As I said I would, I’m watching this History Channel documentary about the origin of life. How about a little live-blogging?
8:00. Ugh. It begins with a bunch of tripe from Coyne and Polkinghorne, claiming we need religion to understand the meaning of life. This is a bad, bad start, but I’m hoping it’s nothing but a weasely preliminary that they will then abandon to get to some real science.
There are lots of gimmicky special efects, but OK, let’s get the general audience interested. I’m not too keen on the parade of talking heads, though: they keep trotting out different investigators, letting them say a sentence or two, and then zipping off elsewhere. I know you don’t want some guy sitting and droning at you, but this seems like a poor compromise.
8:15. It’s a quick tour of the complexity of the cell. They’re using this special effects analogy of a “factory of life” where chemistry is going on.
First important element of life: metabolism. Second: life is cellular, with compartments. Third: life can replicate.
Now we get a parts catalog of polymers: lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.
Very weird: in their factory analogy, they point to something hidden behind a big red curtain and say that that’s where all these bits and pieces come together to make something that’s alive; it seems a bit of a cop-out, a way to pretend there’s something hidden where the viewer can imagine anything they want. Come on, bite the bullet and admit it: life is chemistry, and there is nothing more.
Now we get a fairly lengthy discussion of the idea of emergence. At least they clearly state that emergence is nothing magical, but is just a consequence of the execution of the laws of nature. This is a rather pointless digression, I think.
OK, now we get a timeline of the origin of life: it appeared about 3.8 billion years ago, on a very hostile planet with no oxygen in the air, and just cooling after the last of the great meteor bombardments. This leads naturally into a discussion of extremophiles, with a tour of Mono Lake.
Segue to commercial by mentioning that life will change the environment of the earth.
8:30. Conditions on early life are hostile to us, but chemical energy is abundant. Life would have existed as single-celled forms only, which may have been unrecognizable to us (why are they showing video micrographs of nematodes while they tell us this?)
Stromatolites are introduced, as organisms that grew on chemical energy sources. What are those energy sources?
The camera crew goes spelunking. They’re collecting rock-eating microbes, which the scientists argue is a kind of primitive chemistry that evolved before photosynthesis.
Nice reminder that single-celled life was the only form of life here for 80% of the history of earth, but then they make the mistake of using the past tense in saying they were the dominant form of life on the planet.
Wait…now they’re saying that the ability to reproduce is a property of DNA? That’s kind of cutting off the possibility of an interesting discussion of alternative paths.
Suddenly, boom, they’re talking about Leeuwenhoek. Hang on, this is a bit jumpy. Can we talk more about extremophile chemistry before we start on 17th-18th century microscopy?
Now it’s all about photosynthesis. We’ve moved way, way beyond the period of early abiogenesis already, and they’ve scarcely touched on any of the major theories.
Before the commercial, we get talk about multicellularity and oxygen chemistry. Either they’re going to be jumping about an awful lot and scrambling the story, or we’re not going to get anything about abiogenic chemistry…
8:45. Oops, I had to miss part of this section to run some real-world errands. I come back to see the Burgess Shale and a discussion of the Cambrian explosion. This is long, long after the origin of life!
It’s an excuse to show some computer animations of Anomalocaris, anyway.
George Coyne does a good job now saying that life doesn’t need a designer; Polkinghorne pops up to make excuses for the metaphorical nature of the book of Genesis. Bugger off, Polkinghorne, you bother me, ya twit.
Now we get a summary of the importance of selection and sex. I don’t think we’re going to get a good review of biogenesis anymore — sex is not an important issue in that field.
I am completely baffled. Before the commercial, they say the big question was how human life arose…then they ask, “What was the specific mechanism that caused non-living chemistry into living biology?” Weird. These are very different questions. They seem to be muddling up the origins of life with the origins of the only important form of life, humans.
9:00. We’re back to animals. Come on, animals are peculiar latecomers.
Maybe it’s an excuse to return to a historical survey of ideas about the origin of life. I hope.
Aristotle proposes the idea of spontaneous generation, an idea that hangs on for centuries but is relatively easy to disprove…as Redi and Spallanzani do. This stuff isn’t bad, but it feels like introductory material they should have brought up at the beginning.
Actually, I’m enjoying this part best of all so far. They’re actually talking about the experiments done to disprove spontaneous generation, so it’s a useful summary of how scientists actually do science.
Our closing question: so how did life arise from chemistry? The second half is off to a good start, I think.
9:15. I’ve got to say…the actor playing Charles Darwin looks nothing like him, and that beard looks cheesy and fake.
We get the early concepts: “warm little pond”, “primorial soup”. There the questions are about what kind of chemicals and conditions existed at the beginning of life. They mention Oparin’s ideas about the chemical monomers available, and the idea that these chemicals would accumulate in the oceans. It seems like a very low probability sort of exercise.
The Miller/Urey experiment at last. This is well done, with a very nice illustration of the apparatus and techniques. They get it right, too — it was nice work that showed that the natural chemistry that would produce organic substrates for life was relatively trivial. It also set up unrealistic expectations for how easy it would be to create life.
Closing premise: now there is a race to figure out prebiotic chemistry.
9:30. Let’s consider other sources of organic matter!
Space-borne debris. Complex organic molecules are found in metorites and in space. We get to see scientists extracting organic molecules from ground-up meteorites. Panspermia is mentioned, but they aren’t doing a good job of distinguishing chemicals from life. At least Bob Hazen is razor sharp in pointing out that panspermia is a cop out.
Hazen also clearly explains bottom-up (exploring basic principles about biochemistry to replicate the events at the origin) vs. top-down (working in reverse from extant life backwards to the origin). He also explains that we need a multiplicity of approaches, and the origin may also have been generated from diverse sources.
Hmm. Commercials seem to be coming more frequently as we get close to the end.
9:40. It’s deep-sea vent time, with nice shots of black smokers and squid. Then Bob Hazen shows us how his experiments on the chemistry at high pressure and temperature are done. Cooking a little pyruvate for a while generates substances that form micelles.
Clays! Clays are shown as potential catalytic surfaces that would concentrate organic compounds and promote reactions that form, for instance, RNA. RNA monomers will polymerize in the presence of clays.
