Although I can't accept his veiw on the origin of life, everything else about him is worthy of emulation. If I had 10% of his clarity of thought along with the ability to articulate those thoughts, stirred in with a little ambition, "I could take over the world, Pinky"
@@noeldelatorre369 It's a joke. Freeman Dyson was only a physicist -- my favorite even ahead of Feynman. In one of his interviews he even mentions the funny mails he would occasionally get complaining about vacuum cleaners. He replied very good-naturedly that they got the wrong Dyson.
I think Freeman is probably going to end up being right - a non-expert coming in from a physics and math point of view, who happened to notice how everything that happens in nature tends to be as simple as possible, only later leading to complex high level phenomena.
I'm a Biochemist and I really don't agree with the RNA world hypothesis. For once RNA is a very unstable molecule. When a population of those unstable molecules is in competition with each other for replication, their size shrinks to ~200 nucleotides. I don't think it's possible for a gene to evolve from such a small size. Not to mention a little change in temperature, a little decrease in pH can massacre the whole party.
@@aniksamiurrahman6365 A little decrease in temps and PH can end the human race too, but we persist. Proto life evolved first by self assembly, the phenomena is already observed. You're wasting your time if you try to prove the impossibility of what you believe cannot be. Like the atheist trying to prove the non existence of God.
@@gerardjones7881 Yeah, it's definitely not clear from anything I've seen that it first evolved in the way you're stating. Also, it kind of just pushes back the question. If you want to talk about spontaneous self assembly, you have a lot of work cut out for yourself. Like just about everything else in nature, it shouldn't be just totally random, but developed by steady iterative processes like the one Freeman suggested.
There were lots of very large holes in his hypothesis. It's a fun thought exercise, but life is so very much more complicated than "bags of molecules being split by raindrops."
Isaac Asimov said something similar along those lines, but restricting it to the "assembly" of the hemoglobin molecule. After mathematically demonstrating the impossibility of such a molecule coming together, he said, "Nevertheless, it did." Just like you just said.
I just discovered this man through Marvin Minsky (who I also discovered today). This video alone makes me want to study physics and biology. Why has nobody shown this to me when I was 13.
Once you have some basic physics and biology under your belt I'd definitely recommend some biochemistry as a beautiful overlap. I did a Bachelor's degree in it and it answered so many questions. The origin of life is much further solved than this video suggests. Try reading Nick Lane as a primer until you're more confident of the science. But keep going! I have learned so much since leaving school, just try not to run before you can walk! Good luck, there is a beautiful story out there!
I think Freeman Dyson always thought physics and biology more like an Engineer, rather than a typical physicist or a biologist. So he always has a different and unique way of thinking. Which is very interesting.
I think that the idea of Freeman Dyson maybe right for what concerns evolution before the existence of super molecules like DNA or RNA, both being responsible for a more correct form of replication! Usually biologists start seeing evolution and selection after the existence of these large super molecules. We could say that biology starts here! Of coarse there had to be a very important chemical and catalytical evolution to create replicating units of life ( like droplets) long before super molecules like DNA or RNA existed and took over a much much more accurate way of duplication.
Today it is possible to calculate how the vacuum quantum fluctuation look like. What if it is possible to scale up that and try to find out if there is standing waves or structures on larger scales of that?
on the question of replication vs metabolism, that's just a silly semantic question. Freeman is probably right that metabolism came first because how could replication ever happen without metabolism, complete nucleic acids would just have to be floating around ready to replicate or something
@@faybrianhernandez2416 It's the most natural joke -- considering that Freeman Dyson could never be seriously mistaken as the maker of Dyson vacuum cleaners.
So many accidents of chemistry aren't required, matter can and will self assemble. The underlying information is driving it. It can be observed in the video "nature by numbers". The mechanism is very simple. Biology might be complex but nature itself is very simple and elegant. If life was wiped out it would regenerate from nothing but inert matter.
Yes, but if this was the case, I would think the process would be continuing today. However, the chemical constituents probably still exist today, but their concentrations probably don't.
How close does the interviewer need the mike to his face i hear is lung airways moving, and the dam cough, wheezing, nose sounds jesus is interviewer sick with droplets.... i think the physicist is better shape then interviewer
It's a good theory. Most of it seems like it has to be right. Except, idk about the globules part. I bet the first proto-biotic molecules were confined in wet sand or clay. It seems like a cell wall analogue (maybe just foam) had to come later, as an accidentally useful product of a primitive, pre-existing, pre-biotic metabolism. Then it's off to the races.
