We know living things come from other living things. But how did the VERY FIRST living thing get here? Did it just pop out of nowhere? Can scientists make new life from scratch? If we took all the ingredients for life and put them on another planet, would life start there too after a long, long time?
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So personally I don’t find this so mysterious, here’s my hypothesis. It was an unlikely event yes, but if you know biochemistry, which is just electromagnetism applied to molecules (duh not really but…), you will know that certain molecules bind electromagnetically to other molecules because of the way they are shaped and what they are made of (which atoms). Molecules can be large and complex, like proteins, and the other molecules they bind to can be small or large, as long as they are electromagnetically compatible. So far so good.
The thing is that when a molecule binds to another molecule, that changes the electromagnetical property of the whole. You kind of can see this effect if you have ever played with those small magnetic balls and you put them together in various shapes.
Ok, that’s the setup. Now imagine, in the primordial soup of organic molecules, created by mixing and matching smaller molecules, some on its own, some by external force, such as lightning, a molecule of some complexity happened to be created by these natural electromagnetic forces.
This particular molecule happened to be so formed by chance, that electromagnetically, it attracted and bound to itself smaller molecules, that piece by piece formed a replica of itself, one piece here and one piece there. These smaller molecules, which must have existed in abundance in the soup by then, could only attach themselves, electromagnetically compatible, to the place in the “mother” molecule, where they had a twin piece, and small molecule by small molecule, this created a replica of the mother molecule, attached to it.
And here’s the kicker: as the last small molecule “clicked” into place, the sum total of the electromagnetic forces now made the two identical parts split, or at least become so loosly attached, that it split easily due to external forces.
Now you have a mother and a child molecule, identical, that can repeat the process. Which was just what happened, and very soon, and exponentially, the soup was full of these self replicating molecules.
Once the soup was a bit full of these 1st gen self replicaters and the smaller “food” molecules were becoming more scarce, evolutionary mechanisms would kick in. Probably some of the replicaters changed its molecular structure a little (so a “mutation”) by happenstance so that it could cannibalise other replicators for parts (had stronger electromagnetic attraction at that part), then in turn some got a change that attached a non-replicating part to the whole (precursor of cell walls/defense) etc etc.
From there it’s just evolution, but from earlier than a cell, much earlier.
This is speculative of course, but you asked what I think and I think this is one of the more plausible explanations, imho.
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