NASA Scientists Find Clues to a Secret of Life
17 March 2009
You are made of cells. Those cells contain proteins. Proteins are made of amino acids. There are 20 different amino acids that can be put into an unlimited number of arrangements to form different proteins similar to the way the English alphabet contains 26 letters that can be rearranged to form words. Molecular machines depend on all the words being spelled correctly in order to function properly. If the words are spelled wrong or some of the letters are reversed (ЯUSSIAИ) then the amino acids can't be coded into proteins.
In nature amino acids can be either right handed or left handed. This can be visualized by looking at the palm of your hands because your right hand is the mirror image of your left hand. In the same way a right handed amino acid is the mirror image of the left handed amino acid. All amino acids found in life are always left handed. This seams contrary to what would happen through natural processes because experiments such as the Urey-Miller experiment produced an equal number of both left and right handed amino acids. Not only are there naturally an even mixture of LH and RH but when a living organism dies the LH amino acids automatically start reverting into an even number of RH and LH.
Over the last 4 years scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have been looking at several meteorites that had an abundance of carbon. Of these carbonaceous meteorites three types contained slightly more LH amino acids than RH. Dr. Daniel Glavin said, "Finding more left-handed isovaline in a variety of meteorites supports the theory that amino acids brought to the early Earth by asteroids and comets contributed to the origin of only left-handed based protein life on Earth."
far-fetched: (adjective)
1. Not likely; difficult to believe; outlandish; wild; impractical.
Even if 100% of the amino acids on these carbonaceous meteorites were left handed that still would not support the hypothesis that life evolved from non-living proteins. The origin of life is much more complicated than just having all the right pieces in the right places at the right time.
If you gave a monkey a keyboard the odds that it would randomly type the phrase "encyclopedia britannica" would be 1:4.7x1038 (470 undecillion). This is given that you already have a keyboard that has English letters and a human that can read the sentence after it is typed. That would be 1 monkey on every square foot of the earth stacked 77 miles high typing once a second for 20 billion years!
The probability of a protein assembling its amino acids in the correct order and correct handedness is much greater than that. This does not even include the complex folding that must occur for the protein to function (mis-folded proteins can cause several types of neurodegenerative and other diseases). Even if the amino acids did come from space, assembled themselves into proteins, and the proteins happened to find cells to live in, all you would have is one DEAD cell. Life is more than the sum of its parts.
Life in this universe only started once (Genesis 1) and since then only the things that are alive produce life. No one has ever observed non-living mater come alive.
Law of Biogenesis
Life only comes from life.
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2009/left_hand_life.html
