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From: hogan@rosevax.UUCP (Andy Hogan)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: A few questions on possibilities and odds.
Message-ID: <199@rosevax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 29-Aug-85 20:29:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: rosevax.199
Posted: Thu Aug 29 20:29:55 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Sep-85 05:43:50 EDT
References: <2197@sdcc6.UUCP>
Organization: Rosemount Inc., Eden Prairie, MN
Lines: 31

> I've seen a figure floating around that I'd like to hear some sort of
> comment on.  A guy with a masters in biochemistry from Michegan (I
> think) gave the figure of 10^450 as the odds of life having been created
> by evolution.  Supposedly this is a somewhat well known figure that
> takes into account all the time alotted for the various reactions to
> take place to start life off and then for the evolutionary process to
> have gotten as far along as it has.  Not having access to alot of the
> necessary info, I'm wondering what most biologists/chemists/??? might
> have to say about this figure.
> 			Rick Frey
> 			(...!ihnp4!sdcsvax!sdcc6!ix415)

Hey!  A good question!  What's wrong with this guy? :-)
 
As a ???, I'm curious too.  I'd really like to know what facts and 
assumptions he used, though I probably would not be able to question
the facts (they would still be interesting, though.)  For example, your
next paragraph implies the reactions are assumed to happen in water; I
believe there are alternatives (cf. the "clay" article in Scientific
American a few months ago.)

My main interest is HOW the number is arrived at.  I've never seen a
study of this or any similar questions (like the probability of life
on other planets) that was really convincing.  They are usually full 
of assumptions, or at least unknown probabilities with a very large
range of feasible values (often many orders of magnitude.)

-- 
Andy Hogan   Rosemount, Inc.   Mpls MN
path: ...ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!rosevax!hogan
Quality used to be free, but now it merely has a fantastic ROI.