Getting Closer To Understanding How Life Began

"Scientists believe that all life on Earth originated from one single organism, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, LUCA. Now, researchers have uncovered evidence that LUCA was much more complex than previously thought, which is puzzling because it didn’t have a lot of time to evolve. This seems to suggest that life can come into being much faster than we thought. Let’s take a look."

Click on the link below for a YouTube video explaining the new information:

Life Began Much Faster Than We Thought

What Causes The Chemical And Physical Properties Of Elements?

"Why are some of elements gases, liquids, or solids? Why are they different colors? What is the root cause of the physical properties of different elements? The simple answer is that it’s the element’s nuclear properties and behavior of its electrons that determines its chemical properties and physical properties."

Click on the link below for the details:

How Elements Get Their Properties

Another Biogenesis Hypothesis

"Scientists have long speculated that life didn’t begin on Earth but in space. According to a new preprint, life could have come from intergalactic gas clouds, so-called molecular clouds."

Click on the link below for a 6-minute video presenting the idea:

Life Could Have Begun in an Interstellar Dust Cloud

A "Knotty" Subject (But Not Pornography)

"There is an entire branch of math simply devoted to knots – and it has changed the world. We’ll rope you in."

Click on the link below for a fascinating look at a subject that relates to not only math but also chemistry, biology, and physics:

How the Most Useless Branch of Math Could Save Your Life

The Case FOR And AGAINST Fine Tuning

"Arguments for fine-tuning: Physics has many constants like the charge of the electron, the gravitational constant, Planck’s constant. If any of their values were different, our universe, as we know it, would not be the same, and life would probably not exist."

Click on the link below for one of the best cases for fine-tuning of our reality. The bad news for theists: it's still not enough to put God in the gap of our knowledge.

Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Life?

Don't look to PragerU for an objective answer

No Soul, No Afterlife

There are many ways to falsify religious claims. Sean Carroll always seems to be able to communicate ways of doing so with succinctness, clarity, and humor. Here in this video, he presents the following FACTS:

• Our reality involves atoms (chemistry) ONLY.
• Life emerged from chemistry.
• At death, our atoms disperse from our bodies and stay within our natural reality.
• Thus, there is no support for a supernatural "Soul" or for our brains being conduits for a universal "Consciousness."
• Free Will: Humans can't overrule the laws of physics but are rational agents with the ability to make choices.

Sooooo, to religious apologists: Why do you ignore reality understood by science?

Click on the link below:

Has Science Refuted Religion?

This link is also worthwhile to watch:

You don't have free will, but don't worry

Dark Matter

"Dark matter is the most mysterious, non-interacting substance in the Universe. Its gravitational effects are necessary to explain the rotation of galaxies, the motions of clusters, and the largest scale-structure in the entire Universe. But on smaller scales, it’s too sparse and diffuse to impact the motion of the Solar System, the matter here on Earth, or the origin and evolution of humans in any meaningful way. Yet the gravity that dark matter provides is an absolute necessity for allowing our galaxy to hold onto the raw ingredients that made life like us and planets like Earth possible at all. Without dark matter, the Universe would likely have no signs of life at all."

Is Dark Matter Required For Life To Exist?

Closer To Understanding The Origin Of Life?

"The molecular dance that led to the origin of life billions of years ago remains one of the deepest mysteries in modern science. Though the exact choreography is forever lost to time, scientists now say they may have identified one of the key steps."

‘RNA world’ inches closer to explaining origins of life

"Two researchers at the famous Szostak Lab at Harvard University describe their respective contributions to scientific understanding of the emergence of life. Two essentials of life are (a) self-replication and (b) a membrane. Dr. Matthew W. Powner, a Research Fellow at the Szostak Lab, explains the breakthrough he and his colleagues made in the reconstruction of the origin of nucleotides, the basic material of self-replication. Itay Budin, a doctoral candidate in the Szostak Lab, explains the acclaimed model he devised for the development of lipid membranes on the early Earth. Both projects provide clues to the origins of the earliest stages of life."

Groundbreaking Research on the Origins of Life

Some other links supporting the probability that life came from chemistry. No God is necessary:

https://www.amazon.com/What-Life-Chemistry-Becomes-Landmark-ebook/dp/B008RYSKKS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrAi83YNWq0&feature=share