Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroid Sample

Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by gradus_ad on Monday July 01, 2024 @11:08AM (#40846522)

For life to emerge in the span of a few million years within liquid interiors of early solar system bodies, life would need to be a relatively high probability event. I don't think this changes the probability of life calculus vs the traditional life emerging on Earth story.

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by marcosdumay on Monday July 01, 2024 @11:56AM (#40847043)

Unless life can only appear on that kind of environment for some reason.

It's hard to imagine any such reason. Honestly I don't think there's any to find. But it's still an open question.

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by pfdietz on Monday July 01, 2024 @11:32AM (#40846787)

No, that's wrong. You're ignoring that if it didn't happen, we wouldn't be here to see the result. Observer selection bias. The less common OoL is, the more biased our observation is.

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by gradus_ad on Monday July 01, 2024 @11:50AM (#40846968)

Observer selection bias is independent of the earth vs non earth body question, it's an issue regardless.

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by pfdietz on Monday July 01, 2024 @11:52AM (#40846984)

Yes, it also demolishes the naïve Copernican argument that because life is on Earth, it must be common.

The more subtle argument was that because life originated early on Earth, OoL must be a high probability event. But that argument implicitly assumes the probability of OoL is relatively constant with time, so it wouldn't be biased to occur early. OoL on small planetesimals is naturally biased to occur early, due to decay of those short lived radioisotopes. After the planetesimals freeze OoL there doesn't seem possible.

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by pvaldes on Monday July 01, 2024 @04:24PM (#40850259)

Ok. What is an Ool?

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by blagund on Monday July 01, 2024 @05:12PM (#40850751)

Watch the movie Caveman to find out! Ool anyone?

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by erikig on Monday July 01, 2024 @05:23PM (#40850853)

In this context "Origins of life"

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by pvaldes on Monday July 01, 2024 @06:52PM (#40851701)

I would suggest replacing 'Ool' by 'origin of life' or even better just 'life' then. Is much easier to understand and it just adds one character to the term

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by superposeur on Monday July 01, 2024 @03:52PM (#40849877)

I would think this point would be obvious, but apparently not given the many frustrating discussions I’ve had with smart people on the topic. (Maybe there is a subtlety I’m not appreciating?) It’s a relief to see the good solid sense in all your comments on this thread.

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by pavel_lishin on Monday July 01, 2024 @11:29AM (#40846757)

If there were enough of these warm, water-bearing bodies, then the probability could be low and still result in early life formation, right?

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by pfdietz on Monday July 01, 2024 @11:41AM (#40846885)

Especially if the "enough" is "enough around any star, anywhere". The a priori probability of it happening around any particular star need not be high. And "anywhere" can be something extremely broad, as in "on any branch of a universal Many Worlds wave function".

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Re:Surprising Phosphate Finding in NASA's Osiris-Rex Asteroi... by gradus_ad on Monday July 01, 2024 @11:57AM (#40847056)

Yes but the window of time during which these bodies could have contained liquid water was very narrow, so there would have needed to be a very high number of such bodies to support the low probability of life hypothesis

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