Transition: are scientists on the verge of creating artificial life in the lab?
9:50. It’s “3000 years after Aristotle”? What?
Never mind. Now we get pretty crystals growing and changing. This bit is a little fluffy.
All right: Jack Szostak. They describe his efforts to try and create a protocell. Cool video of creating cell membranes — beautiful little droplets bubbling out of an electrode. Some good cautionary statements: if they succeed, this will still only be a model, not a demonstration of how it actually happened 3.8 billion years ago.
They don’t really say much about the mechanisms in the closing minutes, but they do have a nice statement by Neil de Grasse Tyson about how the search is the important thing, even if we don’t get an answer.
Summary: the first hour was a muddle, and not worth watching. If you’re going to catch it later, just watch the second half.
The last half wasn’t bad. It at least talked very briefly about the actual science and how it is done. It was all painfully abbreviated and only touched lightly on the subject, but I think that is simply a limitation of the medium. I imagine it’s a seriously difficult balancing act to try and meet the needs of real nerds (like us!) and the more casual viewer, so I’ll accept the compromise.
Something at the end to lead the interested viewer to more in-depth sources would have been a good idea — they could have at least mentioned Hazen’s Genesis as a plug.
*sigh* I’m crossing my fingers but I’m not surprised.
The History Channel Canada is showing a rerun of Kingdom of Heaven. So that’s just great. That and Expelled is opening here.
*sigh*
Watching also. Some of the very basic definitions from the “life factory foreman” are plainly wrong. Lipids form cell membranes, not cell walls.
Also annoyed by the “curtain” where something miraculous occurs, and how the foreman doesn’t have clearance to look behind the curtain. Dammit, science is about ignoring curtains and looking for answers, not some bureaucratic busllshit!
Did I hear the foreman right, or did he say that proteins are made out of DNA? I sure hope not. Did they not have an editor to check the script?
The talking head parade is not so bad, but the distracting crap in the background is way too much. If they would spend more than 30 seconds with a head…
The focus on special effects and dramatic storytelling is a major turn off for me with modern documentaries. It’s sacrificing content for the sake of marketability where it’s not going to really rope in the disaffected generation and it’s just going to seem droll to those who actually want to learn something.
I’m not liking it so far. As a layman, I’m finding it a little confusing–its “gimmicky special effects” are providing metaphors that make abiogenesis seem ridiculous and unlikely. (I can just hear the smarmy creationist in the back of my mind, saying “But who built the factory? So it’s a mystery, hmm? Hmm?”)
The 3D effects of amino acids binding to form proteins etc. suggest life immediately found its modern, complex structure. Then there’s the suggestion that life was created and then had to find a way to survive in a hostile environment, as though it were just plonked in the world rather than developing through abiogenesis.
That said, there’s very little material about abiogenesis intended for layman audiences. I’m sure we’ll see better documentaries in years to come, unless fundamentalist extremists like Ben Stein succeed in sending us back to the dark ages.
Which religion? Cao Đài? I bet it’s Cao Đài….
The bit with emergence was actually one of my preferred parts; the self-organization of heterogeneous systems is a necessary idea in this whole timeline, and it’s the idea that IDists try to replace with a magic man.
Really annoyed with the suggestion that the organisms would want to change the atmosphere. Don’t anthropomorphize bacteria!
Well, it is much worse than I thought it would be. I see fluff at 9:13. Crap at 9:21 with “emergence” and then Jesus **ckn ###st. at 9:23 with consciousness. I turned it off.
Abiogenesis is the beginning before all this later stuff.
denisc
“life is chemistry: there is nothing more.” Ok, can chemistry explain why I was snatched from “non-existance” 41 years ago? Can it explain where it is I’ll go when my chemistry expires? Can it guarantee that I will not be plucked from non-existance again? In short, can chemistry solve existance or death? You’ll have to excuse my “barbaric yawp” but there is something more. Why is it that biology or chemistry or whatever seems to have a one track mind: a desperation to replicate!
This show is seriously awful. I’ve seen better documentaries on youtube.
I really wanted to see this, but I’m in Canada, so I have to see this incredibly lame rerun.
What a disappointment… I can’t believe they began the show by interviewing two religious “scientists” who basically claimed that science cannot explain life. By the time they got to the factory, I was too embarrassed to keep watching. It seems like these shows keep getting less and less informative and more and more cheesy.
At least they had Neil DeGrasse Tyson on there. He’s awesome as hell yo.
Well, at least there’s a brief appearance by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. And I enjoyed the presence of the phrase “bacterial poop.”
bunnycatch3r, are you asking about the chemistry behind reproduction? It’s a pretty solid science…
Jinx you owe me a handjob.
bunnycatch3r: “Ok, can chemistry explain why I was snatched from “non-existance” 41 years ago? Can it explain where it is I’ll go when my chemistry expires?”
In order for it to explain it, you first have to demonstrate that the question makes any sense in the first place. If you didn’t exist, then you weren’t “snatched” from anywhere, and you won’t “go” anywhere when you die, and it’s simply self-contradictory to speak in that manner.
Can chemistry currently explain something like conscious, qualia-laden experience? No. But it can’t explain lots of things yet, primarily just because the questions are often complicated and we don’t know everything about chemistry. Your job, however, is to offer some sensible reason as to why chemistry could NEVER, in theory, explain certain real things (remember, you first need to show that they are real and that you are characterizing them properly).
Supernaturalists never fail to fail at this. The best they generally do is to assert that only supernaturalism can explain X, but then they never actually offer any supernatural explanation for X whatsoever, which sort of makes the point moot.
bunny, yeah. Chemistry, specifically organic chemistry on a grand scale, biology does a good job of explaining your personal origin. In fact, it also tells us quite a bit about what will happen to you die. As for consciousness, more chemistry and biology. Science says nothing about spiritual matters because they are not measurable, except when someone makes a testable claim, such as faith healing. Because the spiritual has remained so untestable and unverifiable, many, such as myself consider it to be baloney.
There’s no “one track mind” involved.
But life (that particular arrangement of chemicals that is biology) that didn’t replicate — did not replicate. And therefore left no descendants.
WOOT Animal SEX!!!
9:50
what’s with the bad porn music?
