Prof Brian Cox on Life

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Hi,

Tonight on ABC2 at 2030, Prof Cox examines the nature of Life, from a physics standpoint

Cheers

[Ric]

I'm looking forward to this show, it should be interesting.

[Suzy]

Yaaaaay!
Thanks Geoff.

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Hi,

My attention was jerked back to the screen on this when Prof Cox remarked that from a physics standpoint, it may be that life of some kind is inevitable in the right conditions, like ours.

Fascinating I thought, must find out much more about that. I have not long read "The Eerie Silence" by Prof Paul Davies, in which he presents an argument (not the only conclusion presented tho) that life appears to be the result of such a long chain of very unlikely accidents, or coincidences, that we could well be the only intelligent life in the cosmos. Wow.

The truth is somewhere in the middle? What exactly is life, as well? If it only needs to be defined as the organised result of a proton gradient, how long is the list?

Any suggestions for the reading list?

Cheers

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Yes, I thought some controversial assertions were made during the course of the program..but still visually quite engaging

[madbadgalaxyman (Robert)]

The fact that highly informed people disagree strongly about the odds of life existing elsewhere in the universe, suggests that the best approach is to actually do the experiment and to look out there for life.

However, most of the people who have a professional-level knowledge of biology are definitely at the 'very low probability of life existing elsewhere' end of the spectrum of belief....... It seems that it is usually the SETI crowd and the 'passionate believers' who publicize the most wildly optimistic estimates about the odds of life existing in the rest of the universe; after all, their job depends on projecting an optimistic attitude.

Has Cox completed at least a few units of cellular and molecular biology at university? If not, I suggest that his views about the prevalence of life in the universe should be given little weight. You really need to have some tertiary biology to appreciate how 'super high tech' life really is.

An extremely detailed, but clearly written, discussion of the highly-multiple steps that have to be taken for complex organic molecules to organize themselves into a simple self-replicating life-form, can be found in :

"Life's Solution : Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe"
by Simon Conway-Morris
(Cambridge University Press)(Published 2004 and 2003)

(incidentally, some of the author's theological views do creep in to this book, but the scientific argument itself is impeccable)

The probability for the occurrence of all of the reactions that need to occur, in the very long chain of chemical reactions that leads eventually to the construction of a simple organic lifeform, is vanishingly small;
The gap in complexity between simple organic chemistry and the chemistry of a very simple lifeform like a bacterium..... is absolutely enormous.

This suggests, at the minimum, that the environmentalist ideology of 'reverence for life' and dismay at the destruction of species, may be justified on scientific grounds; life may be so rare in the universe that the nearest occurence of life away from our Solar System could be billions of light years away.

Added in edit:

P.S.
What is life? Nobody knows!!
But read the introductory book "What is Life?" by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan.

This is the book that got me interested in serious study of biology.
Margulis was a controversial biologist who had a brilliant and clear writing style that is very suited to clearly explaining the extraordinary complexities of life. I don't think that physicists like Cox really understand all of the 'observables' when it comes to life....it really takes a few years of full-time study to come to grips with this.

[colinmlegg (Colin)]

I second Robert's suggestion to read 'What is Life' (Lynn Margulis). It was transforming for me when I read it as well.

For a good discussion on the improbability of complex life, 'Rare Earth' by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee is good. These authors conclude that simple life maybe common (give the right planetary conditions), but complex life is rare.

All Peter Ward's books are worth reading for a good intro to the history of life and the planet and how they are so intertwined. "Life and Death of Planet Earth" is good...if you like informed future speculation?

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Cox is a physicist, they deal especially in the very big and very small. Statistically, he's probably right...the odds of us being alone in the universe is very small, but not impossible.

Likewise, however complex and improbable we believe it to be, what we classify as life has evolved at least once that we know of in an otherwise ordinary environment. Such environments similar to our own must exist many times over in our own galaxy alone, let alone the universe as a whole. What's to say it hasn't happened many times?

And that's all before we consider other possibilities to call life...which we've also discovered right here a home.

[Rob_K]

Originally Posted by madbadgalaxyman

However, most of the people who have a professional-level knowledge of biology are definitely at the 'very low probability of life existing elsewhere' end of the spectrum of belief.......

