Molecules and the Origin of Cellular Life

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
David W. Deamer
Keyword(s):  
Origin Of Life ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Self Assembly ◽  
Organic Molecules ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Cellular Life ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Origin Of Life

Movies are the myths of late-20th century western culture. Because of the power of films likeETto capture our imagination, we are more likely than past generations to accept the possibility that life exists elsewhere in our galaxy. Such a myth can be used to sketch the main themes of this chapter, which concern the origin of life on the Earth.

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