"Alfred A. Aburto Jr." wrote in message m...
"Jason H." wrote in message
om...
Paper - How bio-friendly is the universe, by Paul Davies at
http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403050

Ah! Thank you Jason for finding these little gems ...


The paper posits 'biological determinism' as a factor in biogenesis,
"transpermia" versus "panspermia" and that "...the key property of
life is its information content, and speculate that the emergence of
the requisite information-processing machinery might require quantum
information theory for a satisfactory explanation."

Along similar lines, I have been reading a book called: "The Primal Bias"
http://www.sciam.com/marketplace/ (third item down)


(Note the life probability number ascribed to SETI.)

You mean P2 ~ 1 ?


Yes. In context

"...SETI proponents, who tacitly assume a life principle, have
frequently asserted P2~1 for a single earth-like planet, implying an
enormous amplification factor of 10^40,000."

I don't think that scientists who are "SETI proponents" make this
assertion. I think that many SETI proponents who are scientists are
applying the scientific method (and asserting that there is no
evidence of ET life in the universe) and they entertain the
possibility that life is ubiquitous (but certainly they are NOT making
any scientific assertions or observations based on such a factor, i.e.
"SETI" proponents are not making the assumption that almost every
earth-like planet of similar age has life on it; their targeting
criteria for detection doesn't even include earth-like planets, yet.)
I think there are ASTROBIOLOGISTS who make a good argument for such a
possibility, but I don't think that "SETI" scientists use or would
assert that number.

Also, it's been my experience (through this NG) that not all "SETI
proponents" assume a "life principle" as described in the paper (the
religious, rare-earthers, etc.) And I wonder if many "SETI
proponents" (if even a majority) are still subscribers to the theory
of life arising from a world-covering ocean that is a "homogenous
medium of pre-biotic building blocks such as nucleotides and amino
acids." as described in the paper. Also, as Davies morphs
"panspermia" into "transpermia", he limits transpermia to very local
activity, and by doing so seems to omit the possibility of comets as a
vector for life (those "Red Rain of Kerala" self-replicating protein
from comet papers seemed a plausible life transmission medium idea
(IMO), and seemed probability-wise (again IMO) a more likely scenario
than oceans of nucleotides and amino acids spontaneously instigating
self-replication.

Best regards, Jason H.




TTFN, Jason H.

Al