Posted: Mar 31, 2010 3:50 pm
rainbow wrote:Rumraket wrote:rainbow wrote:Better replicators, like RNA would have totally replaced any simpler precursors, and since we are talking about events that happened over 3.8 billion years ago, much, if not all information could be lost.
Invisible Pink Unicorns might also exist, but we have no way of knowing either, do we?
It's a bad equivocation. By inference from evolutionary principles we would have reason to believe in increasingly reliable and complex replicators. Obviously we can't just assert it, but there is a basis for researching the possiblity.
In contrast, we don't have any empirical evidence on which to assert the existence of pink Unicorns. On that basis, I think it would also be a waste of time and research money to start looking for them.
Absolutely no doubt, I'd like to see research on making a simpler replicator. A little collection of molecules that can make copies of itself, and sometimes making mistakes in that copying - leading to an improved, evolved version.
It would not even need to be based on the exact same chemistry of known life.
The applications in medicine and industry could be enormous.
Money well spent, I would say.
That's the idea here. There probably are novel applications but for replication today we can just hijack bacteria.