WOWIE, Wowie wowie!

That was one hell of a program!

OMG! The Christians, what must they be thinking? Who cares what they think? But understand this, I'm sure the Christians will try to stop this progress.

Can't view it, but the title seems to be something interesting to watch from home tonight.

If it is about creation of life in the lab, I believe the ready made response lies on the scientists having created it.

thankfully we now have a chemist , not a biologist, who is willing to question the very fundamentals of life. It shouldnt be surprising the a chemist is doing it, because biology is possible through chemistry. What however is disappointing is that it took this long since darwins theory of evolution. If it didnt take long and mass were just ignorant of other pioneers of such an idea, then once again the fault lies with media's ignorance.

Zwaarddijk wrote:at times some of the wordings he used sounded a bit pseudoscientific, altho' this might just be the result of the presentation. I am sure the applications and actual science behind the results is valid, and I am writing this like six hours after actually watching the video. this summary of my position is basically mostly a reminder to myself to explain and specify what about his wording I find odd, and I promise to do so tomorrow or the day after that, and also to find out whether anyone else had the same kind of reacting to it.

I agree his presentation wasn't all that great, but if you look past it, it's very interesting and what he is trying to accomplish sounds reasonable. I am more than eagerly waiting for results.

Guys, making life from non-living chemicals was done over 40 years ago now:
http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

some more stuff by the guy

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20906-lifelike-cells-are-made-of-metal.html

Is there any process in nature that is going to make these polyoxometalates or produce the spheres?

I noticed this paragraph: "Cronin and his team begin by creating salts from negatively charged ions of the large metal oxides bound to a small positively charged ion such as hydrogen or sodium. A solution of this salt is squirted into another salt solution made of large, positively charged organic ions bound to small negative ones." That's 2 separate salt solutions and a process to squirt one into another. Is there any process in nature that would do this?

While I think the work is fun and interesting, it is a future poster-child for Intelligent Design.

lucaspa wrote:Is there any process in nature that is going to make these polyoxometalates or produce the spheres?

I noticed this paragraph: "Cronin and his team begin by creating salts from negatively charged ions of the large metal oxides bound to a small positively charged ion such as hydrogen or sodium. A solution of this salt is squirted into another salt solution made of large, positively charged organic ions bound to small negative ones." That's 2 separate salt solutions and a process to squirt one into another. Is there any process in nature that would do this?

While I think the work is fun and interesting, it is a future poster-child for Intelligent Design.

Not that I'm aware of but Calilasseia may know. I do know of hypothesis of origin in ice and origin in porous rock as those environments could keep reagents in good concentration and could build organic molecules needed for life. You're right though, ID could try to hijack this for themselves but I doubt that since they would be giving up position in order to use it imo.

Sovereign wrote:Not that I'm aware of but Calilasseia may know. I do know of hypothesis of origin in ice and origin in porous rock as those environments could keep reagents in good concentration and could build organic molecules needed for life. You're right though, ID could try to hijack this for themselves but I doubt that since they would be giving up position in order to use it imo.

Notice what I bolded, your use of "organic". That is the misconception everyone on the board has. Cronin is working with INorganic material, not the stuff that makes up you or me. If you look at the portion I quoted, Cronin is making metal oxides.

Now, Cronin is apparently unaware of the work by Sidney Fox that I referenced. Did you read it? Yes, it is easy to get a living cell from ORGANIC material. It's been done. Cronin is acting like all this is unknown.

What Cronin is doing is using "intelligent design" to INORGANIC life. He bans carbon, the essential element for our organic life. Now that is playing directly into the analogy argument of Intelligent Design. They are going to say: "Cronin has to use a laboratory and design his molecules of inorganic life. Organic life, by analogy, also need an intelligent designer."