Yeah. They really hate it when you do that!
:)
“why are they showing video micrographs of nematodes while they tell us this?”
Thank you! Like stock footage of bacteria is so hard to come by!
——-
Sexual reproduction isn’t the huge step forward, it is specialization of cells, which is one of the steps that leads to sexual reproduction. You need gonads to make these gametes.
——-
Gag, more religious bunk about how genesis tells us about how nothing exists without God.
——-
Kagato, :P
That said, I’m really enjoying its handling of evolution. Respectful to its more-than-likely predominantly Christian audience, but still firm in its delivery. Having a prominent religious figure deliver a description of natural selection was especially powerful.
I don’t think we need to view this as the final battle, but it is a pretty good opening salvo against ID. The show is pretty dumbed down but I think most people can understand the concept the show is trying to present.
The show clearly stated that you don’t need god to have life. If he/she was there then good but god doesn’t need to be there.
Hmmm… considering this is something that is aimed precisely at a general audience, I’m not sure I find anything particularly upsetting here. Really. I mean I want my family and friends to be able to watch something like this and then the next time Kirk Cameron comes a-knocking with his crock-a-ducks, they can know his “version” of evolution (the BS version) is a crock of crap.
And to that extent, for that purpose… is this not doing
I wonder if we were mistaken in thinking the show was only about the origin of life.
Oh… I see, they’re doing a whole arc-thing to lead us from evolution and then backwards to the beginning of it all.
Kinda like explaining how astronomers figured out the expanding universe… and then realized what that meant if you took that backwards to the beginning.
10:02
yay! behind the curtain!
Interesting but they’re jumping around too much and include magic in different forms (factory curtain, vatican astronomer, etc), the “read between the lines” about Darwin. But I will give it credit for 1) trying 2) saying evolution does not need a designer 3) reminding people that evolution is about survival. I was only paying half attention, I was playing my MMORPG and I just realize the CDs I’ve been ripping was done at the wrong bitrate.
Anomalocarids gone wild.
Ah! Research & Development! Now we’re getting somewhere! Right? They were just laying some groundwork before. Now to fill in those huge, huge gaps and correct some poor metaphors…
Pay no attention to the invisible sky fairy behind the curtain…
Hey we are into whales, elephants and moths, oh my!
I appreciate your response and I admit that I am not able to discuss being/nonbeing without contradiction. However, I would like you materialists to admit that there is something going on here beyond what can be measured. And I’m not referring to a deity. There is a very palpable will to replicate at all levels. I read how a sequence of dumb amino acids form into an almost sentient like protein and there now seems to be a ghost in the machine! This is the very stuff of horror.
I am dissapointed, and wonder if it would have been presented differently on PBS. I have Richard Fortey’s books and I think he explains it a lot better than what is shown here tonight. Are you people familiar with Richard Fortey?
I just finished watching that, myself. There were certainly a few parts that induced out-loud groaning and forehead-slapping.
I thought they built up the emergence of multicellular life quite a bit, but then never really went into detail. I was disappointed by that.
oops… I goofed. I was asking “And to that extent, for that purpose… is this not doing that?”
Twas great to see a guy in a priest outfit (Coyne) saying that evolutionary processes didn’t require a designer.
Huzzah for Neil Tyson!
Here come the heroes of science! There are going to be some pissed off people in the religious community.
I wonder if the HS is doing and ‘overall’ type program here to get as many points in one hour as possible.
BTW, I have a feeling the whole “How Life Began” won’t be answered by the end of the show — which is kinda how nearly every modern TV show works. The title appears to note that it will be answered, but the question always remains.
The chic sticking the toothbrush in her cakehole was hot, though.
Howard?
Is that you?
Howard Phillips Lovecraft, have you returned from the dead to warn us of the eldrich and uncouth horrors that lie beyond the ken of man, waiting for the time of their return?
Bunny, you would like materialists to admit that there is an unmeasurable something else? Perhaps you should look up materialism in a dictionary. Science is about measuring, not fantasy.
Oy. I’m horrified at your reasoning, at least. The “will to replicate” is a consequence of the simple fact that organisms that did not replicate did not leave descendants. Proteins are not remotely sentient, and the ghost in the machine is your fevered imagination playing tricks on you.
almost an hour and a half before Miller, Urey…seems like something is wrong, like that perhaps should have been around 30 minutes.
That should have been measuring and observing…
—
Hooray, Miller! Finally some science!
Be careful with those kind of movies, jimmiraybob. This guy I know bought one and even though it had the standard ‘all models are of legal age’ disclaimer he still got busted by the cops for possession of underage porn.
Turns out everyone in the movie was Ediacaran.
Very nice, but you left out gibbering, blasphemy and cyclopean architecture.
Is it too much to hope that they will mention that those who updated the Miller experiments found that they still work?
Yeah. Probably.
Hmmm, maybe I should get some spare equipment from the chem department and perform this in my bio lab.
starting in the middle, going forward, then going back to the beginning to catch up through the heavier stuff seems to be the public documentary norm these days.
Tyson’s “Origins” for PBS did the same thing: started with the origins of the earth, then with life, then a (unnecessary in my opinion) side track on UFOlogy, and THEN we get to big bang theory, cosmic radiation research, and the beauty that is the dark matter dark energy problem.
Chronology seems to be something that happens to other people. Nobody these days can do it as well as Sagan or James Burke, I guess.
On the other hand, no wonder kids can’t get their damn history right these days, if that’s how they’re getting it in the classroom nowadays.
If you have a chance you should check out the BBC documentary series “Earth: The Power of the Planet” that aired in the UK recently. Hopefully it will be shown here but it’s also available online from torrent sources. It only touches on the origin of life as a means to explain the dramatic changes in the atmosphere and oceans but it seemed to do a good job, the presentation seems very good and both the graphics and real world nature shots are absolutely stunning.
I generally find BBC documentary production values much better than US ones. This one must have cost a fortune because they flew the host and his crew all over the world to get HD shots of some really amazing natural phenomenon including him diving in the cenotes (sink holes) of the Yucatan that form the rim of the impact crater that most likely caused the demise of the dinosaurs.
I’d love to see one focused entirely on abiogenesis in detail.
