Sunday 22 March 2009

More questions on abiogenesis, Millers experiment

another point discussed in the article;
that's just the beginning next to the shortcomings of the experiment a lot of criticism can also be formed as to how representative it was. The experiment did not contain oxygen, since oxygen generally oxidizes anything it comes in contact with. It's quite destructive. No oxygen however, means no atmosphere and also no ozone, which is formed by oxygen. Ozone blocks us from UV light from the sun. Without ozone we'd be bombarded by it.

And UV-light breaks down ammonia, one of the major components of the experiment. So I guess you're catching my drift by now. Either the experiment should have contained oxygen, to account for the presence of ammonium or we have to explain the high presence of ammonium despite the lack of ozone.


So there's quite alot of contradictions in the experiment, because for example if you say that there was oxygen present in the early atmosphere - then that means that everything would have oxidized, but if there's no oxygen - then there can't be an ozone layer to protect the organic molecules made - which means that UV rays would easily destroy the ammonia present in the atmosphere [which was a major component in the mixture produced by Miller].

UV light rays do destroy ammonia, but there was no O-Zone layer in that atmosphere, so how did this ammonia remain there with a high amount of presence without getting destroyed even till the end?



Oxidation is a process which 'takes away' electrons from other matter. If oxidation was to take place on DNA (which was supposedly produced in the early atmosphere), it would be destroyed:

"Oxidation of DNA can result in damage to all four bases and deoxyribose (a sugar which is a major component/part of DNA). "

http://www.ebmonline.org/cgi/reprint/222/3/246.pdf

In other words, DNA would be destroyed if oxidation took place.



So either there was oxygen (which forms an Ozone layer to protect the earth from harmful rays from the sun - which would in turn protect the ammonia) in the early atmosphere. In this case, oxidation would occur and any DNA produced would be destroyed.

Or there was no Ozone & no oxidation, which means no protection against harmful UV rays which would destroy ammonia [which is a major component in the mixture produced by Miller of the earths early atmosphere]. So if this ammonia is to be destroyed [without no Ozone] in reality, how did it remain there within the experiment? Isn't that something to think or be suspicious about?

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