Theory proposed in "Origin" by Dan Brown

[TrumanB]

I've finished this book today and although Brown may not be the best thriller writer in the world in this book he suggested an interesting theory on how life started. He probably didn't just make it up, it's more likely that he heard of it or read it somewhere. If you have not read the book I will present it here with my limited aptitude.

In short, the law of entropy caused the creation of life from zero. The entropy will always increase within a closed system. To put it simple, from elements come life to maximize the utilization of free energy from the environment. 

If this is true we don't really need God who created life, it's jut a law of physics. Then we may was that law created by someone or not. 
Professor Langdon in the book thinks that the intelligence behind is needed to put information in DNA but he is just a fictional character.

I'd like to know what real nerds from this forum think! 

[+and-then]

I'm definitely NOT a nerd but I've always had a good eyeroll when I see these explanations of how life came to be.  I'm a pretty simple person and make no claims to deep or profound scientific knowledge but they always seem to breeze past the biggest question.  I can live with the "big bang" and that's where most of these explanations begin.  They can become VERY involved and I have no idea if they are correct but I've never really gotten a solid answer about what was happening an hour before the "bang"?

[zep73]

3 minutes ago, and then said:

I've never really gotten a solid answer about what was happening an hour before the "bang"?

Before BB time itself was frozen. The concept had no meaning.. It defrosted at the BB.

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, TrumanB said:

I've finished this book today and although Brown may not be the best thriller writer in the world in this book he suggested an interesting theory on how life started. He probably didn't just make it up, it's more likely that he heard of it or read it somewhere. If you have not read the book I will present it here with my limited aptitude.

In short, the law of entropy caused the creation of life from zero. The entropy will always increase within a closed system. To put it simple, from elements come life to maximize the utilization of free energy from the environment. 

If this is true we don't really need God who created life, it's jut a law of physics. Then we may was that law created by someone or not. 
Professor Langdon in the book thinks that the intelligence behind is needed to put information in DNA but he is just a fictional character.

I'd like to know what real nerds from this forum think! 

He not the only one.

God hasn't been required for creation for some time now. Stephen Hawking might be where he got it from, he was something of a pioneer in these areas. 

[zep73]

1 hour ago, TrumanB said:

from elements come life to maximize the utilization of free energy from the environment.

That's pop-science taken to the extreme. And utter BS.

Life was a matter of atomic/molecular mechanisms. Life is chemistry. What we still lack to figure out is how those simple mechanisms became so complex as to include reproduction.

[+and-then]

25 minutes ago, zep73 said:

Before BB time itself was frozen. The concept had no meaning.. It defrosted at the BB.

Okay.  Perhaps I didn't phrase the question well.  I'm less concerned with the concept of time than the lack of understanding of how the infinite amount of mass and energy we can detect out in the universe came into being at the moment of the big bang.  Is that not saying that everything came from nothing?

[zep73]

7 minutes ago, and then said:

Okay.  Perhaps I didn't phrase the question well.  I'm less concerned with the concept of time than the lack of understanding of how the infinite amount of mass and energy we can detect out in the universe came into being at the moment of the big bang.  Is that not saying that everything came from nothing?

Something from nothing happens all the time in space. It's something that can be reproduced in a lab without much trouble. It's called quantum fluctuation.

No one knows where the energy from quantum fluctuation comes from. We just know, with absolute certainty, that it exists and it comes and goes.

One theory is that the universe itself is one very big and very slow quantum fluctuation. But size and time is relative.

Edited May 24, 2022 by zep73

[papageorge1]

2 hours ago, TrumanB said:

 
Professor Langdon in the book thinks that the intelligence behind is needed to put information in DNA but he is just a fictional character.

That's kind of what I think. Intelligence fostered the process. When I try to understand DNA I have to ask; 'and this came about HOW?'.

[zep73]

16 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

That's kind of what I think. Intelligence fostered the process. When I try to understand DNA I have to ask; 'and this came about HOW?'.

Be patient. They have to recreate a process that took millions of years. Won't just happen in one lifetime.

[papageorge1]

17 minutes ago, zep73 said:

Be patient. They have to recreate a process that took millions of years. Won't just happen in one lifetime.

Not sure I understood this reply. Who is the 'They'? Do you mean scientists trying to create DNA from raw materials of early earth?

I was talking about the mindboggling complexity and for DNA to do what it does. 

[zep73]

4 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

Who is the 'They'?

Hard working scientists who are eager to learn the truth about life, like you. Oh wait, you have faith, you don't need truth... Or do you?

 

5 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

Do you mean scientists trying to create DNA from raw materials of early earth?

And much more. DNA was just one of many elements.

[papageorge1]

2 minutes ago, zep73 said:

Hard working scientists who are eager to learn the truth about life, like you. Oh wait, you have faith, you don't need truth... Or do you?

I don't have faith really. I just believe what is most believable about life. And DNA and complex life with no intelligent fostering just seems fantastic and almost impossible (but I guess not completely impossible). 

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

5 hours ago, and then said:

Okay.  Perhaps I didn't phrase the question well.  I'm less concerned with the concept of time than the lack of understanding of how the infinite amount of mass and energy we can detect out in the universe came into being at the moment of the big bang.  Is that not saying that everything came from nothing?

There is a theory that right before the Big Bang was a moment of stasis between “ganb gib” and “Big Bang” (ie the end of the previous universe after it collapsed into an unltradense “blob” of everything. 

[Abramelin]

On 5/24/2022 at 3:35 AM, zep73 said:

Before BB time itself was frozen. The concept had no meaning.. It defrosted at the BB.

Not to nitpick, but time wasn't 'frozen', it didn't exist.

[zep73]

1 hour ago, Abramelin said:

Not to nitpick, but time wasn't 'frozen', it didn't exist.

Yes, the standard model. That's another possibility. But the standard model is in a crisis these days. And we just don't know anything about pre-bigbang.
If conformal cyclic cosmology is right, it was frozen. So that's a safer bet than not existing.

[Abramelin]

1 minute ago, zep73 said:

Yes, the standard model. That's another possibility. But the standard model is in a crisis these days. And we just don't know anything about pre-bigbang.
If conformal cyclic cosmology is right, it was frozen. So that's a safer bet than not existing.

I am not going to argue about that, but I think the main reason they've changed it into time being frozen is, that no one can possibly have any idea about 'non-existence'. That's for me the main reason people came up with things like an afterlife or reincarnation.

[zep73]

42 minutes ago, Abramelin said:

I am not going to argue about that, but I think the main reason they've changed it into time being frozen is, that no one can possibly have any idea about 'non-existence'. That's for me the main reason people came up with things like an afterlife or reincarnation.

I concur. And I'm not a supporter of CCC, I just accept it as a possibility.

 

Edited May 26, 2022 by zep73