From Science Daily, iron (III) hexacyanoferrate (II) or Prussian blue salt when added to ammonia makes hydrogen cyanide. Which is an important building block when it comes to creating life. Leading to stuff like urea, lactic acid and dimethylhydantoin. Interesting bit about it concentrating carbon and creating hematite.
Post 100!
From New Scientist, a list of how life could have started. I haven’t seen a detailed list like this on abiogeneses. Most of the research looks at replication or metabolism. This ties both together for the first time.
Also a longer article
From Science Daily, German scientists have discovered that using salts (NaCl, CaCl2, MgCl2 and KCl) amino acids will form pyrroles. Pyrroles are important for photosynthesis.
From Fox News, Glycine has been found on comet Wild 2. Carbon 13 was used as an indicator of extraterrestrial origin.
From the NASA Spitzer news page, A look at the chemicals around smaller and cooler stars than the sun show that they do not have hydrogen cyanide, but acetylene. The speculation is that ultraviolet light is involved in the creation of HCN. Also small stars have extreme magnetic bursts that can be disruptive for life. So the implications for life on planets around these stars seems to be less likely than sun-like stars.
One of the big questions in the origin of life, is why are some chemicals right handed or left handed. Usually in a reaction, the two enantiomers are formed. And this is dependent on several factors. Looking at meteorites, scientists have found that in space there is a higher proportion of left-handed amino acids than expected.
Edit: After publishing this piece, I received information about a conference on this topic.
So Rogers AR maybe the new Dover. Parents there seem to want “critical thinking” about evolution. But I doubt that any critical thinking about “creation science” will be allowed.
Cool shit in OZ. The South Australia Museum will be displaying fossils from the Ediacaran period. These PreCambrian fossils are some of the oldest animal fossils.
And finally, some help for the RNA World hypothesis. The discovery of a RNA enzyme that acts like RNA polymerase(meaning that it can join pieces of RNA together) is big news. Abstract
I use to get irritated when some fundy made the comment that science says that we are made out of rock or dirt or the like. Even when they say that Genesis is how we were created: Adam from dust (Genesis 2:7). I realized that what upset me was not that geochemical processes created life from non-life that eventually formed 3.8 billion years ago-give or take. What really bothered me was the belief that it was impossible for such a thing to occur without some form of divine assistance. That somehow rocks were inert. It makes me wonder if people do not know what the incredible mingling of water and limestone do over millions of years to from glistening caverns of calcite. Read the rest of this entry »