PZ: If you can get a grant to do a better piece on this, I’ll come out there and help you write it. (I know you can do that yourself, but I’m assuming you’ll be voicing the host spot, and will need a spear-carrier for some of the writing/editing.)
And a degree from Miskatonic.
Off topic, but Holy crap! This “pressed-to-death” thing is completely freaky.
I didn’t know about that Miller apparatus yielding amino acids, pretty cool.
They should have had a car chase before the Cambrian explosion
w00t! they mention the repeat of Miller! I was ready to bet that they would have skipped over it.
—–
The panspermia story was so close to saying that not only is saying that the physics and chemistry involved so tough, that aliens did it is a cop out for the lazy, but so is saying god(ess)(s)(es) did it is too.
Commercials seem to be coming more frequently as we get close to the end.
That’s also the norm, and has been for decades. Try watching the “movie of the week” on a Sunday and see how long you can tolerate the cliffhanger moment being broken up by 3 commercial breaks…
Oh great. Show Miller appearing nuts as he blinks eyes in such a fashion; and while he’s doing that, say he remained a _believer_ in the “primordial soup” theory. Jeez…
If this were on a Christian Channel, they could have a terrorist attack to symbolise the Cambrian explosion, that way it looks like evolution = terrorism!
I didn’t think emergence is a non-important digression, it’s good for the layman like me! And of course, cool astronomy pictures are involved.
From years of TV-watching experience, high commercial frequency corresponds to lack of substance. Filler, in other words.
My mother is in the hospital and she wanted me to record it for her. I am, and may I just say that I love DVRs? I have absolutely no intention of watching commercials so breaks be damned!
5 min. left and we get the word “miraculously”!
Almost made it, damn.
Stromatolites oxidized the iron seas.
OOO OOO OOOO can I play Michael Behe? I do a great Renfield from the Dracula movie.
Can’t end it w/o a talking head in a priest outfit though.
Bones, others have used it already. Bleah.
The last 45 minutes of this would make a great science documentary.
bunnycatch3r:
Nope. Entropy pushes for the most disorder- sometimes this is achieved through pushing some order aside to allow more room for disorder, put simply. The only “striving” is for a stable lower energy state for ordered molecules, not because they “wish” it, but because entropy pushes them to get out of the way. Left without environmental change, life would “progress” to become one inanimate mass dominating everything. It just so happens that in liquid water temperatures at roughly a few atmospheres there are a lot of contenders for this lowest most-tightly-packed energy state, so competition arises. In crystals, it’s pretty easy: but for carbon, it’s not so easy. So we’re “born” of pushy water and competing hydrocarbons. That’s pretty much it.
May I just say, I love Neil Tyson!
Is that Tyson guy gonna bite somebody’s ear off or what ?
Robster, I must’ve missed it then. That word usually makes me involuntarily cringe, and I only caught that one occurrence. The worst part was that a guy used it while doing an experiment; it wasn’t one of the 3 preacher-types that said it (when I heard it, that is).
They should have left it with Tyson’s last statement, and skipped the beyond human comprehension or something is out there…
[bunnycatch3r, post 33]
As others have pointed out, proteins are not sentient, not even by a long stretch! ;-)
The amino acids used to make proteins are composed of a “backbone” that is the same for all the amino acids and side chains”. The side chains of different amino acids differ and are what make each particular amino acid unique. Different side chains have different chemical and physical properties. Some dislike being in water (are hydrophobic). Others are “charged” in a variety of ways. Those with like charges repel one-another. Those with complementary charges will interact to remain in proximity of eachother, given the opportunity.
The key point is that amino acids have physical properties that affect how they respond to amino acids near to them and to the solvent (the solution the protein is in). These physical properties cause the protein to fold. Order amino into a chain, as they are in a protein, and a particular order of amino acids will have particular interactions with its neighbouring amino acids in the chain and with the solvent its in. The particular set of interactions defined by the order of the amino acids in the chain results in the protein “folding” to form a particular three-dimensional shape.
I am leaving out a lot of fine detail in the interests of simplicity, but it is the physical properties of the amino acids and the solvent drive protein folding, not some magic. If ordinary physics and chemistry is “the stuff of horror”, then the world must be a horrible place for you! ;-)
I dunno… on the whole, I liked it. Again, the intent – I’m assuming – is to aim this at general audiences so as to educate them, at least just a bit for starters, about something they may never have really thought about in any concrete way.
One hope of starting with this, and then letting those interested dive deeper, is that some people will be a bit more aware of the realities of science/biology (in this case). And so, when confronted by the lies of anti-science folks, people watching shows like this might then know they are indeed being sold a bunch of snake-micelles.
I got home and turned it on just as they were starting to talk about Miller-Urey, so I figured it was just starting. When I figured out it had been going for over an hour I was wondering what the heck they were talking about for the rest of the time. After coming here I’m thinking I’ll pass when it airs again in a couple hours.
Personally I didn’t get much out of what I saw, but it may not have been too bad for people that don’t already know much biology, presumably the target audience for a biology documentary on the History channel. Though from the description it doesn’t seem to really fit the title.
Supernaturalists never fail to fail at this. The best they generally do is to assert that only supernaturalism can explain X, but then they never actually offer any supernatural explanation for X whatsoever, which sort of makes the point moot.
They offer plenty of “supernatural explanations for X” – they tend to all be variants of “a wizard did it”, but they are explanations. What they never fail to fail at is to offer forth testable explanations for X.
And the reason for that is simple. If they could offer a testable explanation for “X”, then that explanation would cease to be supernatural. The explanation could be included in models for phenomenon X (if testing showed that they were consistent with observations) or cast aside (if testing showed they were inconsistent). But regardless, any testable explanation of a “supernatural” explanation makes that explanation “natural” – it has to, since science only deals with the “natural”, the observable and the testable.
This is something that certain folks just don’t get – especially folks in the ID movement. If they really could offer up testable theories for proving that there was a creator, and if subsequently experiments showed that those theories were consistent with reality, all it would mean is that the “creator” was a natural phenomenon. The “creator” would cease to be a supernatural element at all and would become an observable, quantifiable phenomenon. One that could be analyzed, poked, prodded and probably exploited. The whole framework that ID proposes cannot end in a “good” answer for theists – if they can’t “prove” the existence of a creator they lose, and if they ever DID prove the existence of a creator they lose. Even by framing the question of whether there is a creator or not as a scientific one (rather than a philosophical one) they concede the playing field to science and admit that a scientific explanation for a “creator” is the only valid one.
