*life
In: Earth Science
No body really knows, there is also the problem that “life” is not really that well defined and the line between alive and not alive can sometimes be a bit blurry.
but how ever it happened we call it [Abiogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis) tho there are many different hypothesis of how it actually took place they may all be wrong tho.
Our best current hypothesis goes like this:
* The building blocks for RNA can be found in nature. Given enough time, those building blocks assembled into strands of RNA by pure chemical means by chance.
* RNA is unusual in that it can both be replicated (that is, it works as a genetic material) and can cause certain chemical reactions to happen faster (that is, it can play the same role as proteins do in modern biology). This led to some RNA strands catalyzing reactions that made those RNA strands reproduce or be more stable in their environment. These RNA strands became self-reproducing and exercised control over their environment in a way that depended on their structure, meaning that they were arguably the first living things. Examples of these isolated RNA “organisms” exist today in the form of plant diseases called [viroids](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viroid).
* Structures similar to cell membranes can form without the intervention of life, by purely chemical means. Some of those membranes eventually wrapped around a strand of RNA from the previous step. This allowed the RNA to work within a controlled environment.
* These membranes-around-RNA-strands (what you could loosely call the first cells) figured out how to duplicate their RNA and to split the membrane, in such a way that they maintained control over their internal environment. At this stage, cells (and not RNA strands by themselves) became the fundamental building blocks of life.
* A specific kind of RNA, what we’d now call tRNA, developed that could use RNA as a template to build proteins. This was better than the RNA doing things itself, because a single authoritative copy of the RNA could be kept and used as a template for thousands of proteins. At this point, proteins became the main (though not the only) functional molecules within a cell, with RNA taking a back seat in the role of pure genetic material.
* DNA’s building blocks can also be found in nature. DNA is a bit harder to assemble, and more importantly can’t directly “do things” like RNA can. Because RNA can cause the formation of other RNA or proteins, it could create a new type of RNA that “copies” information off of DNA (what we would now call mRNA). Because DNA is much harder to damage than RNA and can be more easily repaired because errors can be detected from mismatch between its strands, DNA became the main way to store information in cells. RNA was now neither the main genetic material nor the main functional molecule, and instead took on a role as an intermediate between DNA (genetic material) and proteins (functional molecules).
It’s around this point that the last universal common ancestor – the single cell that would ultimately produce all cellular life on Earth today – lived. All cells known today:
* use DNA as their genetic material,
* use DNA to produce RNA according to a specific mechanism,
* use that RNA to produce proteins through a code that is almost universal among living things (a very few organisms later evolved slight modifications),
* and use those proteins to carry on the functions of life,
* within a cell membrane of phospholipids that separates the cell from its environment.
Other kinds of life probably existed at this time, but none of their descendants have survived to the present day. Note that modern cells actually do carry remnants of this very early world, with [RNA acting as a catalyst](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme) in specific parts of even modern cells.
The theory I’ve summarized above is the “RNA world” hypothesis. It’s generally the best-accepted theory today, but there are a number of competing theories that are also possible; it’s possible we’ll never truly know the answer to this question. Our best guess is that this process happened over a few hundred million years, beginning somewhere between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago (shortly after the formation of the Earth), probably at volcanic vents in the ocean.
It’s a bit easier to grasp when you reflect that life is just chemistry and physics.
That’s happening all around us all the time whether it’s in life or not.
Asking why “dead” things can make life is kinda like asking why sand, metal, and plastic can become computers, or why simple atoms can become the Himalayas.
No atom in your body is “alive” yet the aggregate…is. Nifty things can happen when lots and lots of things come together in specific ways.
Are you failing your God Apprenticeship 101 and looking for some online help?
“Life” is just chemistry and physics of a myriad of compounds. The same laws and reactions govern the interactions of “dead” matter. There really is no fundamental difference between “living” and “dead” matter.
This makes your question confusing and hard to answer – there really cannot be a clear cut answer on how A turned into B, if there is no celarly defined difference between the to begin with. I guess the answer would be “It didn’t – the chemical system just got more complicated, but it’s still not that different”.
Electricity is needed to generate consciousness and it is used by our nervous systems to transmit information and to my mind, that process holds the secret to life.
I will get voted down to Hades for saying it but I believe the Universe is comscious and we all have souls. Those things invested matter with life.
I highly doubt that it happened as described in any religious text, but I also don’t buy the notion that matter animated itself through mechanistic means. And, as of now, there is no proof it happened the way that has been hypothesized by mainstream science. it is all theoretical.
One of life’s biggest mysteries is as yet unsolved, so I doubt any ELI5 will give you the answers.
There is no live matter. There is no dead matter. The atoms in your body are no different to the atoms of the wooden table you’re leaning against. Your body incorporates atoms that are exactly the same as the stone floor you’re standing on.
Life is a process, a particular configuration of atoms where they make up one or more cells, and those cells are capable of replicating themselves. Theoretically we could study a cell well enough to assemble the right atoms in the right configuration and we would “create” life.
How we got from a state where there was no life to the first self replicating system is a matter for much debate. It seems likely though that this step is not actually very difficult, however in a world that is now full of life anything naturally arising from these processes would be immediately consumed by something who’s ancestry goes back billions of years and is specialized in generally eating anything the same size as it.
Occam’s Razor, put simply, states: “the simplest solution is almost always the best.”
There is a Creator of life. Every attempt at explaining life from dead matter is a far reach.
they didn’t. consciousness comes first. there is only consciousness, expressing as physical matter, in its various forms.
Actually ELI5. There used to be a ton of chemicals in the ocean. They would just mix and combine into new chemicals as time passed. Most of them did nothing, but eventually a chemical was made that could copy itself using other chemicals around it.
Naturally, this chemical took over because there was no other chemical doing the same thing. It had the whole ocean to itself. But as it copied itself, some copies were imperfect. Most of the imperfections would just stop the chemical from being able to copy itself ever again, but sometimes they would make the chemical do something new. Such as make the surrounding environment more toxic to its other cousin chemicals.
Repeat this brute force method of chemicals mixing and copying themselves enough, and you get a cell. The cell goes through the same process, and you get multicellular life.
See, life is just about making copies. All other things like blood and math and music are just parts of that.
Latest Answers