[Wanderer]

So many tuppenies in the pot. Perhaps enough to buy a round? Here's another couple:

Originally posted by Krsqk:
The truth is, there are no "simple" life forms; single-celled organisms are far more complex than we understand. As you've said, each cell has a built-in defense system, power plants, feeding system, etc.

Just as physicists keep finding smaller and smaller sub-atomic particles, so I found my biology classes spoke of smaller and smaller bits of organisms until I lost count/got bored.

The odds of all of those parts evolving simultaneously (as you say must have happened) would be much, much higher than what I've posted here.

I don't think any 'defence' system would appear immediately - you'd need the presence of hazards (defend itself from other organisms? but this is the first one ) and time for those to develop. Yes this would make any such creature very vulnerable for a (long) period, but if enough survive...

You're right that such complex things aren't likely to appear (talking evolution-style not creation-style ) all at once. The logical answer is that they didn't but developed over time. If that makes the initial stages of life on earth that we're postulating look utterly useless compared to modern-day amoebae, so be it. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

As for the probability stuff - did you factor in the number of stars in the universe and the number of planets likely to be circling them? It could be that life on Earth was an amazing piece of luck and that there are 10^20 (is it a billion galaxies with a billion stars? guess 20 planets per system including all the satellites) lifeless hulks out there. Is trying 100 trillion times a second reasonable? How did you get that number?

Plus you needn't run the simulated attempts enough times to ensure that the initial formation occurs, only to show that there is a significant chance of it happening. If you said "I can only get the figures to say 5%" I'd say "Well, we're here aren't we?"

A quick sound-bite:
Just because something is statistically improbable doesn't make it impossible.

On the other hand, I doubt play the lottery...

Oh, and the current vogue for universe age is about 14 billion years (at least at the time of writing, by the time I hit Preview Post it could have changed again... )

"How many [comets] did we start with?"
Short-period comets only have a life-span of 10,000 years.

I don't know the figures for comet-life, but surely it matters little given that new ones can appear? They're only icy rocks that get too close to the sun, and there's a huge number of rocks out there.

"Jupiter and Saturn are losing heat twice as fast as they gain it. They should have cooled off long ago."

Er, I don't think so. But I can't find anything useful, either way, in the first twenty Google results.

Volcanic "spewing" doesn't account for enough new mass to make up for it, though.

Aye, it's plate tectonics - if two plates meet they tend to push each other up (e.g. the Himalayas are the result of the Indian sub-continent pushing against the main Asian plate [or someone hid a lot of ancient fish fossils up there for a laugh ] also see Iceland and the mid-Atlantic ridge). Eroded soil doesn't disappear off the planet - I'd expect to see the material again eventually.

Sorry if this is a bit rambling, have been on the phone whilst writing it.