(Certain evangelical creationists understand this dynamic completely and are very outspoken anti-ID folks. Certain Roman Catholic scientists and theologians ALSO understand this dynamic completely and are ALSO very outspoken anti-ID folks. ID can only serve to undermine religion in the long run. If the politics around ID didn’t do so much damage to science education in the short term, and if they weren’t willing to use children as pawns in their little political pissing matches, then one might almost be able to cheer them on in their accidental undermining of religion).
Bunnycatch3r, I don’t know where I got this but it seems useful to say right now:
The number one law of life is to keep the individual alive.
The number two law of life is to keep the species alive.
Sex sells, baby.
On another note, matter has properties, it does what it does. Why are Na and Cl so desperate to bond into table salt? Why are noble gases so elitist, so desperate to be alone? Why is water so desperate to abandon the lotus leaf? Science rocks! You are made of matter, and your life, from zygote to grave, is a series of chemical interactions.
Meanwhile, somewhere down the line, your brain voted itself as the most meaningful object in the universe. It believes that what it thinks is Important, and that contemplating existence and death is what really matters.
However, none of those thoughts matter one iota to your individual atoms and molecules. Each will continue to exist, to continue interacting chemically, long after your “life” is over. When it is time for your collection of cells to cease functioning as a whole, like di-hydrogen monoxide on a hydrophobic surface, so go all the thoughts your brain ever perceived.
Am I saying that you and your thoughts are not important? Absolutely not! My brain perceives you as a fellow Homo sapien that is searching for meaning and truth, and that makes you cool. (Just be careful of those who try to get your money under the guise of providing “eternal” truths.)
Bunnycatch3r, I don’t know where I got this but it seems useful to say right now:
The number one law of life is to keep the individual alive.
The number two law of life is to keep the species alive.
Sex sells, baby.
On another note, matter has properties, it does what it does. Why are Na and Cl so desperate to bond into table salt? Why are noble gases so elitist, so desperate to be alone? Why is water so desperate to abandon the lotus leaf? Science rocks! You are made of matter, and your life, from zygote to grave, is a series of chemical interactions.
Meanwhile, somewhere down the line, your brain voted itself as the most meaningful object in the universe. It believes that what it thinks is Important, and that contemplating existence and death is what really matters.
However, none of those thoughts matter one iota to your individual atoms and molecules. Each will continue to exist, to continue interacting chemically, long after your “life” is over. When it is time for your collection of cells to cease functioning as a whole, like di-hydrogen monoxide on a hydrophobic surface, so go all the thoughts your brain ever perceived.
Am I saying that you and your thoughts are not important? Absolutely not! My brain perceives you as a fellow Homo sapien that is searching for meaning and truth, and that makes you cool. (Just be careful of those who try to get your money under the guise of providing “eternal” truths.)
Bunnycatch3r, I don’t know where I got this but it seems useful to say right now:
The number one law of life is to keep the individual alive.
The number two law of life is to keep the species alive.
Sex sells, baby.
On another note, matter has properties, it does what it does. Why are Na and Cl so desperate to bond into table salt? Why are noble gases so elitist, so desperate to be alone? Why is water so desperate to abandon the lotus leaf? Science rocks! You are made of matter, and your life, from zygote to grave, is a series of chemical interactions.
Meanwhile, somewhere down the line, your brain voted itself as the most meaningful object in the universe. It believes that what it thinks is Important, and that contemplating existence and death is what really matters.
However, none of those thoughts matter one iota to your individual atoms and molecules. Each will continue to exist, to continue interacting chemically, long after your “life” is over. When it is time for your collection of cells to cease functioning as a whole, like di-hydrogen monoxide on a hydrophobic surface, so go all the thoughts your brain ever perceived.
Am I saying that you and your thoughts are not important? Absolutely not! Responding to your comment caused my limbic system to reward me with lots of interesting chemicals, and I thank you for that. My brain perceives you as a fellow Homo sapien that is searching for meaning and truth, and that makes you cool. (Just be careful of those who try to get your money under the guise of providing “eternal” truths.)
Why is it that biology or chemistry or [ajani57] seems to have a one track mind: a desperation to replicate! :)
A triple posting??? I am soo sorry. The server said to try again, that too many were posting at the same time, so I tried again. And again, sorry.
ajani57, I try to refrain from correcting spelling errors and the like on blogs, but I make an exception for this one:
No such thing. It’s Homo sapiens, because the masculine nominative singular form of the word for “wise, rational” in Latin is “sapiens”, with the “s”. There is no word “sapien”.
of course the history channel shows more christian programs than any other science channel out there. They talk about virgin births and talking snakes like they deserve to be talked about as historical facts or even as historically important.
noncarborundum: Good catch. Feeling like a B. americanus.
SC: lol
Just watching the first hour (3 hours later than some of you) and am very disappointed. I’m glad to hear that later they come back to the Origin Of Life, because they sure blew it in the first hour. A mysterious factory which looks nothing like a cell. Saying that life just started somehow or other! This plays into the hands of creationists who assert (wrongly) that scientists know nothing about the origin of life. Nothing about RNA worlds, nothing about hypercycles, nothing about crystals or molecules aggregating on surfaces.
They are also making mistakes, as some of you have pointed out. They play up the importance of “sex” which is said to create variation. Now I have written papers on this and can tell you that this is … just … plain … wrong. It is an ancient and discredited theory (that of East and Jones) which you do hear people citing. They fell for it.
And how its going to help the audience to go zipping back and forth between OOL and Anomalocaris in both directions … well that escapes me. Aargh. I’ve got work to do so am turning it off. Bummer.
I watched the show with a non-scientist friend who’s been a semi-regular Scienceblogs reader ever since I cued him in on the Ridiculous Saga of the Ridiculous Movie. After the two clergymen’s comments in the first 5 minutes, I turned to him and said, “Call 911 in Minnesota. PZ’s having a heart attack.”
