[AdmSmith]

Positive impacts of volcanoes

[AdmSmith]

Original article http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/03/14/1019191108.abstract

[DeltaZulu]

Holy Cow! L. Ron was right!?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

......In the 1950s, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey of the University of Chicago performed a series of "spark discharge" experiments, in which the researchers applied electrical sparks-- meant to simulate lightning -- to a mixture of gases in steam-filled flasks...

[count-your-change]

One spark-discharge experiment using radioactivity ran all night and in the morning the vessel was found broken open. Little footprints of black goo led to the window and a note was left........ What did the note say?
“Gone fission!”

[backwoods-engineer]

Since Miller and Urey's experiment was utterly discredited as an origin-of-life scenario, the scientists have now backed off and want to use it as a scenario for the origin of proteins/amino acids. Fine, but it does not solve the REAL problem in origin of life: Where did the information contained in DNA and RNA come from?

[blueunicorn6]

“Well, Bobby, another one of those big questions for Mr. Science. ‘Can volcanoes produce life?’ Hmmm. You know the Mr. Science motto, ‘Doing Is Knowing!’ We have here a bowl of boiling cheese-dip to simulate the lava in a volcano. Here is our bottle of hydrogen and a sparkler to simulate lightning. Just a second. The court order requires that the fire department be notified whenever I conduct an experiment. Have we done that Director Lisa? OK! Here we go. We turn on the hydrogen...and put the lit sparkler over the cheese. HOTCHEESE!!!HOTCHEESE!!!HOTCHEESE!!! Thanks Cameraman Steve. That cheese-lava can really scald you. Once again, science triumphs over superstition! ‘Can volcanoes produce life?’ The answer is no, volcanoes can produce third-degree burns. Mr. Science has been receiving letters requesting him at birthday parties. The District Attorney has threatened to throw Mr. Science in Jail ‘until the end of time’ if he works at any more birthday parties. I will be at the Harrison Avenue Mall this Saturday from noon to four demonstrating volcanoes. Free nachos, too!”

[LiteKeeper]

This is as likely as a Boeing 757 being left behind after a tornado sweeps through a junk yard. And this theory fails to account for the information required to assemble amino acids into proteins. And, it fails to account for teleonomy and autopoiesis. I will invoke Polanyi’s Impossibility here!