Off Topic: Darwin Award

Something to mull over on a quiet evening...

What do you suppose the odds are of a lightning strike producing a single single DNA (the basis for everything we recognize as being "alive") molecule from some random glob of "soup"?

:)

Reply to
Morris Dovey
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Greater than the chance of having the surface of the earth covered with identical 1sq.cm tiles, with one of the tiles having a mark on the bottom, and tossing a stone in the air at any random location and having it land on the marked tile.

Reply to
-MIKE-

No, some of us farmboys learn from others mistakes!!!!(Then there are those who just HAVE to piss on the fence themselves)

Uncle's favorite trick was when walking along shoulder of road in fresh dewy grass, me barefoot & him in rubber boots, he'd grab my hand and then grab the fence with the other hand. Pulsating type fencer, pops out a spark-plug sized jolt every 3 to 4 sec, and the poor soul on the END of the loop gets nailed worse than if I had grabbed the fence myself. Norm

Reply to
Nahmie

rather than a strong lightning strike, maybe just a wandering electrostatic sizzle could have randomly arranged a billion DNA wigglies that eventually mutated into woodworkers as we know them? Well.. it COULD have happened..... Maybe when they turn the LHC up to Volume 11 it could set off a chain reaction that would grow into an alien.

Reply to
Robatoy

That would BE phenomenal odds, but odds nonetheless. And to plot that on a timeline of infinite length, that marked tile would get hit eventually.

Reply to
Robatoy

Given a long enough period of time, pretty high, I should say. Lightning strikes the earth approximately 300 million times a year, and the planet is believed to be some five or six billion years old. Assuming the current rate is representative, that works out in the neighborhood of 1.5 x 10^17 lightning strikes since the planet was formed. With that many opportunities, the probability that even a one in a million billion event will occur *sometime* is, for all practical purposes, certainty.

Reply to
Doug Miller

But that's the point of the illustration, you don't get to do it over. You get one chance and those are the odds.

Reply to
-MIKE-

No, some of us farmboys learn from others mistakes!!!!(Then there are those who just HAVE to piss on the fence themselves)

---------------------------------------

What's the difference between an Oriental and an Occidental?

An Occidental learns from his mistakes, an Oriental learns from the mistakes of others, it's cheaper.

Lew

Reply to
Lew Hodgett

BOOGER!!! Just ONE??? But lightning hits continuously all over the planet. Not just one shot. Besides, just to get this out of the way, I believe in Creationism, with a healthy dose of evolution (Adaption?) tossed in to keep us on our toes.

Reply to
Robatoy

There you go, off the PC rails again...

Reply to
Robatoy

"Robatoy" wrote

BOOGER!!! Just ONE??? But lightning hits continuously all over the planet. Not just one shot. Besides, just to get this out of the way, I believe in Creationism, with a healthy dose of evolution (Adaption?) tossed in to keep us on our toes. ==================

Creationism, eh??

You make a lousy liberal.

Reply to
Lee Michaels

It would seem reasonable to allow for multiple lightening strikes - but not on an infinite time line. Planetary conditions would have had to reach a point where the molecule could persist long enough to replicate (since that's much of the "point" of a DNA molecule), which would establish the beginning of the time line - and the strike would have to occur before those conditions were no longer present.

To make the problem even hairier, the resulting molecule, composed of the ACGT building blocks would be a dead end if the blocks weren't arranged in whatever constitutes a "workable" sequence and if the molecule contained any destabilizing components (like, for example, zinc).

I wasn't asking a rhetorical question - just suggesting that Rob's comment might lead to some interesting (if not necessarily productive) quiet contemplation...

Reply to
Morris Dovey

God would have no trouble creating 1 billion-year-old rocks, would He?

Reply to
Robatoy

WTF started this shit about my being a liberal?

Reply to
Robatoy

Yahbut -- he did it by Occident!

Reply to
Robert Bonomi

"Lee Michaels" wrote

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>Well, the verdict is in. The autopsy was done. He did not die of pissing on a downed power line. He GRABBED it with his left hand.

He still qualifies for a Darwin Award though.

First he crashes into a power pole. He calls for help. Then he grabs a downed power line. Somehow or another, that made sense to him.

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Reply to
Lee Michaels

On Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:19:50 -0600, the infamous Morris Dovey scrawled the following:

Or not.

Gazillions to one, minimum. That much juice fries/explodes anything it touches, including _stone_.

Life globules come from something a wee bit more subtle, I gar-on-tee.

-- An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do. -- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943

Reply to
Larry Jaques

On Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:54:46 -0600, the infamous Morris Dovey scrawled the following:

Yabbut, how many darkening strikes would it take, hmmm?

-- An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do. -- W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943

Reply to
Larry Jaques

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>>>> Well, the verdict is in. The autopsy was done. He did not die of pissing

Begs the question, what did he have in his Right hand?

Most Certainly!

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Reply to
LDosser

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