It was awfully uneven, jumping back and forth in history and from one idea to another and apparently trying to include “something for everyone” but having no idea how to really tie it all together. At times it seemed as if a bad editor had cut the thing down from a 3- or 4-hour piece.
The factory thing was totally hokey, but I suspect it was a calculated hokeyness. It reminded me of the movies we used to see in science class at school – get the kiddies interested, and they might just learn something if they’re not careful.
(I did get a laugh out of the inspector poking at the blobs of stuff. Doesn’t he watch monster movies? Doesn’t he know that you should never poke The Blob?)
The show did have its moments though, mainly when it got around to talking about real scientific investigations. Two points extra credit for the priest saying that life doesn’t need a designer. And of course, Neil deGrasse Tyson is the greatest.
But that fake Darwin! :-P How come no one seems to remember that Darwin was a young man during the Beagle expedition, and middle-aged when he published Origin? The fact that you almost never see a younger Darwin is a pet peeve of mine in general, but when they paste a beard on their elderly Darwin that no self-respecting shopping-mall Santa would be caught dead in……. And verily I say unto thee, :-P
p.s. PZ, I would have been terribly disappointed if you hadn’t liveblogged the thing.
Or, as my mom used to say (pronouncing it with a short “a”): “Homo sapiens. Sappy man.”
I actually don’t do any catching. Things like this just leap from the monitor to burn holes in my eyes, and I happen to notice.
Colorado:
Yes 71.09%
No 28.15%
NS 0.76%
Maryland:
70.37% Yes
29.62% No
Doh!, wrong thread; too many tabs open…
3000 years since Aristotle? How long did you say this show was??
Bob Hazen is razor sharp in pointing out that panspermia is a cop out.
Why? I can see that for directed panspermia to some extent, because there would still be a need to explain the origin of the pansperming aliens, and because the idea is very difficult to test – but it could still be true. It’s quite possible we’ll do it ourselves at some point. But the hypothesis that abiogenesis occurred off-Earth, and simple organisms are (or were) drifting through the solar system, landing on all solid bodies and reproducing and evolving wherever conditions allow, should be testable by examination of extra-terrestrial materials.
I took Hazen’s point of a “cop out” to be true if you simply say “it came from outer spaaaaaace” and stop there.
Let’s say it could be confirmed (somehow…) that organic components – some, all, or at the extreme, assembled living, replicating units – were introduced into Earth solely from the outside.
The cop out reaction would be to stop there. But I’d bet few scientists would stop there at all. Most would say, ok, cool, but they had to be first assembled somewhere. And when they were, they did so by mechanisms probably similar to Earth-based models anyway, or some variation depending on their ultimate source.
So really, mechanistically, the questions remain wide-open for exploration. It would just be less certain, assuming we didn’t know the ultimate origin of the rock, and so didn’t know the initial chemical/physical mix, etc.
I think the reality that Hazen was addressing was the human tendency to take “from beyond” as a permanent barrier to our understanding. And there’s no need to do that, as was reasonably illustrated by the work of all the folks mentioned in the second hour.
By the way, I really think the show used Hazen’s quote very intentionally as a cap to the section. To me, it presented a formal possibility, which is known to the public, and then cautioned to not use it as a conversation stopper.
clear as mud@93. OK, thanks – being located in the UK, I didn’t see the programme.
Panspermia is still a cop-out. All it says is “life started elsewhere”, and it doesn’t make any testable predictions about the mechanisms involved. While we can make observations to confirm or refute it, until that data comes in we can’t really make any speculations about how life arose if it wasn’t on this planet. And if the mechanisms proposed could operate on Earth why the need for panspermia?
As for this programme, it may be 29 years old, and may only discuss abiogenesis for about 5 minutes, but I think I’ll stick with episode one of “Life On Earth”.
Terrabiogenesis is still a cop-out. All it says is “life started on Earth”, and it doesn’t make any testable predictions about the mechanisms involved. While we can make observations to confirm or refute it, until that data comes in we can’t really make any speculations about how life arose if it was on this planet. And if the mechanisms proposed could operate off Earth why the need for terrabiogenesis?
I remain to be convinced over this idea that life started out splitting sulfur compounds for a living. For one thing I thought that all the examples we have, including life around black smokers, all require molecular oxygen, which before the cyanobacteria got their act together didn’t exist in anything like the necessary amounts. This little detail seems too often ignored. Those communities around the black smokers are just as dependent on the sun as we are, because without photosynthesis there is no oxygen.
Dave Godfrey wrote:
Observations that tend to confirm it… finding organic chemicals in the galaxy’s dust clouds. If future Mars landers looking for microbes on Mars find them. If we find some weird extremophiles living on comets and or meteors…
Because some form of exogenesis might be true even if, because we don’t know any better yet, it seems life could have originated on Earth?
Like Nick Gotts says, terrabiogenesis is also a cop out in the same way.
It was put together very similar to their Universe series. It bounces around enough to keep the ADD American mind happy with little facts, buzzwords, and sound bytes… but doesn’t really stick to any one subject long enough to satisfy those that have a working knowledge of the subject already. It is good at seeding a ‘want to know more’ attitude into the viewer though, and if it gets even 5% of those that watch it to seek out more information available online or in print resources, than it is a success in my book. You just have to remember the audience they’re shooting for.
I did like Tyson’s bits, he always has a way with words.
@zero: Isn’t that exactly who this show is aimed at? Is it just me that feels they were aiming this show at people who haven’t sat down and learned about this stuff another way? I mean, having 5% go and learn more and maybe 50% at least know a little something… isn’t this the prime goal of a show like this?
Er… I really don’t think this show was being directed at scientists, but reading the comments, I think people here were expecting a full journal club or science lecture.
Was it reasonably accurate – given the constraints of a 2 hour timeslot and a lot of details that couldn’t even be touched – while presenting an brief overview from scratch to the uninitiated?
If not, it failed.
If so, it was a success.
Nick Gotts @ #92,
Why?
Thanks for asking this and starting the discussion. I was wondering the same thing.
Not the only important form of life, rather the form of life that responds to commercial advertising.
Any interesting advertisers?
For a great summary of this experiment, turn again to the great Carl Sagan fom the Cosmos series. Enjoy!
