Topics that seem to be of general interest to many AP enthusiasts:
(1) Published this week in the journal
Science, reported by Reuters:
Sun was shinging brightly from beginning. Researchers at UC San Diego looked at isotopes of sulfides in primitive chondrite meteorites for the first conclusive evidence that the so-called protosun emitted enough ultraviolet energy more than 4.5 billion years ago to catalyze the formation of organic compounds, water and other elements necessary for the evolution of life on Earth.
Comment: It seems that new evidence keeps pushing back the possible beginning of life to earlier and earlier periods in the history of the earth.
(2) Reported by CNN from Associated Press:
Harvard to explore origins of life.
quote:
Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began.
The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained.
"My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention," said David R. Liu, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard.
...
"It is quite gratifying to see Harvard is going for a solution to a problem that will be remembered 100 years from now," said Steven Benner, a University of Florida scientist who is one of the world's top chemists in origins-of-life research.
Comment: The only thing a little misleading here is that the "Theory of Evolution," beginning with Darwin's 1859 publication, explains the diversity of life over the earth's history but does not address the ultimate origins of life itself. Has the term
evolution been broadened in its scope of meaning? Or is there a better term to describe the origins of biochemistry on earth and subsequently the first living cells?
