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Origin of life: Ancient mud volcanoes promising early habitat?

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In “Ancient mud volcanoes perfect for early life: study” (MSNBC October 17, 2011), Charles Choi reports, “Rocks, more than 3.7 billion years old, examined as part of research”

The researchers found these ancient rocks once were permeated with lukewarm alkaline fluids rich in carbonates. These liquids resemble those seen today in so-called serpentine mud volcanoes located in the deep sea near the Mariana Islands, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean formed by the summits of volcanoes; the conditions would have made the area off the coast of Greenland an especially friendly place for amino acids, helping keep them stable in the distant past. Amino acids are key ingredients of life, serving as the building blocks of proteins.

“These serpentine mud volcanoes would have been the best environment for sustaining life,” researcher Francis Albarede, a geochemist at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon in France, told LiveScience. “These findings mean that you could have sparked life at those places and also have it survive there.”

But who “could have sparked life at those places”?

One thing about these OOL news stories is that you find out what’s wrong with the earlier theories marketed to the public in documentaries a couple of years ago. Now that a substitute implausible theory is fronted, that’s okay. Remember deep sea hydrothermal vents?

Scientists have long thought that life might have begun at deep-sea hydrothermal vents typically found near volcanically active locales. These are rich in chemical and thermal energy, often helping sustain vibrant ecosystems. However, the vast majority of hydrothermal vent fields seen now are too hot and too acidic for a soup of free-floating amino acids to have survived.

“It’d be like trying to make life evolve from hot Coca-Cola,” Albarede said.

Hmmm. Many claims made for Coke often feel that way.

Here’s a small mud volcano:

Comments
What's telling in these stories is not the specifics of what they are proposing, but the certainty with which they state it. "The best environment." "You could have sparked life at those places and also have it survive there.” You know, that life-sparking thing that someone else explains in another paper that everyone should already know about. They sure don't sound like people proposing and testing hypotheses. More like they're trying to get into the spotlight for ten seconds. There's a common thread running through all of these stories. Always check the batteries in your BS meter before you read or listen to them. The trouble is that no one seems to realize that sometimes scientists are motivated to just make crap up, and they do.ScottAndrews
October 19, 2011
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Quote: "Hmmm. Many claims made for Coke often feel that way." ===== Maybe getting high on Cocaine is necessary to recieve the uncanny ability of Fable fabrication. Incredibly, NOT ONE of the faithful parishioners of this Dogma will ever question newer story telling which debunks long held cherished Nursery Rhymes or warm and fuzzy bedtime stories, as long as it's sole purpose is to defuse anything to do with an Intelligent Designer. The ONLY truly evolving thing is the "Dice Theory" itself and the ability to quickly adapt without question by it's prosyletes.Eocene
October 19, 2011
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