Metabolism to information-based replication is a hurdle of astronomically proportions. Protein enzymes increase rates to 10^9 to 11th. Life requires responsiveness to changes in environment. Information error rates must be extremely low to permit evolution to work on breeding populations. Current prokaryote error rates are still in the 1 part in millions, and prokaryotes 1 in a billion. But RNA is a very unstable molecule for heredity.
I would like to ask Prof. Dyson something regarding his work with the RAF in WWII. During the First World War, some RFC aircraft were fitted with a weapon on a (Foster) mounting that allowed the pilot to fire the Lewis gun almost vertically. This they employed when attacking German Gotha bombers by flying below them and shooting upwards. The Germans rapidly adapted a gun position in the fuselage floor to counter this tactic. Was this not thought about at all by his department in WWII? If someone had known this and thought about in 1940s terms, perhaps Schraeger Musik would have been rumbled earlier, and many, many lives saved.
If this theory were accurate, then why wouldn't we see multiple origins of life, rather than all life arising from the same genetic origin. Shouldn't we find these non-DNA globules floating around in bodies of water today? Do we?
No, because an organism capable of replication like the organisms we see today would have outcompeted the non-DNA globules. They would make use of a very similar resource pool of organic molecules. A replicating organism that has a well designed metabolic system would be capable of transmitting the plan for this metabolc system near perfectly to its descendants, while these non-DNA globules are not capable of the same feat. Them being outcompeted and essentially dissappearing would be especially true over an extremely long period of time. This is at least how I see it. Also, I wouldn't discard the option that life like this still exists. The planet is large and it might be hard to detect if you are not actively looking for it.
Right, I think if we looked for it, it should still be present. And perhaps we do see non-DNA lipid membranes forming in aqueous solutions, but I doubt it, since he didn't mention it in this video.
By what are you assuming the resources for Non-DNA globules were around to form in the first place? Neil Tyson was talking about this not long ago at some lecture, where he said he could envision finding non-carbon based, dna life-forms, but didn't expect we ever would, simply due to the fact that carbon, hydrogen, the building blocks of life on earth, aren't special in any way and are among the most common elements in the universe.
The non-DNA globules would still make use of organic molecules, that being molecules containing mostly carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The point Dyson is making, is not whether life arose from some other basis than organic molecules but if there were two distinct events in the evolution of DNA-based life: one being the formation of self-sustaining globules, two being the infection by DNA and subsequent fusion of DNA with the globules. Regarding life on another basis than carbon, Cairns-smith has an interesting theory that is related: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Cairns-Smith He is also mentioned in Dyson's excellent book: Origins of life
He has a scientific mind but he still relies on false theories of evolution. Read Universal Model by Dean Sessions where empirical evidence is used instead of theory . What a difference provable evidence is instead of the guessing game per theory.
If his reductionism is true, there ougth to have NON Carbon based life as well which might like cyborgs and altogether different from us. Well it is exciting but we haven't met such beings ever.
Would have been nice if the interviewer in these videos would have had the professionalism to blow his nose and gargle some mouthwash before he sat down. It would have saved us having to listen to his snotting and hacking every time he opened his mouth.
Dr Dyson is a brilliant man, but I do not find his arguments for the origins of life to be compelling. TBH I don't find any explanations compelling yet.
Any attempt to explain the origin of life as some sort of "natural" process invariably fails. If new life forms were capable of arising spontaneously we'd expect to see such new forms arising continuously throughout history, but of course we don't. As should be clear, the origin of life must have involved some highly improbable process, not likely to ever be repeated -- in a lab or anywhere else. By the same token the notion that we can expect to find life on planets similar to ours (the right atmosphere, the right amount of water, etc.) is almost certainly in error. If life could so readily arise in environments similar to ours, it would be arising over and over again right here on Earth, time after time, but of course that is not the case.
But the enviroment is not the same today as it was in the primitive Earth. If any simple "life-form" were creating today, a more complex and advanced life form (like a fish) could destroy it by eating it or by another means.
@@produccionesmbj6914 Correct. Chemical evolution needs a very long time to happen without anything else absorbing or eating it. Also, the earth's atmosphere back then had little or no oxygen. All life today either has to hide from oxygen or possess systems to detoxify its highly oxidative (and destructive) forms. Any complex molecules today that were not eaten or absorbed by organisms would be quickly destroyed by oxidation.
