Posted: Dec 20, 2017 12:17 pm
zulumoose wrote:How do we know that they weren't successful?
A fair point, given the grounds for "success" are not specified and some of those species could have existed for millions of years, which is more than homo sapiens has managed.
If "success" is taken to mean that those abiogenesis events lead to species that are alive today, then as we know all extant life on earth is genetically related, it would be unlikely that any of that was the result of a different abiogenesis event. I say that, without knowing what the likelihood of abiogenesis events producing identical genetic material area.
zulumoose wrote:How do we know that there weren't multiple identical or similar abiogenesis events in the same period in areas where the conditions were similar?
Exactly!
zulumoose wrote:How could we realistically determine that we are all descended from event A in a muddy puddle X many years ago, but no current life on earth, not even a simple virus, could be descended from event B in a similar muddy puddle 1000 years later 100 km away, etc?
Viruses are not considered to be life.
Beyond that, aside from the genetics issue, we don't know.