Who Built the Moon? (18 page)

As the huge tides advanced, salt concentrations would have been very low. Even modern double-stranded DNA breaks apart under such conditions, because electrically charged phosphate groups on each strand repel each other. However, when the tides receded, precursor molecules and precipitated salt would have been present in high concentrations. Lathe claims that this would have encouraged DNA-like double-stranded molecules to form, because high salt concentrations neutralize DNA’s phosphate charges and this allows strands to stick together.

It is these constant salty cycles and changes in temperature that, Lathe says, would have amplified molecules such as DNA but he points out that the tidal forces were absolutely vital in the process. Whilst it is true that the Sun also creates tides on the Earth, these are of a very low magnitude compared to those caused by the much closer Moon. Three billion years ago it was closer still.

Without DNA there could be no life because it stands at the very heart of the replication of living matter. From the single-celled amoeba to the largest blue whale on our planet, DNA is the vital component that began life and which keeps it going. Perhaps Richard Lathe is correct and it was the presence of so large a Moon that began the chemical process that led to us, but it does remain a fact that despite all the theories, no scientist has yet managed to take the various chemicals that comprise life and arrange them in such a way that they become even the very simplest life form.

Lathe’s theory could explain how the Moon caused the early replication of DNA but its origin remains a complete mystery, and many scientists are quite unsettled about the theory of how life came into existence in the first place. For example, David A Kaufmann PhD, of the University of Florida said, ‘Evolution lacks a scientifically acceptable explanation of the source of the precisely planned codes within cells without which there can be no specific proteins and hence, no life.’

Admittedly David Kaufmann is a creationist, so maybe we can expect him to come to this conclusion. But then there is Professor Hubert P Yockey, a physicist from the University of California – who is most definitely not an adherent of creation and is concerned that discredited ideas continue to clog up the process of seeking out the truth. He wrote:

‘Although at the beginning the paradigm was worth consideration, now the entire effort in the primeval soup paradigm is self-deception on the ideology of its champions…

The history of science shows that a paradigm, once it has achieved the status of acceptance (and is incorporated in textbooks) and regardless of its failures, is declared invalid only when a new paradigm is available to replace it. Nevertheless, in order to make progress in science, it is necessary to clear the decks, so to speak, of failed paradigms. This must be done even if this leaves the decks entirely clear and no paradigms survive. It is a characteristic of the true believer in religion, philosophy and ideology that he must have a set of beliefs, come what may (Hoffer, 1951). Belief in a primeval soup on the grounds that no other paradigm is available is an example of the logical fallacy of the false alternative. In science it is a virtue to acknowledge ignorance. This has been universally the case in the history of science as Kuhn (1970) has discussed in detail. There is no reason that this should be different in the research on the origin of life.’
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Yockey makes this statement because, like many other scientists, he cannot believe that the question regarding the emergence of life can be answered at all well by the primeval soup theory. Like the Double Whack theory of the Moon’s birth – it is simply wrong and obfuscating progress to a workable explanation.

The main reason there is so much unrest about this question is because DNA cannot exist without life, and life cannot exist without DNA. The two are totally interdependent and create a chicken-and- egg situation that seems impossible to resolve.

It occurs to us that even the theories of Richard Lathe, on the way the Moon may have contributed to the rapid spreading of life through huge tides and chemical mixing, come no closer to explaining how life actually came about.

Some experts still claim that it must have happened by accident, presumably because the other possibilities are too hard to swallow. However, it would be far more sensible to claim that fairies from Neverland did it.

Nobody doubts that the information contained in a single gene must be at least as great as the enzyme it controls. However, just one average protein contains over 300 amino acids. In order to create the protein it would take a gene of DNA that would have to contain 1,000 nucleotides in its chain. Every DNA chain contains four sorts of nucleotide. This seems complicated but it results in a possible 4 x 10
¹⁰⁰⁰
possible forms. For those who do not realize, 4 x 10
¹⁰⁰⁰
represents the number 4 followed by 1,000 zeros.

These are values beyond all comprehension. To get some perspective on this, it is interesting to note that it is estimated that there are only 10 x 10
⁸⁰
particles in the whole Universe. One begins to realize how utterly impossible it would have been for complex DNA to be accidentally created in the primeval soup of the young Earth.

In the world of probability, some things are very likely to happen, others might sometimes happen but some can never happen at all. An expert in probability, Emile Borel (1871–1956) claimed that phenomena with very small probability don’t occur. He estimated that there would be about one chance in 10 x 10
⁵⁰
for a small probability. Minute though these odds were, they weren’t remote enough for more modern experts in probability. William M Dembski, associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science at Baylor University and a senior fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, decided to go further. He estimated that there were 10 x 10
⁸⁰
particles in the Universe and wondered how many times per second an event might occur. The number he came up with was 10 x 10
⁴⁵
. He then calculated the number of seconds from the beginning of the Universe to the present time and then, to make sure he was erring on the side of caution, he multiplied this number by one billion and arrived at the number 10 x 10
²⁵
seconds. He now multiplied all the figures together achieving a result of 10 x 10
¹⁵⁰
for his Law of Small Probability.
³⁰

For a minimum living cell there are 60,000 proteins of 150 configurations.
³¹
Joseph A Mastropaolo, an expert who has tackled this problem at length, estimates that the probability of the evolution of this first cell would be an absolutely staggering 1 in 10 x 10
^4,478,296
or 10 followed by 4,478,296 zeros. This exceeds Dembski’s estimation for Small Probability by such a great margin that were it not for the fact that DNA does clearly exist, no self-respecting scientist could uphold the possibility of it having originated by chance.