I think the show succeeded. Given that it was aimed for a basic cable TV audience, it imparted some decent information in an uncondescending way.
Good points –
-The woo factor was kept to a minimum.
-Used clergy who supported science.
-Coyne gave a good line about the intelligent design inherent in nature without needing a disigner.
-Tyson! I love the way he is amused at the unknown. He always seems to think before he speaks as opposed to morons like Ham, Hovind, & Comfort, who speak without thinking.
Bad points –
-A little jumpy.
-What gives with those lights racing around the walls during the talking head segments? Very distracting.
-Could have used a “where to find out more about it” section at the end.
Overall grade: A-
What about anaerobic organisms?
I watched it last night and concur with your overall review.
After sleeping on it, I think the producers were using an outright devious (almost IDish) method. I think this video is for driving a ‘wedge’ between evolutionary theists and IDists. The prolific use of Jesuit science priests, the mentions of the Genesis story, the compare and contrast to different religions, with Abrahamic faiths given preeminence, it all leads up to a first half thats intended to make a religious person feel comfortable. Then the second half softly pounces. They speak quickly, with small detail about any theories (that tricky word that trips up so many creationists) and spend lavishly on facts that have been discovered that show what we know about early life.
An un-educated theist who watches this might have a conversion to rationality. Not likely, but I think that it might be the type of tipping stone that can swing an individuals scales more twards the truth, and away from fantasy.
But I was fairly bored, and learned too little.
You’re too generous — what are you, one of GW Bush’s Yale professors? I’d give it a C+.
The first half was badly done, and I think right here in this thread we’ve got examples of several people who tuned in, got disgusted, and turned it off.
The second half was much, much better, but suffered from a lack of continuity. They gave too little time to each of lots of little vignettes. While you could argue that that is a good fit to short attention spans, I don’t think it helps learn much.
One test: if this program were all you knew about research into the origin of life, how much would it help you in an argument with a creationist? Was there one solid revelation in the progress that’s being made in the field that you’d bring up and discuss for more than about 30 seconds?
It sounds like another heavily compromised science documentary to appease the sheep and boost ratings. I’m sorry to hear it was disappointing, but for once I’m glad History Channel Canada was running a crummy rerun.
Heh… In my all too brief peering into creationist dogma (or whatever it is) I’d wager that there is absolutely nothing that would help in an argument with a dyed-in-the-wool creationist. I think that view got solidified for me after watching some VenomfangX vids. Ugh.
I guess with these type of programs, if done well, I’m sort of hoping for everyone else, first-timers with no agendas, to watch and then have all sorts excited questions start bubbling up. I figure that’s when the learning would really begin.
If the questions don’t flow from this introduction, then it fails as an introduction. And it’s a good question whether this show was able to do that. I should have my mom watch it and see what happens…
It would, of course, also help if there was a place to get the next level of answers, kind of like what Nova does.
I don’t understand what everyone is saying about them playing to a certain audience. I am not a scientist, but I am interested in science enough to tune in to this program and I was disgusted by it. I was among those who could barely make it past the first hour.
Who is this audience you think they’re trying to play to? I can’t imagine anyone who would be interested enough to tune into this and then actually like when they saw. The jumping around was a bit much for me too. I took a look at an elementary school kid’s math text book recently and was shocked at all the side-bar notes and pictures making it all busy. Is that what really works with kids today. I’m only 27. What happened?
The show was just as I expected for a cable channel — jumps & bytes. Discovery & TLC would’ve done the same thing (in between their dramatic remodeling shows, that is).
zeekster, that busy, jumping around, ADD shit definitely seems to be the norm for communication with youth these days; though why they (who create it) think it should be the norm is odd. I learn just fine from not-so-noisy college texts, but some of those are even falling victim to the flash & noise (for lower level courses).
I missed the first half entirely – from the comments looks like that was a good call!
I found the second half somewhat jumpy, but it did, at least, provide some solid information – albeit in tiny, tiny nibbles. One thing that made me sit up was the sound bite from the vatican astronomer (I’m paraphrasing) – “evolution is real and does not need any designer to direct it or guide it along”. Wow! Although, being a catholic his views are already suspect to most fundies!
I’d give the part that I saw a B+. Good information. Haphazard presentation.
PZ-
Yeah, I guess I am a much easier grader than you. It was a tossup from a high B, but maybe if they get a higher grade on the introductory course, they will come back for 201, when it gets a lot tougher & then let the hammer drop.
That & I really had to give a big curve in relation to the ususal fare presented by commercial networks & cable. What else was on TV this past week even gets a D on proffering some scientific knowledge? Did anything else even show an actual scientific experiment?
So, how would you guys have done it better?
One thing I thought needed to be there was some mention of Craig Venter’s work on making a cell from scratch and those guys who have already made virii from scratch – no “life only comes from life” there. It really kills the idea a special “life force” like that idea called “quintessence” that Aristotle promoted.
That is one of the really wrong ideas a lot of creationists have and it really needs to die.
Nova never fails to provide great scientific programming. They’re able to present material for the average viewer (non-scientist) without dumbing it down. The recent program on E.O. Wilson and sociobiology made me cry and I can’t wait for the next episode on the “Mystery of the Megavolcano.” Supposed to air tonight at 8pm on PBS (though I didn’t see it in my local schedule).
PSB progams also constantly direct viewers to where they can learn more. Their website even has a teacher’s guide.
My comment was written while 92 was up, but before 93 arrived. Had I seen it I’d probably not have said anything. :)
I’ve mostly encountered panspermia via Paul Davies book, “The Fifth Miracle”, where he argues that life could have started on Mars, but doesn’t convincingly explains why Mars is a better candidate than Earth.
At the moment all the good candidates I’m aware of for abiogenesis work on Earth. It therefore seems more parsimonious to assume terrabiogenesis. If you know of mechanisms where Earth is explicitly excluded then I’d be very interested to hear about them. Until the non-directed panspermia seems doubtful to me.
Here’s a great video about abiogenesis, recently released on Youtube:
Dave Godfrey@116
Well, this one is certainly not possible on Earth – though I’d guess it’s not possible off Earth either!
