eli5 – If RNA was created by a soup of chemicals, is it possible that it’s being randomly created in pockets around the world? and could those random rna strands create life out of nowhere?

Question

Sorry If these questions are stupid, I was just randomly thinking about how rna started.

In: 329

Answer 1

I just watched a YT video by astronomy news blogger Anton Petrov related to this question. It’s called the Leventhal paradox. It’s about how rare life in the universe may actually be. Here’s my understanding of it. The protein required for photosynthesis has to be folded in a specific way. Researchers have figured out that the required folding is only 1 out of 10^300 possible combos. Researchers have also estimated that there only 10^30 places in the milky way where this protein can potentially form. That averages out to 1 potential creation of this photosynthesis protein per 10^10 milky way like galaxies.
edit: can’t remember if the numbers are exactly correct, but the scale is right.