It absolutely does explain a theory of the origin of life. I'm not saying it is correct, but it is feasible. He is basically saying that a very primitive chemistry aped the basic function of a pseudo-cell like structure. Components were held together by some chemical action in the environment. Then that cell was acted upon by the environment which caused it to split into ''sister'' parts (so the parent is gone and the next generation are sisters to the parent cell). The split doesn't copy the former cell, so allows for iteration and change with enough viability for the process to continue generationally. Over a long enough timeline the iteration resulted in divergent attributes and some forms of sister cell drifted towards greater survivability, and/or other greater characteristics that promoted their flourishing. Eventually one line of the sister group found a way to replicate rather than just randomly split into sister cells. It is chemical evolution without strict replication, just division and change.
The late Freeman Dyson was a good mathematician and physicist but origin of life is a physics, chemistry, biochemistry and genetics endeavour. However he was right about the beginning. Coacervates, rock pore contents, liposomes, micelles, proteasomes and aerosols all converged by physicochemical mixing by tides, waves, rains and wet dry cycles of concentration into the first protocells. Too complex to outline here.
When a physicist talks about biology, he underestimates the complexity of a biological systems. . A cell is NOT a “bag” filled with “stuff” and a human being is not a sphere, lol. I have great a respect for the Physics of Dyson but I don’t believe that he is qualified to talk about biology or life.
@@aniksamiurrahman6365 Exactly, Mr Dyson's theory is infinitely simpler and easier to get going than any prevailing theory in the biologists orthodoxy.
@@SardonicALLY Did you ever read Mr. Dyson's theory? His "Origins of life" is my all time favorite. But its not easier. Rather its more abstract, and far more harder. And to this date there's yet not experimental or paleontological evidence supporting his scheme either. However it inspired "Metabolism First" hypothesis and that has bore many fruit. Particularly, despite a strong support for RNA world hypothesis (which is actually the simplest origin or life hypothesis) its now pretty clear that all of metabolism, protein, lipid and RNA has to coexist for life to come to be.
But with cell replication you have an antropic postulate refraction! Your baseline cathalisis is at a very high rate. So under quasi superposition you have a greater risk for self absorbsition distillate far greater than the bar Fenyman or Rose once stressed based on e'2y=(14-'''_6:7-) Am I the only one who comprehended the yields for such a rough and unfetted composition? Dyson misses the point completely and Plank would have laughed out loud. Anyhow as basic as it is surely you get the picture.
When the first fish exited the ocean it had a big advantage because it was alone on land with a bunch of plants to eat and no predators, thus it propagated. The land is pretty competitive for food sources nowadays so even if a fish mutated to have legs it wouldn't exactly be easier for it to thrive making short trips to land as fish once did. It would be far better off staying in the ocean where it has been fine tuned to compete.
It is still going on but people like you don't understand the time scales involved in evolution. If you have children then they resemble you but are different right. Well in a few million yrs it probably wont be humans on the planet but it will be what ever humans become and us today will be regarded as distant ancestors.
um no...this is sheer imagination going now where fast,...there is something about any membrane which more sooner than later will POP% because of low length ultraviolet light, which means there is no time or chance for anything to get itself going, much less a self replicating cell. these "certain grouping of molecules" he is speaking of ....DO WE SEE ANY SUCH MOLECULES THINGAMAGIG THING ANYWHERE TODAY? hello......anybody home?
When scientists got rid of God, they had to find a theory to explain life. Molecules ... probably... probably... evolves...maybe ... I don't care... such language. Now let them produce one cell in the laboratory.
Oh dear. Ignored by biologists for good reason after listening to this. It reminds me of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe getting equally confused about biology and evolution. Contradicting experts usually means you're just plain wrong. I do wish mathematicians, physicists and astronomers would give biologists the courtesy of some basic homework before pontificating.
You didn't say a single substantive thing in your entire post. Which makes you sound highly suspect and weak-minded. The exact type of person who disregards theories for dubious tradition-based reasons and looks like an idiot generations later.
@@EGarrett01. Calm down dear, this is just the "comment" section, not the "explain everything in infinite detail so EGarrett01 can get his little brain round it" section! I'm a post-grad Biochemist with a special interest in the origin of life so I know what I'm talking about. More than this guy...and probably you.
Nope. I knew you were a "post-grad." Exactly the type of person who just finished a multi-year process of being fed large amounts of information that you then had to repeat back without questioning or analysis. Academia distorts our ability to recognize correct new ideas because it creates improper emotional associations with correctness. That's why you simply DECLARED that it was a joke and cited academic titles without going to the key points of error. Did you know that the great innovations in sciences are made outside of the academic process, almost uniformly?
It’s true what he is saying Evolution only needs a few correct ingredients to start and grow. The same with the big bang and the beginning of our universe
