I'm reading "Sugar raining down from space may have helped create life on Earth/Cluster of sweet molecules in Milky Way gas cloud offers clue to possible origins of DNA, astronomers claim" (London Times).
13 జులై, 2026
"Up to 50 million tonnes of sugar may have rained down from space on to Earth about four billion years ago, potentially delivering the building blocks of life..."
"... a study has found. Scientists have discovered sugar molecules in clouds of interstellar gas, suggesting a key ingredient for DNA and RNA could have come to our planet from deep space...."
I'm reading "Sugar raining down from space may have helped create life on Earth/Cluster of sweet molecules in Milky Way gas cloud offers clue to possible origins of DNA, astronomers claim" (London Times).
I'm reading "Sugar raining down from space may have helped create life on Earth/Cluster of sweet molecules in Milky Way gas cloud offers clue to possible origins of DNA, astronomers claim" (London Times).
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47 కామెంట్లు:
So, the guys that came up with the Milky Way and Mars bars, knew what they were talking about, eh?
That's why it's named after the candy bar.
Milky Way...Heh.
Might have. Could have.
Last time I checked, life does not arise from none life and nothing can not make all things spring forth from nothing.
That said, life is sweeter with sugar.
Yeah sure. It may have happened that way. And it may not.
I prefer to belive sugar plum faries were involved. And unicorns made out of chocolate.
Color me suspicious.
Sugar does not survive heat/cold. There is no way sugar exists in space. None.
Somehow 50 million tons of sugar survived atmospheric entry with a burnpoint of 392 degrees F.
OK.
Could it have been Brown Sugar?
4 billion years ago, Earth didn't have much of an atmosphere. Fascinating theory.
Archived here, by the way:
https://archive.ph/o8CuL
“May have” and “could have.” What would we do without astronomers creating click bait?
Gimme some sugar.
"Last time I checked, life does not arise from none life and nothing can not make all things spring forth from nothing."
You "checked" that where?
Aggie said...
4 billion years ago, Earth didn't have much of an atmosphere. Fascinating theory.
The earth was a giant ball of burning gas and iron with some rocks stuck to it until about 4.4 billion years ago where evidence suggests we had deep settled oceans. But there were millions of years of super heated vapor being expelled into the atmosphere and vaporizing on contact with the earth's surface.
By the time we had oceans we had atmosphere. Water does not exist on the surface without atmosphere to hold it down.
Sugar either burned in the atmospheric entry or it burned in the super heated vapor field around the earth before oceans or it turned to carbon on the molten iron blob before that.
"Sugar does not survive heat/cold. There is no way sugar exists in space. None."
Spectral data would be pretty conclusive.
What do you think cold does to it?
50 million long tons is not really very much, world production is 200 million per year. And in Hadean time the surface was typically molten anyway. So I don’t see a big deal except for a bit of carbon, which would have become deadly CO2 anyway.
The argument that earth was too hot for the sugar to have stayed together misses a point. Presumably, the sugar kept raining down on earth while earth continued to cool. There would come a point where earth was no longer too hot.
Does this mean that it's OK to like "Brown Sugar" again?
And as to "it would have burned up on entry", I think it would have "floated" down. Do you think 50 million tons of feathers dumped in the upper atmosphere would burn up before reaching the ground? I don't.
But this was erythrulose and not sucrose, erythrulose is a lower molecular weight sugar found in raspberries, and it would decompose above 150 degc. So molten rock would not be a good place to keep it, 4 billion years ago.
Aw, hell. Tcrosse got there first.
I prefer Pratchett's theory: Rincewind accidently left his egg sandwich in a tidal pool way back when and the life from that colonized the earth.
"Bitch" was my safety school. But "Brown Sugar" is the genuine article.
The Hadean had an on and off molten surface due to massive meteor bombardment which generated heat, in perspective 50mm tonnes would be 8 × 10⁻¹⁵ of the earth's mass, so it would have to be concentrated locally to be a significant regent for dna synthesis. I’m just saying that this sugar would need to be pretty damned lucky to remain undecomposed under cyclic melting in that environment.
Big sugar strikes again. Everybody knows we are made of carbon. This is just more anti-carbon green propaganda.
You can make lemonade with blood and bones. ;-)
"I’m just saying that this sugar would need to be pretty damned lucky to remain undecomposed under cyclic melting in that environment."
I
And there would come a day when the cyclic melting would have ceased but the sugar would still be raining down.
damn touchscreens
Drop me like a bomb baby come and get it on.
