How to really screw up abiogenisis research.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If life came here from "somewhere else", it would be very unlikely that we would ever learn the conditions in which life first started. Yes or no?

[Trolldor]

No more impossible than knowing how life started on Earth. It'd be just as intangible.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

No more impossible than knowing how life started on Earth. It'd be just as intangible.

But if it started here there MIGHT be a clue somewhere/somehow. Not very likely at all, but not "impossible".

[Trolldor]

Idiom.

There's no reason to suspect if life started elsewhere that we'd be more unlikely to find any evidence of how it began.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Idiom.

There's no reason to suspect if life started elsewhere that we'd be more unlikely to find any evidence of how it began.

Why?

[Mr P]

However life started it's still likely to be down to chemistry, the same rules will still apply wherever the origin lies.

[Trolldor]

Because it's an unknown. You can't raise a proability on something as vague as 'elsewhere'.

[Trolldor]

However life started it's still likely to be down to chemistry, the same rules will still apply wherever the origin lies.

Except that the younger the Universe is, the more the laws differ from ours.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

However life started it's still likely to be down to chemistry, the same rules will still apply wherever the origin lies.

So we figure out the rules and determine what conditions are needed? If life started on Earth we MIGHT find out the conditions and determine the rules from that. Not so much if "elsewhere."

[Trolldor]

However life started it's still likely to be down to chemistry, the same rules will still apply wherever the origin lies.

So we figure out the rules and determine what conditions are needed? If life started on Earth we MIGHT find out the conditions and determine the rules from that. Not so much if "elsewhere."

Where is elsewhere?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

However life started it's still likely to be down to chemistry, the same rules will still apply wherever the origin lies.

So we figure out the rules and determine what conditions are needed? If life started on Earth we MIGHT find out the conditions and determine the rules from that. Not so much if "elsewhere."

Where is elsewhere?

To keep it simple, say Mars.

[Trolldor]

We can travel to Mars, we could probably set up a stationary colony, develop equipment. Why couldn't we find evidence on Mars?

[Trolldor]

Mild alternative:
If we could, why would it necessarily be ahrder? Could be we dig four feet down and discover everything.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We can travel to Mars, we could probably set up a stationary colony, develop equipment. Why couldn't we find evidence on Mars?

But until we do, we're missing something or other, some exotic compound we'd never find on Earth. [/speculation]

[Trolldor]

And until we do, we don't know that we're missing anything.