Biologists are absolutely the worst people to listen to in the discussion of life in the Universe, simply because their field is myopic, bound up in complexity. You can argue all you like about the complexity of biological processes and logically posit that life should be vanishingly rare (and hence we shouldn't exist either??). But a physicist can say, let's chuck a lot of star-stuff together, mix it up for a few billion years, and voila we have life. Where? Here! It didn't matter how complex the processes were, it happened! Right here in our own backyard, one backyard amongst countless similar backyards (as we are now understanding more and more). Physics can move backwards from the physical reality of life to unravel processes, while biology is mired in forwards moving processes, each of which presents a new layer of complexity (leading inevitably to impossibility!). Not that we'll ever understand life without both!

The universe creates and orders matter (what is matter LOL?) by processes we only have the crudest understanding of. Life is nothing more than another level of ordering of matter. One example is all that is necessary to know that the ordering of matter to create life is something that the universe does. We have that example.

Unfortunately human thinking is also influenced by religion - I don't mean we are all religious, but that our upbringings & exposure to religion or religious-type ideas colour our attitudes. "The Miracle of Life" etc. The idea that we are special, separate from the Universe in which we live. A hard hurdle to get over because it impacts on the meaning each of our lives has to us, regardless of how strenuously we may deny it.

As far as the probability of other life existing in the universe, the simplistic calculations of the biologists don't cut the mustard. What are the chances of a single hydrogen atom existing? Of putting together all the bits - different parts in different energy levels, let alone the constituent bits of the different parts, going down to who knows what at the fundamental/string theory particles level, all in their correct fuzzy places. Pretty damn small if you think of it as a random assemblage. And yet the universe has done it, abundantly, ubiquitously, profligately. Our lack of understanding of processes limits our ability to make meaningful predictions.

So we are left with only one certainty - that the universe creates life from star-stuff. Good enough for me!

Cheers -

[allan gould]

This all sounds theologians arguing about the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin.
As a molecular biologist for the last 40 years might I suggest that some of you should get a far deeper understanding of molecular biology as well as evolution before commenting.

[Steffen]

I've started by watching this video:

Click here to load the video

Loading...

My mind is blown now, although I thought the major groove protein was cute. Am I on the right track?

Cheers
Steffen.

[spacezebra (Petra)]

What more can you ask for => smart, a physicist and good looking!!! :-)


Cheers Petra d.

[taminga16 (Greg)]

Originally Posted by allan gould

This all sounds theologians arguing about the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin.
As a molecular biologist for the last 40 years might I suggest that some of you should get a far deeper understanding of molecular biology as well as evolution before commenting.

Thank you Allan, Brian Cox is just a face with a background, no where near as convincing as Sir David, and it is after all, just television.
Greg.

[Herb]

Madbadgalaxyman wrote

"Has Cox completed at least a few units of cellular and molecular biology at university? If not, I suggest that his views about the prevalence of life in the universe should be given little weight. You really need to have some tertiary biology to appreciate how 'super high tech' life really is."


Thankfully, some of the greatest amateurs in the history of science ignored arrogant attitudes such as this and built the very foundations of scientific knowledge.

As an aside, I doubt Gregor Mendel (ironically, a physicist) completed any units of cellular or molecular biology.

regards

Herb

[FlashDrive (Poppy)]

Originally Posted by madbadgalaxyman

The fact that highly informed people disagree strongly about the odds of life existing elsewhere in the universe, suggests that the best approach is to actually do the experiment and to look out there for life.

However, most of the people who have a professional-level knowledge of biology are definitely at the 'very low probability of life existing elsewhere' end of the spectrum of belief....... It seems that it is usually the SETI crowd and the 'passionate believers' who publicize the most wildly optimistic estimates about the odds of life existing in the rest of the universe; after all, their job depends on projecting an optimistic attitude.

Has Cox completed at least a few units of cellular and molecular biology at university? If not, I suggest that his views about the prevalence of life in the universe should be given little weight. You really need to have some tertiary biology to appreciate how 'super high tech' life really is.

