The chances of life starting spontanously are infinitesimally tiny
Summary
- In 1953, Stanley Miller, a university student, took some water, methane, ammonia and hydrogen sulphinde and mixed them together with some electrical sparks and was able to make organic compounds. It sounded as though that was how easy it was to create life. But the reality is that the chances of this happening spontenously are almost nil.
Details
- Life needs proteins, which are created by a string of amino acids.
- There may be as many as a million types of protein in our body, and each one is a little miracle.
- A protein needs amino acids assembled in a particular order. For example, collagen needs 1,055 amino acids in the correct sequence. THe chances of this happening by itself is nil. Even if they were only 200 instead of 1,055, it would still be a 1 in 10(260) chance of it happening.
- There are several hundred thousand types of protein, all seeming important for life.
- Furthermore the proteins are folded in a specific shape that can work.
- DNA is needed in order to duplicate proteins.
- DNA and proteins need some kind of membrane to contain them.
References
Quotes
- "By the laws of probability, proteins shouldn't exist"
- "For random events to produce even a single protein would seem a stunning improbability - like a whirlwind spinning through a junkyard nad leaving behind a fully assembled jumbo jet, in the colorful simile of the astronomer Fred Hoyle"