New Study Outlines 'Water World' Theory of Life's Origins

From  JPL NASA

April 15, 2014


Life took root more than four billion years ago on our nascent Earth, a wetter and harsher place than now, bathed in sizzling ultraviolet rays. What started out as simple cells ultimately transformed into slime molds, frogs, elephants, humans and the rest of our planet's living kingdoms. How did it all begin?

A new study from researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the Icy Worlds team at NASA's Astrobiology Institute, based at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., describes how electrical energy naturally produced at the sea floor might have given rise to life. While the scientists had already proposed this hypothesis -- called "submarine alkaline hydrothermal emergence of life" -- the new report assembles decades of field, laboratory and theoretical research into a grand, unified picture.

According to the findings, which also can be thought of as the "water world" theory, life may have begun inside warm, gentle springs on the sea floor, at a time long ago when Earth's oceans churned across the entire planet. This idea of hydrothermal vents as possible places for life's origins was first proposed in 1980 by other researchers, who found them on the sea floor near Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Called "black smokers," those vents bubble with scalding hot, acidic fluids. In contrast, the vents in the new study -- first hypothesized by scientist Michael Russell of JPL in 1989 -- are gentler, cooler and percolate with alkaline fluids. One such towering complex of these alkaline vents was found serendipitously in the North Atlantic Ocean in 2000, and dubbed the Lost City.

"Life takes advantage of unbalanced states on the planet, which may have been the case billions of years ago at the alkaline hydrothermal vents," said Russell. "Life is the process that resolves these disequilibria." Russell is lead author of the new study, published in the April issue of the journal Astrobiology.

Other theories of life's origins describe ponds, or "soups," of chemicals, pockmarking Earth's battered, rocky surface. In some of those chemical soup models, lightning or ultraviolet light is thought to have fueled life in the ponds.

The water world theory from Russell and his team says that the warm, alkaline hydrothermal vents maintained an unbalanced state with respect to the surrounding ancient, acidic ocean -- one that could have provided so-called free energy to drive the emergence of life. In fact, the vents could have created two chemical imbalances. The first was a proton gradient, where protons -- which are hydrogen ions -- were concentrated more on the outside of the vent's chimneys, also called mineral membranes. The proton gradient could have been tapped for energy -- something our own bodies do all the time in cellular structures called mitochondria.

The second imbalance could have involved an electrical gradient between the hydrothermal fluids and the ocean. Billions of years ago, when Earth was young, its oceans were rich with carbon dioxide. When the carbon dioxide from the ocean and fuels from the vent -- hydrogen and methane -- met across the chimney wall, electrons may have been transferred. These reactions could have produced more complex carbon-containing, or organic compounds -- essential ingredients of life as we know it. Like proton gradients, electron transfer processes occur regularly in mitochondria.

"Within these vents, we have a geological system that already does one aspect of what life does," said Laurie Barge, second author of the study at JPL. "Life lives off proton gradients and the transfer of electrons."

As is the case with all advanced life forms, enzymes are the key to making chemical reactions happen. In our ancient oceans, minerals may have acted like enzymes, interacting with chemicals swimming around and driving reactions. In the water world theory, two different types of mineral "engines" might have lined the walls of the chimney structures.

"These mineral engines may be compared to what's in modern cars," said Russell.
"They make life 'go' like the car engines by consuming fuel and expelling exhaust. DNA and RNA, on the other hand, are more like the car's computers because they guide processes rather than make them happen."

One of the tiny engines is thought to have used a mineral known as green rust, allowing it to take advantage of the proton gradient to produce a phosphate-containing molecule that stores energy. The other engine is thought to have depended on a rare metal called molybdenum. This metal also is at work in our bodies, in a variety of enzymes. It assists with the transfer of two electrons at a time rather than the usual one, which is useful in driving certain key chemical reactions.

"We call molybdenum the Douglas Adams element," said Russell, explaining that the atomic number of molybdenum is 42, which also happens to be the answer to the "ultimate question of life, the universe and everything" in Adams' popular book, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Russell joked, "Forty-two may in fact be one answer to the ultimate question of life!"

The team's origins of life theory applies not just to Earth but also to other wet, rocky worlds.

"Michael Russell's theory originated 25 years ago and, in that time, JPL space missions have found strong evidence for liquid water oceans and rocky sea floors on Europa and Enceladus," said Barge. "We have learned much about the history of water on Mars, and soon we may find Earth-like planets around faraway stars. By testing this origin-of-life hypothesis in the lab at JPL, we may explain how life might have arisen on these other places in our solar system or beyond, and also get an idea of how to look for it."

For now, the ultimate question of whether the alkaline hydrothermal vents are the hatcheries of life remains unanswered. Russell says the necessary experiments are jaw-droppingly difficult to design and carry out, but decades later, these are problems he and his team are still happy to tackle.

[Looking good for life – indeed complex life – on Europa and Enceladus. Definitely sitting here with seriously crossed fingers!]

