Re: How did life begin?
An impossibility is defined as having a probability of zero.
Is the probability of molecules being in exactly the right spot at the right time to start a self-replicating chain reaction greater than zero? Yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt. This means it is possible.
500 million years is the most conservative time window for the creation of life. Many people have trouble conceptualizing the amount of time that is. A molecule in liquid or gas phase has about 10^10 collisions per second. Scale that for years and the time window in question and each molecule makes something on the order of 10^27 collisions during that period. Each molecule also moves about 10^17 meters, which is the same as traversing the earths orbital circumference 1000 times. Now consider how many hydrogen, carbon, orxygen and nitrogen atoms there are on the earth. The number of permutations of chemical arrangements in 500 million years in a baryonic soup is magnitudal orders greater than astronomical, it is just inconcievable.
If you sent 10^500 tornadoes at piles of scrap metal, You would end up with a fleet of 747s, a few M1 Abrams tanks, a few bentleys and most certainly a few cellular organisms.
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