LOL.
How do they propose to test their belief?
“ And there would come a day when the cyclic melting would have ceased but the sugar would still be raining down.”
Yes, I kind of like the sound of the Hadean Eon, sounds fun, but I was not there at the time so I don’t really know. Perhaps I could have met up with some hot little dna fragments.
I've always liked the name Hadean; sounds hellish. And Archean; sounds old. Proterozoic doesn't float my boat.
So long as it wasn't refined sugar
When did the chocolate and peanuts fall out of the sky?
So Velikovsky was right. Manna did rain down from heaven.
>"Last time I checked, life does not arise from none life and nothing can not make all things spring forth from nothing."
You "checked" that where?<
Well, no one's been able to make it happen so far, even under the most ideal conditions.
When I was a kid, I loved the "mix up some primordial soup and run electricity through it like lightning striking early oceans, and you get amino acids, the Building Blocks of Life" thing. But as far as I know, they've never gotten beyond that in "creating life." The experiments that purport to create primitive single cells start with primitive cell components rather than from chemical ingredients, and as some have pointed out in discussing the necessary timescale, any failure in a sequence of events in, say, combination of amino acids to create proto-DNA has to start over from the very beginning*, not from where the error occurred. Even starting from after the black box of "life from non-life," getting to sexual reproduction from asexual requires two living entities that are in the same place at the same time with the same crazy mutation(s) that would prevent** them from reproducing themselves single-handedly, so to speak.
* I remember my paleo prof's discussion of the development of eyes. Having simply light-sensitive cells could provide an evolutionary advantage over a critter without them. Then more discerning light-sensitive cells, then light- and shape-sensitive cells, etc. But that process starts the clock way after "life from non-life," or even single- to multicellular life.
* I am aware that there are pretty complex lifeforms - some frogs, for instance - that can reproduce either sexually or asexually (though it seems that they don't "choose" sexual reproduction unless there's no sexual alternative, of memory serves). I've often wondered why that didn't catch on - seems like a very advantageous trait to have.
>"Last time I checked, life does not arise from none life and nothing can not make all things spring forth from nothing."
You "checked" that where?<
1. There has never been any evidence of life arising.
2. I paid attention to what the word "nothing" means.
"Well, no one's been able to make it happen so far, even under the most ideal conditions."
In 1900, 1800, 1700, … mankind couldn't fly. But I didn't mean to suggest that we could do it.
"1. There has never been any evidence of life arising."
Look around.
>"1. There has never been any evidence of life arising."
Look around.<
O. Mike! Clearly that meant "arising from non-life." If we were just talking about reproduction, the conversation would be over.
As to flight: flight preexisted us by many millions of years. Gliding, which is more or less what we do in planes except with the addition of propulsion, for even longer, if we're reading the fossil record correctly. (Non-fixed-wing flight - I'm pretty sure, but have not looked it up, that there were flying insects before there were gliding critters with internal skeletons. It would make sense since we define "insect" as, in part, having wings.) Mechanical flight is a variation on a theme rather than an actual innovation.
Life, things that employ biochemical metabolism rather than inorganic chemical reactions to reproduce themselves and to continue their own existence*, is not a variation on the theme of non-life. I'd add that it seems to me that human consciousness IS a variation on the theme of self-consciousness or self-awareness - there are plenty of animals that have these - but at some point consciousness was also a brand-new thing, or near as dammit to one. Avoidance of danger, like a single-celled critter avoiding an amoeba, implies some rudimentary awareness of either danger or other, or both, and serves the function of supporting the prey critter's ability to reproduce, but SELF-consciousness for no other function than seeing oneself in a mirror and not being scared or attracted - that's different.
Of course I'm making all this up over coffee.
* Including this definition of life. I know biologists use some definition that contracts inorganic and organic processes, but this probably isn't it.
Sigh. I meant "contrasts," of course.
"O. Mike! Clearly that meant "arising from non-life."
I understood. My comment stands. We have a whole planet full of life where none was at the beginning.
God liked sugar in his coffee before his one and only week of work.
We got some troubles but they won't last
We're gonna lay right down here in the grass
And pretty soon all our troubles will pass
'cause we're in shoo-shoo-shoo, shoo-shoo-shoo
Shoo-shoo, shoo-shoo, shoo-shoo Sugar World.
So it was a mixed blessing.
Life was created on earth.
But everything was sticky afterwards.
And don't get me started about the flies.
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