Just Finished Reading: To Save Everything, Click Here – Technology, Solutionism and the urge to fix problems that don’t exist by Evgeny Morozov (FP: 2013)

Can Technology in general or the Internet in particular solve all of our problems (or even most of them)? The author think the answer to that is a resounding NO. Why? Because those who are proposing their particular solutions – normally those most deeply embedded in the philosophy of ‘the Internet’ - are trying to fix problems that aren’t actually problems at all.

Peppered with countless examples of how these so-called ‘revolutionary times’ demand of us a radical rethink of everything we’ve done before (normally predicated on the old = bad/new = good dichotomy) this gripping, funny and thought provoking book is difficult to precis adequately. What is clear is that those who push ‘the Internet’ as the source code of solutionism do so either by being ignorant of or simply by ignoring the fact that similar ‘revolutions’ have happened before – notably with printing, the telegraph, radio and television that generated equally absurd claims of them heralding in a new (and very different) age allowing – or demanding – that we ditch everything that went before and start again with a new. Clean and (technologically much improved) slate. Computers, and the physical Internet they combine to create, have accelerated many of the already existing processes and (potentially at least) given many access to more but this itself is not a revolutionary break with the past. There is no great chasm in time between a world before and after the Internet came into being.

Those who believe that such a change has indeed occurred are convinced that, because we are living through an epoch changing revolutionary process, we must use the power we now have in our hands to advance the programme of change into every nook and cranny of human existence – from the way we buy books (who needs libraries when you have Amazon, e-readers and ‘the Cloud’), listen to our music (where algorithms can determine which music you’ll like before you know it yourself and can produce music to order at the touch of a button), read our newspapers (tailored to your tastes, beliefs, attention span and ability to pay), vote for our politicians (where we can listen to everything they’ve ever said and have ‘soundbites’ directed to our mobile devices reinforcing or destroying our confidence in the person, party or political process), and do our science (who needs elitist ‘experts’ when we can tap into the wisdom of crowds wiki-style to produce the next great breakthrough and where cutting edge research is crowd-sourced from the outset). What a brave new world we have to look forward to – where efficiency reigns and messy humanity is slowly eliminated through the application of more technology and greater processing power – coupled to ever greater disclosure of information so that we can be judged in the free market of ideas and traded as if we are commodities just like the things we wish to buy (and sell) to get by in a fast unforgiving world.

The author, as you might expect, will have none of it. Filled with highly intelligent and severely biting sarcasm, I found myself nodding in agreement, laughing out loud, shaking my head in exasperation (not at the author but at his unearthing of the latest stupid idea originating from Silicon Valley) and finding myself even more sceptical about the supposed advantages of the latest gadget, fad or social media website. One thing I remember making me chuckle a great deal was an honest piece of advice an Internet guru gave in an interview that if you started dating someone only to discover that they didn’t have a Facebook profile/account that you should find this very suspicious and should consider ditching them for someone with less to hide. There is even, apparently, a growing suspicion amongst global security agencies that not having a Facebook (or equivalent) presence on-line should be a red flag warning that the person is a (at least potential) subversive attempting to hide from the authorities! It made me wonder when such things are going to be made compulsory. If you do have any suspicions about the way things are going or have just wondered what the future on-line is likely to be like then this is definitely the book for you. Be warned though it might make you reconsider your on-line activities which might get you on a watch list somewhere. You have been warned!  

Cartoon Time.

Eye-Catching Titles

Having a roving eye and a butterfly mind (a rather dangerous combination sometimes!) I do, rather inevitably, zero in on books with interesting covers or eye-catching titles. Stephen over @ This Week at the Library posted something recently on such titles and I was just going to post a handful of my books in response – until I actually went through my archives and ended up with over two pages worth! Some are more eye-catching than others but all of them I feel have a special something that made me notice them. They are (in reverse order of review):

You are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

Zombie Economics – How Dead Ideas still Walk Among Us by John Quiggin

The Fishing Fleet – Husband Hunting in the Raj by Anne De Courcy

French Women Don’t Get Fat – The Secret of Eating for Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano

Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations by Jules Evans

Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman

Star Trek and Philosophy – The Wrath of Kant edited by Jason T Eberl and Keven S Decker

The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy - One Book to Rule Them All edited by Gregory Bassham and Eric Bronson

Spies in the Sky – The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence during World War II by Taylor Downing

Wired for War – The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century by P W Singer

Heaven – A Traveller’s Guide to the Undiscovered Country by Peter Stanford

Your Inner Fish – The amazing discovery of our 375-million-year-old ancestor by Neil Shubin

The Immortalization Commission – The Strange Quest to Cheat Death by John Gray

Love & Sex with Robots – The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships by David Levy

Stoic Warriors – The Ancient Philosophy behind the Military Mind by Nancy Sherman

Terminator and Philosophy – I’ll be Back, therefore I Am edited by Richard Brown and Kevin S Decker

A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters edited by Martin H Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes

Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them – Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir by John T Irwin

How to Survive the Titanic or The Sinking of J Bruce Ismay by Frances Wilson

Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy – New Life for the Undead edited by Richard Greene and K Silem Mohammad

The Fly in the Cathedral – How a small group of Cambridge scientists won the race to split the atom by Brian Cathcart

The Buried Soul – How Humans Invented Death by Timothy Taylor

The Planet in a Pebble – A Journey into Earth’s Deep History by Jan Zalasiewicz

Say It With Bullets by Richard Powell

Dune and Philosophy – The Weirding Way of the Mentat edited by Jeffery Nicholas

Strange Days Indeed – The Golden Age of Paranoia by Francis Wheen

The Age of Absurdity – Why Modern life makes it hard to be Happy by Michael Foley

Slayers and their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead by Bruce A McClelland

A Pelican in the Wilderness – Hermits, Solitaries and Recluses by Isabel Colegate

The Golden Compass and Philosophy – God bites the Dust edited by Richard Greene and Rachel Robinson

Guns, Germs and Steel – A Short History of Everybody for the last 13,000 Years by Jared Diamond

The Philosopher and the Wolf – Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death and Happiness by Mark Rowlands

Pastwatch – The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card

Amazing Tales for making Men out of Boys by Neil Oliver

Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of the Soul – A Study in Heroic Individualism by Leslie Paul Thiele

The Shock of the Old – Technology and Global History since 1900 by David Edgerton

The Vengeful Virgin by Gil Brewer

Black Mass – Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray

Rousseau’s Dog – Two Great Thinkers at War in the Age of Enlightenment by David Edmonds & John Eidinow

Basic Flying Instruction – A Comprehensive Introduction to Western Philosophy by Charles Gidley Wheeler

The Coming Anarchy – Shattering the Dreams of the post Cold War by Robert D Kaplan

Empires of Belief – Why we need more Scepticism and Doubt in the 21st Century by Stuart Sim.

Narcissus in Chains by Laurell K. Hamilton

The Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys by Mick Farren

Warrior Politics – Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos by Robert D Kaplan.

Six Impossible Things before Breakfast – The Evolutionary Origins of Belief by Lewis Wolpert.

The London Vampire Panic by Michael Romkey

God's Funeral by A.N. Wilson

The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet by Margaret Wertheim

Cartoon Time.

A Quote that keeps on Giving.........

Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

By Chris Baraniuk for BBC News

7 January 2016


Microsoft has revealed details about the data it is tracking via its new operating system (OS), Windows 10. In a blog, the firm listed statistics on how many minutes had been spent by users in total in the Edge browser and the number of photographs which had been viewed in the Photo app. The firm also said that Windows 10 was now active on over 200 million devices. However, some people have questioned whether the data tracking is a threat to privacy.

Since Windows 10 was launched, Microsoft has been tracking information about how those with the OS are using it. Until now though, relatively little has been known about what data is being collected. "Microsoft is deeply committed to protecting our customers' privacy," a spokesman for the company told the BBC. "Consistent with all modern services and websites, the Windows 10 information highlighted in the blog on January 4 is standard diagnostic, anonymous analytics that enables us to deliver the best Windows 10 experience possible. We are committed to delivering industry leading privacy protection for our customers, as shared in a recent blog from Terry Myerson."

The company blog listed a range of figures, including:

  44.5 billion minutes spent by users in the Microsoft Edge browser across Windows 10 devices
  2.4 billion questions asked to virtual assistant Cortana
  30% more Bing search queries per Windows 10 device versus previous versions of  the OS
  82 billion photos viewed with the Photo app
  More than four billion hours spent playing PC games

Microsoft also reported that Windows 10 continued to be the fastest growing version of Windows, outpacing the adoption of both Windows 8 and Windows 7. Security expert Prof Alan Woodward told the BBC he was interested to know the long-term plans for the data. "[This information] might be collected for one purpose, but how long will it be stored for? What else are they going to use it for?" he said. "As soon as it goes outside the EU it's no longer protected by things like the UK's Data Protection Act." Recently, Microsoft announced it would be opening UK data centres for corporate clients in a move the firm hoped would address privacy watchdogs' concerns about "data sovereignty". However, it is not clear where data relating to the company's own operating system is transmitted and stored.

It is possible to increase the privacy controls in Windows 10 by setting the feedback option to Basic, so that activity data is not sent to Microsoft - bar error reports. However, Prof Woodward suggested that users of the new OS may not be fully aware of the range of options and what they do. "I've noticed it because I've been installing it a lot recently. The default is for them to track a whole lot of things about usage and send details back to Microsoft," he said. "I think some people are walking into it blindfolded, they don't necessarily realise what's going on."

[No great surprise there – Windows 10 is spyware – or at least has spyware components to “deliver the best Windows 10 experience possible”. Maybe you want to check your settings? Especially as 85% of people never change the defaults on any device they have. Needless to say I have not yet installed my ‘free’ ‘upgrade’.]