Posted on 07/18/2002 10:17:50 AM PDT by nuda_veritas
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| 10:57 18 July 02 | |
| Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition |
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An amino acid, one of the building blocks of life, has been spotted in deep space. If the find stands up to scrutiny, it means that the sorts of chemistry needed to create life are not unique to Earth verifying one of astrobiology's cherished theories. This would add weight to ideas that life exists on other planets, and even that molecules from outer space kick-started life on Earth. Over 130 molecules have been identified in interstellar space so far, including sugars and ethanol. But amino acids are a particularly important find because they link up to form proteins, the molecules that run, and to a large extent make up our cells. Back in 1994, a team led by astronomer Lewis Snyder of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced preliminary evidence of the simplest type of amino acid, glycine, but the finding did not stand up to closer examination (New Scientist magazine, 11 June 1994, p 4). Now Snyder and Yi-Jehng Kuan of the National Taiwan Normal University say they really have found glycine. "We're more confident [this time]," says Kuan. "We have strong evidence that glycine exists in interstellar space."
The researchers monitored radio waves for the spectral lines characteristic of glycine. They studied emissions from more locations than before - giant molecular clouds, huge blobs of gas and dust grains. They have also identified 10 spectral lines at each location that correspond to the lines created by glycine in the lab; before they had just two. The discovery of glycine supports recent lab-based simulations of deep space, which show that ices containing simple organic matter could form. When researchers bathe those ices in ultraviolet light, amino acids are created. "Glycine is the holy grail," says Jill Tarter, director of the Centre for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View. "Let's hope they've got it this time." |
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Rachel Nowak |
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Sounds like the guy had to publish something to justify his pay and just republished the same rejected stuff with some additional information. This is the problem with the press, they publish the announcements, but they do not publish the verification or the rejection of the fantastic findings claimed.
The Miller-Urey experiment has been thoroughly discredited by now. More important than that it could not have happened in real life though is that it is completely wrong. DNA makes amino acids (or rather the RNA which DNA codes for), not the other way around. These folk were the scientific equivalent of wrong-way Goldfarb.
Not proven. Every few years we hear of proof of biological substances from space, and after a year or two they are disproven quietly. This guy already made a false claim, a reasonable person would wait for it to be examined and verified. However, evolutionists (or should we say atheists in this case) are real desperate, so they latch on to anything reed, no matter how flimsy.
"wildly elliptical" planetary orbits
"1720"
placemarker
The Miller experiment simply showed how you can get more complex molecules out of a simple soup + energy.
The Miller experiment simply showed how you can get more complex molecules out of a simple soup + energy.
No. The whole purpose of the Miller-Urey experiment was to give some substantiation to the theory of abiogenesis. It is touted as such in textbooks and by materialists everywhere. As I point out above, it was a miserable failure in that respect.
Now who's being defensive ?
Everybody knows that science and religion are irreconcilable.
BUMP
Doesn't seem to be in great abundance on Earth. We can only hope that "intelligence" has made an appearance on some other planet.
Hehe! Now my sides are hurting!
Even scientists know this.
{^_^}
Depends on how you define the two. They are not necessarilty irreconcialble, and in a healthy growth of knowledge, a marriage of the two, along with philosophy (logic/reason), should occur. IM, and others, HO of course.
I referred to "truths". The set of "Knowable reality" encompasses far more than the set of "truths". Most of the universal "truths" do not exist yet in the set of "knowable reality". Science is the job of moving those "truths" into that set
There are things that can be supposed/theorized or be articles of faith. These may be treated as reality but it does not transform them to provable "truths".
We learn to deal and find practical use everyday for things we do not understand.
Science is a process of discovering "truth". It often must synthesize suppositions/guesses before confirming or denying the nature of those guesses. In the meantime, some of the guesses may be dealt with in a practical manner even before the truth of the guess is known.
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