There were several interesting articles and images that all gave me the inspiration for this post. So, let’s talk about…
Category Chemistry
Yesterday I went to the First Annual (hopefully) Lone Star College Book Festival in Houston. They put on an impressive…
A friend put me on to a course in information theory by the Santa Fe Institute. It’s a good course,…
The origin of life on Earth is a fascinating topic. But to be truly informed, you really have to get…
In dealing with creationists, they will often steer the conversation to something like specificity. They will say that no new…
Up here, near the surface of Earth, where the sun shines, life depends on photosynthesis. I hope that everyone has,…
We dealt with the issues around radiocarbon dating here. That leaves a bunch more to cover. That the atmosphere has…
Does not knowing exactly how something happened imply that it didn’t happen?
Oxygen can damage us though. It can react with many different types of molecules. It can damage things like amino acids, proteins, and the nucleic acids. Which brings us to the next claim by Texas creationists.
Photo dissociation of water vapor has been a source of oxygen since the Earth formed, and there is substantial geologic evidence that a significant amount of oxygen existed in the atmosphere prior to the advent of photosynthesis. Oxygen breaks down amino acids and sugars that are postulated to have formed!
In part 3 of this series, I’ll take two of the claims made by the Strength’s and Weaknesses website, as they really are the same thing. I’m not sure if the author thinks that they are two different things or what, but it is odd. Of course, while the science is not settled, it is far from the claims of the website.
No known way to achieve 100% left-handed amino acids in proteins or the 100% right-handed sugars in RNA and DNA – all of which are universal to life systems.
All natural processes are known to produce a 50-50% mixture of left-handed and right-handed molecules.