An extremely detailed, but clearly written, discussion of the highly-multiple steps that have to be taken for complex organic molecules to organize themselves into a simple self-replicating life-form, can be found in :

"Life's Solution : Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe"
by Simon Conway-Morris
(Cambridge University Press)(Published 2004 and 2003)

(incidentally, some of the author's theological views do creep in to this book, but the scientific argument itself is impeccable)

The probability for the occurrence of all of the reactions that need to occur, in the very long chain of chemical reactions that leads eventually to the construction of a simple organic lifeform, is vanishingly small;
The gap in complexity between simple organic chemistry and the chemistry of a very simple lifeform like a bacterium..... is absolutely enormous.

This suggests, at the minimum, that the environmentalist ideology of 'reverence for life' and dismay at the destruction of species, may be justified on scientific grounds; life may be so rare in the universe that the nearest occurence of life away from our Solar System could be billions of light years away.

Added in edit:

P.S.
What is life? Nobody knows!!
But read the introductory book "What is Life?" by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan.

This is the book that got me interested in serious study of biology.
Margulis was a controversial biologist who had a brilliant and clear writing style that is very suited to clearly explaining the extraordinary complexities of life. I don't think that physicists like Cox really understand all of the 'observables' when it comes to life....it really takes a few years of full-time study to come to grips with this.

Robert....Well said and to the point....I agree

Flash......

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by FlashDrive

Robert....Well said and to the point....I agree

Flash......

Too Flash and Robert

I think #14 post is more to the point.
One doesn't have to have a degree in any particular subject to
know what they are talking about.
I am sure Professor Cox just like Carl Sagen,can talk on many different
Scientific subjects without mastering it at university.
How do you know he hasn't studied biology.
I am sure he would have had the relevant scientific advisers to make sure he was giving the right information.
Why the tear down ???
He is like David Attenborough,Carl Sagen, and others is trying to get science and nature out to the public,and in my honest opinion is doing a bloody good job.
Cheers

[Ric]

Have to agree Ron

It's a great series and I'm quite enjoying it.

[allan gould]

Originally Posted by Herb

As an aside, I doubt Gregor Mendel (ironically, a physicist) completed any units of cellular or molecular biology.

regards

Herb

Herbe
Mendel actually as the poster boy for genetics was not a good scientist as his notes on pea genetics and hence inherited traits have been rigorously analysed and shown that he "cherry" picked his results to get the answer he believed was correct. Not a good scientist. Just a small footnote to the history of genetics.
Allan

[FlashDrive (Poppy)]

Originally Posted by astroron

Too Flash and Robert

I think #14 post is more to the point.
One doesn't have to have a degree in any particular subject to
know what they are talking about.
I am sure Professor Cox just like Carl Sagen,can talk on many different
Scientific subjects without mastering it at university.
How do you know he hasn't studied biology.
I am sure he would have had the relevant scientific advisers to make sure he was giving the right information.
Why the tear down ???
He is like David Attenborough,Carl Sagen, and others is trying to get science and nature out to the public,and in my honest opinion is doing a bloody good job.
Cheers

Yes....quite right...you have a point there.....but I have a problem with things being ' said ' ...as if they are the ' real facts ' about how things ( life ) came about.

I certainly don't know how ' life ' came about because like myself, Brian Cox wasn't there in the ' beginning ' when it ' ALL ' started....no one was.
To me...it's all speculation,lots of good ' theories ' being passed around over many decades etc.

Anyway....I guess Brian and other members of the Scientific Community are doing their best to ' explain ' things the best way they can ' according ' to what they ' deem ' is a possible ' outcome ' of how life began.

This is where I come in.....do I accept what their saying as ' plausible ' or as ' fact ' ... especially by the way they present it to the viewer.

Somethings I accept....somethings I can't......because they don't ' sit well ' with my own ' perception ' of things.

That's the joy of human nature....being able to ' decide ' what each of us accepts as ' fact ' ...or ' truth '

BTW...I love watching Sir David and other types of Doco's relating to Space or Nature ...I have lots of these in my Blu-Ray collection.

Cheers......Col.

[bigjoe (JOSEPH)]

At the end of the day, its all about getting a very smart poster boy to get young and alll interested, thinking, and to take up science