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1367-2630/9/8/263/njp7_8_263.html
Panspermia. Yeah. Right. So how did the extraterrestrial life that eventually rained down on earth get started? Reminds me of the line from the old joke: “Young man, it’s turtles all the way down.”
Self-organization helps, say by Szostak’s idea of enclosing general replicases in self-organizing vesicles to make them successful enough, but it isn’t strictly necessary as roughly the same enclosure can be found in weathered minerals. Evolutionary processes should be able to organize from the start, by selection on open systems before their replication enclosure.
Self-organization doesn’t need to imply emergence, and emergence doesn’t need to imply self-organization (say, by evolution organizing itself according to the environment).
themadlolscientist@119. I don’t know how life got started. My point is simply that saying “Panspermia doesn’t solve anything” is not an argument against it being the truth. We don’t know. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that. We may be in a much better position to judge within a few decades:
a) Suppose we find life elsewhere, and it has a lot of apparently underdetermined features in common with life on Earth (uses DNA for heredity, RNA in the same range of roles, same genetic code, same chirality, enzymes in common…) That would be pretty strong evidence it had spread either from here to there or vice versa – particularly if this life were in the form of bacterial spores floating in space.
b) Suppose we find what appear to be fossil organisms in non-terrestrial rocks older than any found on Earth, maybe even older than the Earth itself. Not direct evidence of panspermia, but would raise its plausibility.
c) Suppose we find life elsewhere, but it uses completely different genetic material. Not direct evidence against panspermia, but would lower its plausibility.
d) Suppose we find no trace of past or present life anywhere in the solar system. Again, this would lower the plausibility.
e) Suppose life is created in the laboratory, by a sequence of steps all of which we think could have taken place on the early Earth. Again, this would lower the plausibility.
f) Suppose life is created in the laboratory, by a sequence of steps which we think could not have taken place on the early Earth, but could have taken place in conditions we (at that time) believe would have existed elsewhere in the early solar system, or in the aftermath of a supernova, or whatever. Again, this would raise the plausibility.
Given the above, it seems sensible to keep an open mind on the issue.
Myers is pretty much spot-on with this review. I watched this program today (taped it last night on the DVR). It was jumping all over the place, had some inaccuracies that most people have already pointed out, and the first half was just plain BAD. I was pretty disappointed for two reasons: 1–it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, and 2–it was so useless I can’t even use it in my classroom (which is what I was really hoping for).
Oh well.
Way, way too many “woosh” sounds. It’s a science program not the latest Spiderman movie.
Science classics like Cosmos, Ascent of Man, and Connections didn’t need all these effects to keep the viewer engaged.
“I know you don’t want some guy sitting and droning at you, but this seems like a poor compromise.”
Heck if its neil degrasse tyson he could lecture me for hours about science at least he has some personality to his points
Other goofs:
States that van Leeuwenhoek observed bacteria.
Shows a Tree of Life with at least two branches converging.
The visuals of the Cambrian Explosion literally poof animals into existence. (Even though the narration explains that sexual reproduction could explain the diversity.)
Twice, DNA is shown splitting down the middle during the process of cell division, but not actually replicating. Another time, DNA (or maybe it was RNA) is shown replicating… by a copy simply materializing next to it.
I said before that if this show was as good as History’s “How the Earth Was Made,” I’d be buying copies as gifts for friends. Well, I will not be buying copies.
Like PZ, I thought the Pasteur segment was fine. The whole program steered clear of many pitfalls, and I can excuse it for oversimplifying. But it wasn’t the show I was hoping for.
MikeIDR: “Science classics like Cosmos… didn’t need all these effects to keep the viewer engaged.”
Actually, Cosmos had extensive and (for the time) groundbreaking special effects. It even used an extended metaphor: Sagan’s “ship of the imagination.” The difference is that the effects enhanced the information, they didn’t confuse it.
A play by play commentary on a television show? Someone around here has an inflated sense of self-importance…
@127 Hmm, could it be the person calling themselves BiG?
Mentioning Sagan, reminds me that this is the fronts-piece of chapter 10 of ‘Contact’:
[O Zeus, what can I say? That you look on man
and care? [Or]] Do we, holding that the gods exist,
deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams
and lies, while random careless chance and
change alone control the world?
–Euripides
Hecuba (488-492)
(Bracketed bit is my addition to fill out the quote a bit more.)
The show was generally mediocre, best characterized as “safe” and therefore, on the whole, rather boring. The first half was about trying hard not to drive away creationist viewers. The second half loosened up a tad, but remained a yawn.
–
bunnycatch3r#10:
“Ok, can chemistry explain why I was snatched from “non-existance” 41 years ago?”
No, except inasmuch that a LACK of chemistry might suggest why “you” weren’t around before you showed up.
“Can it explain where it is I’ll go when my chemistry expires?”
No, except for the same reason.
“Can it guarantee that I will not be plucked from non-existance again?”
No, because chemistry doesn’t say ANYTHING about how “you” can exist while “you” don’t exist. Neither can such a ludicrous idea be entertained by any logic.
“In short, can chemistry solve existance or death?”
No, because chemistry doesn’t any supply answers to such nonsensical questions.
“You’ll have to excuse my “barbaric yawp” but there is something more. Why is it that biology or chemistry or whatever seems to have a one track mind: a desperation to replicate!”
You’ve been grievously misinformed. Whatever gave you the idea that “chemistry or whatever” has a “mind” afflicted by “a desperation to replicate”?
I’ve seen some serious cases of anthropomorphism in my time, but you must really try a little harder to grow up and quit watching Disney cartoons that depict talking fish with lips and eyelashes.
Grumpy #126 “Cosmos…even used an extended metaphor: Sagan’s “ship of the imagination.” The difference is that the effects enhanced the information, they didn’t confuse it.”
Fans of ‘Cosmos’ may be amused to learn that after many weeks of serious worry over how to depict Carl’s “ship of the imagination”, the final solution we arrived at was an extremely simple one: it consisted of a styrofoam ball with lots of white pipe-cleaners stuck in it. It cost about 5 bucks and 10 minutes to make.
We mounted it on a rotatable pipe and had a little trouble with a few of the pipe-cleaners staying steady during the tracking camera shoots, but nothing a little extra hot-glue couldn’t fix. Worked like a charm.