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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!mcnc!rti-sel!rtp47!throopw
From: throopw@rtp47.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Life came from clay, so there!
Message-ID: <51@rtp47.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 25-May-85 20:50:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: rtp47.51
Posted: Sat May 25 20:50:10 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 27-May-85 03:19:44 EDT
Organization: Data General, RTP, NC
Lines: 20

I was delighted to see in the June, 1985 Scientific American an article that
maintained that life arose in clay, rather than in the more traditional
"primordial soup du jour".  The article starts out raising several of
the same arguments that have such currency in this group, but rather
than just saying that "evolution can't explain x", the author goes on to
give a stab at explaining x!  (Not a very convincing explaination to my
way of thinking, but *something*.)

In essence, the article is an attempt show how DNA and proteins, which
are mutually dependant (DNA needs proteins to exist in order to create
proteins), could have arisen spontaneously.  A facinating thing to me is
that this has parallels in computer science (as does much of
microbiological genetics).  The "bootstrapping problem" for example.  If
you want to write a compiler for language X, *in* language X, and there
are no language X compilers around, what to do?  In computer science,
the problem is solved "on purpose", and the article in question goes
into how the analogous thing *could* happen "naturally".  Interesting,
if unconvincing.
-- 
Wayne Throop at Data General, RTP, NC
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