If every particle in the Universe had one chance for every second since the beginning of time – we still would not have DNA.

In case there are readers who doubt Mastropaolo’s scepticism regarding the possibility of DNA creating itself from scratch, it is interesting to see that he is far from alone. Peter T Mora of Macromolecular Biology Section, Immunology Program, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland wrote: ‘The presence of a living unit is exactly opposite to what we would expect on the basis of pure statistical and probability considerations.’
³²

The English scientist J D Bernal said, way back in 1965: ‘The answer would seem to me, combined with the knowledge that life is actually there, to lead to the conclusion that some sequences other than chance occurrences must have led to the appearance of life as we know it.’
³³

And to add to the list of dissenters regarding a theory that clearly doesn’t hold water, primeval or not, we have the opinion of the late Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, one of the most respected astronomers who has ever lived. ‘Rather than accept that fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act. By “better” I mean less likely to be wrong.’
³⁴

However, no matter how great and how many the howls of indignation at this complete disregard of probability, one of the fundamental tools of science, it remains a fact that DNA did occur somehow. As the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum of any sort. No matter how much Professor Yockey may suggest that if we have no viable theory we should exist without it until one is discovered, it seems that to many scientists a twisted and broken paradigm is better than none at all.

After all, the alternative might be unthinkable to most experts. We might, for example, have to consider the possibility of a ‘mind’ behind the creation of DNA, even if we can accept evolution as a viable theory once DNA existed.

The majority of scientists would prefer to break their own rules rather than to evoke the deity, but even Professor Sir Fred Hoyle was left with the only conclusion that could occur to him, namely that the Universe was under some sort of ‘intelligent cosmic control’.
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Is this the way forward? If we are going to be truly honest, bearing in mind the utter impossibility of the chance occurrence of DNA, might we have to accept that ‘God spoke and it was so’?

Who can blame Anthony Flew for turning a lifetime’s work on its head and saying: ‘A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.’

However, Flew’s definition of God bears little resemblance to the deity of Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, which he describes as being depicted as ‘omnipotent Oriental despots – cosmic Saddam Husseins’. He is actually describing something as open as our own ‘Unknown Creative Agency’ – which presumably might mean virtually anything from a sublime single entity to a galactic federation of planet seeders!

Some sixty years ago, when quantum theory first emerged, physicists thought the mystery of life was about to be resolved. By looking at the tiniest building blocks of matter it was starting to explain how everything worked – so it surely would also explain the essence that we call life. They were to be disappointed, but recent developments have raised the hopes of some scientists that the nature of first life might be explained by new levels of understanding about sub atomic behaviour in biology.

In 2004, these new ideas caused NASA to convene a workshop of leading scientists to discuss the subject of ‘quantum life’ at their astrobiology laboratory in Ames, California, where discussion covered fields such as nanotechnology and quantum computation.

Nanotechnology is concerned with the manufacture of artefacts or machines that are assembled on an atom-by-atom basis. A nanometre is an almost unbelievably small unit of length. A human hair is typically about one 10,000
^th
of a metre in diameter and a common cold virus is approximately one thousandth of this size. A typical protein unit making up the coating of such a virus is typically ten nanometres thick – equivalent to about 100 atomic diameters, or the size of one of the amino acid groups making up that protein molecule.

A whole new world of technology is envisaged from building self-replicating machines that could, for instance, carry out surgery at a cellular level inside the human body. However, an increasing number of scientists are suggesting that nature may have used this idea a long time ago. As Professor Paul Davies has pointed out, the living cell is full of nanomachines designed and refined by biological evolution. And he posed the question: ‘Could it be that some of them acquired their amazing properties by deploying fancy quantum tricks?’
³⁶
He says: ‘One vital part of a cell’s reproductive machinery is a little motor, called a polymerase enzyme, which crawls along unzipped strands of DNA and forges the links that match up the unpaired nucleotide bases with complementary bases floating through its environment.’

Apoorva Patel of the Indian Institute of Science, believes that living cells may use quantum mechanics to boost their information-processing efficiency, which could explain why the genetic code is the way it is, and why it is found in all organisms. As Davies points out, quantum theory describes atoms and molecules as waves, which can overlap and combine coherently – known as superposition. This means that the normal rules of time/space do not apply and an atom can exist in a superposition of excited and unexcited states, or of states corresponding to several spatial locations at the same time. These superpositions are expected to be the basis of quantum computers that will be able to hunt for a target among a jumble of data. This is said to be equivalent to finding a name in a telephone directory when you know only the phone number.

The role of quantum theory in the origin of life is not yet clear. But it seems that the new technologies that humankind is now investigating may be at the root of life itself. Paul Davies acknowledges that life somehow emerged from the ferment of the quantum molecular world, and he adds:

‘The role of quantum processes in living matter is still unclear. It is entirely possible that quantum mechanics was the midwife of life, but has played an insignificant role since… All scientists agree that life somehow emerged from the ferment of the quantum molecular world. The key issue is on which side of the quantum-classical divide the transition to life occurred. Niels Bohr once said that anyone who is not shocked by quantum mechanics hasn’t understood it. I believe that anyone who is not shocked by life hasn’t understood it. The question before us is whether quantum mechanics is shocking enough to explain life.’

It seems to us that whoever seeded life on our planet, all those billions of years ago, was using a form of self-replicating ‘technology’ which will eventually come to be understood. And we might not be that far from that understanding now.