Mimicking an impact on Earth’s early atmosphere yields all 4 RNA bases

Re:Mimicking an impact on Earth’s early atmosphere yields al... by JumpCrisscross on Thursday April 13, 2017 @04:12PM (#14110540)

You may be looking for the RNA world hypothesis [1] [2]. In essence, random bits of RNA combine and replicate "in the wild". The bits that replicate better become more prevalent, et cetera, et cetera. This system needs no metabolic process per se. Heating and cooling and/or an oscillating chemical environment , e.g. from the day and night cycle or the tides or a belching vent, could provide the energy to power these cycles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1xnYFCZ9Yg

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Re:Mimicking an impact on Earth’s early atmosphere yields al... by mtdewcmu on Thursday April 13, 2017 @05:03PM (#14110909)

Hmm. I could see the day-night cycle as creating the large molecules of organic junk that the life, or proto-life, springs from and eventually eats.

It seems like having big molecules of junk lying around would set the stage for self-replicating processes to be able to "eat" the junk molecules and put the energy into synthesizing its own molecules.

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