Many creationists who support intelligent design claim that the probability of the life arising from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds is almost zero or impossible.
And they did subtle calculations to proof this.
But if we made the same classical calculations to explain the reactions in the sun then this will lead to a conclusion that the sun will not make its reactions, and stay as ball of cold gas, or simply the sun will not shine.
And that is because the sun uses nuclear fusion to turn the hydrogen into helium. And this need very high temperature that not measured in the sun.
The fusion of hydrogen into helium requires 4 hydrogen nuclei (protons) to produce a single helium nucleus.
But these are positive charges and the electrostatic force between the positively charged nuclei of hydrogen is repulsive, they cannot come together in cold temperature.
So how these repulsive charge brought together?
This is done by making the separation between these positively charged nuclei small enough, to make attractive nuclear force works, and glue them together with strong force to make helium. Only we need that make positively charged nuclei move very fast.
Therefore, the prerequisite for fusion is that the nuclei have enough kinetic energy that they can approach each other despite the electrostatic repulsion.
The temperature required to make this kinetic energy is 1.6 X 10^10 Kelvin This is about 1000 times larger than the central temperature of the Sun, 15 10^6 (15 million Kelvin), It seems that fusion should not be occurring in the Sun at all.
The situation we face is asking a crowd of people to try to throw a ball over Mount Everest. Typically they may be able to throw it say 10m compared with the 10000 or so needed. Some can perhaps throw it 20, but no matter how long people try, no-one is ever going to throw a ball over Everest.
This is analog to make new protein from amino acid.
But what if one throw the ball, and the ball move through the Mount Everest not over it. That is what happen in the stars.
Stars make the fusion because of an effect known as quantum tunnelling.
It’s like walk through wall, something seems impossible.
Physically this means that there is a finite chance that fusion will occur even when the kinetic energy was classically too small to have breached the Coulomb barrier. This does not mean to say that this process is at all likely!
But after all it’s possible even the chance is zero.
Tunneling play important role in microbiology and DNA structure this explained by quantum biology.
“Quantum biology refers to applications of quantum mechanics to biological objects and problems. Usually, it is taken to refer to applications of the "non-trivial" quantum features such as superposition, nonlocality, entanglement and tunneling, as opposed to the "trivial" but ubiquitous quantum mechanical nature of chemical bonding, ionization, and other phenomena that are the basis of the fundamental biophysics and biochemistry of organisms.
Austrian-born physicist and theoretical biologist Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founders of quantum theory in physics, was also one of the first scientists to suggest a study of quantum biology in his 1944 book What Is Life”
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So, if one claim that the probability of making DNA or proteins from simple organic compounds like amino acid is impossible,- ignoring all other non-classical effects such as superposition (be in two place at the same time), nonlocality ( action at a distance ), entanglement (like go back in time) and tunneling (walk through the wall) -, then he is just like ignoring tunneling in the sun.
These affects we cannot understand , we cannot explain but still make our world works, without them there will be nothing in our universe, no stars no galaxy no us.
These effects are so wired even Einstein considered quantum entanglement behavior to be impossible, as it violated the local realist view of causality (Einstein referred to it as "spooky action at a distance")
One example of these effects in biology is Spontaneous DNA mutation
“Spontaneous mutation of DNA occurs when normal DNA replication takes place after a particularly significant proton has defied the odds in quantum tunnelling in what is called "proton tunnelling" (quantum biology). A hydrogen bond joins normal base pairs of DNA. There exists a double well potential along a hydrogen bond separated by a potential energy barrier. It is believed that the double well potential is asymmetric with one well deeper than the other so the proton normally rests in the deeper well. For a mutation to occur, the proton must have tunnelled into the shallower of the two potential wells. The movement of the proton from its regular position is called a tautomeric transition. If DNA replication takes place in this state, the base pairing rule for DNA may be jeopardised causing a mutation.
Per-Olov Lowdin was the first to develop this theory of spontaneous mutation within the double helix (quantum bio). Other instances of quantum tunnelling-induced mutations in biology are believed to be a cause of ageing and cancer.”
In addition there is what called quantum mind or quantum consciousness hypothesis proposes that classical mechanics cannot explain consciousness, while quantum mechanical phenomena, such as quantum entanglement and superposition, may play an important part in the brain's function, and could form the basis of an explanation of consciousness.
Maybe DNA or protein or cell have some kind of consciousness, and know how to from by itself. Everything is possible, but using dump classical calculations to explain our complex world, everything will seem impossible even star to shine will be impossible.
Some proteins causes the most fatal diseases in earth, more fatal than viruses diseases, called Prions they are not considered living things, they only proteins, Still can replicate, and causes incurable and invariably fatal diseases such as "mad cow disease" in cattle and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in human.
one cannot says that things are impossible to happen just because he don’t know how it happen. There is a lot to be discovered , We are still on our first step to reveal the truth.
Interesting post. Perhaps quantum biology is the next frontier in life sciences.
Personally, I think self replicating proteins are the place to start in the investigation of abiogenesis.
Finally, when creation apologists conflate evolution with abiogenesis it makes me very angry. Very angry indeed. Many of them know better but still use it as a rhetorical tactic to confuse the public. I may forced to disintegrate them.
Too many grammatical and spelling errors, please correct them, as I can't forward this as is. Thanks.