Energy Harnessing: An Achilles Heel for Origin of Life
On this ID The Future out of the vault, origin-of-life specialist Rob Stadler joins host Eric Anderson to discuss a special problem facing all naturalistic origin-of-life scenarios: energy harnessing. To be viable, a cell must have sophisticated machinery, including ATP synthase, to turn raw energy into constructive energy. But how could prebiotic chemicals harness raw energy on the way to evolving into a viable self-reproducing cell without first having the sophisticated machinery to harness raw energy and convert it to useful work? Are the energy sources that have been proposed for chemical evolution realistic? In his conversation with Anderson, Stadler argues that, no, they aren’t. This isn’t the sort of thing that mindless natural processes can overcome, but it’s precisely the sort of problem that a designing mind could solve.
This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. Look for Part 2 soon.
Dig Deeper
Check out the episode of Long Story Short that inspired this conversation: