[QUOTE=AstralTraveller;835601] All Alex seems to be saying is that the chemical pathway that changes non-living into living is not understood but evidence suggests that such a pathway would be followed where ever suitable conditions are found. This is a pretty common opinion.
Yes indeed David as Bert would say "self evident" ..but one tends to say that when others have glossed over the simple things one has said but were not regarded as important and so they miss the self evident simplicity of a concept.
If we know all there is to know then such a process (the life chemical process) would be well understood. As Bert mentioned the complexities are mind bending ..just because one can use a hammer does not mean you can automatically build a house...
If we could identify the process (and control it such that we can test enviroments) it would then be reasonable to conclude life must exist everywhere basically, indeed such is an extrapolation but extrapolations have been used before in the name of science
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Add the survival of the fittest and adaption to environment we observe in the life we can sample .... at that point perhaps we would be entitled to use the Drake equation to estimate probabilities on a reasonable footing.
I think identifying the procees would be wonderful and it matters not if we wish to call it physics or chemistry.
alex
