Life's Launch

I have been taking an online course on the subject of the origin of life on Earth. This is a field of study that seems to be getting tantalizingly close to an answer. The field got a major boost back in the 1950s when two researchers conducted an experiment that showed when a mixture of certain gases (thought at the time to be similar to Earth's early atmosphere) were heated with water and a spark passed through the vapors, complex organic molecules were formed. It seems as if the pre-life chemicals have a predilection to combine into complicated configurations—all on their own, in the form of many different complex amino acids.

But the process of these complex molecules then taking the next steps into something animate, is another huge leap. Lots of research is going on and it is tantalizingly close to an answer, but the difficulties of the process are immense.

We do know that life arose very early in Earth's history. Our planet was formed some 4.5 billion years ago, and life appeared quite shortly thereafter—under conditions that most types of life today would be unable to tolerate. Life is tough, though. Given half a chance, it will thrive, and it did. Then it took a very long time (some 3.5 billion years) for life to grow past single-cell creatures. Only about 500 million years ago did multicellular animals appear on the scene, during what is termed the Cambrian Explosion.

What struggles did life encounter in its early days to stay alive? Current research suggests that life may have originated in various clement locations on our planet. I use the word “clement” in a relative sense here... all conditions on Earth were very harsh in those days. 

Life may in fact have gotten started more than once and then earlier forms died out, before sustaining itself; in a sort of stuttering manner. It's also possible that different forms of life came into existence and that the kind of life we know today may have driven other forms extinct.

Then again, life may not have originated on Earth. Meteorites continue to fall on our planet from space, which contain complex organic molecules. Maybe life got seeded here from elsewhere in the solar system or the cosmos. The environment on Mars some 3-4 billion years ago was warm and wet. Maybe life arose there and traveled on a rocky space ship to Earth. We have fund several meteorites on the Antarctic snow that we know did come from Mars (due to their unique Martian composition), and some of their interiors appear to have had primitive life forms embedded in them.

As I wrote above, the more scientists learn about the origin of life, the more complex that beginning seems to have been. It may not be long before we've deciphered the story, however.

Republican Rout In 2022?

In a previous post I addressed societal illnesses in the US that promote out-of-control gun violence. There are numerous other problems we have, such as voting restrictions, control of government by moneyed interests, economic inequality, racism, extreme right-wing violent actions, poor public education, etc. Neither party—Democrats nor Republicans—has done much to deal with these problems, but it's safe to say that the Republican Party deserves far more blame for the sad state of affairs in this country.

Republicans have fought gun control, promoted fossil fuel damage to our environment, opened the door to our government being controlled by the rich, cut taxes that have thrust many people into poverty and decimated our infrastructure, interfered with the ability of our schools to adequately educate our children, gerrymandered and distorted state elections—so that many minority citizens struggle to be able to vote, created a hostile atmosphere in government, unethically skewed the US Supreme Court so that six of nine justices possess extreme views that are out of touch with the desires of citizens, and much more.

It remains a mystery to me why Republicans have been successful at degrading American democracy as much as they have. On most of the issues listed above, they are very much out of touch with the desires and needs of most of the country's citizens. They force agendas that the majority of Americans do not support. It is a measure of how US democracy has been damaged. By definition, a democracy is a system of government that provides for the needs and welfare of its citizens through their participation. If the government ignores or overrides the needs of the people, it's not a democracy.

Evidence suggests that the Republican Party seriously began its assault on the American government after Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980. His predecessor Jimmy Carter spoke to citizens in 1979—declaring that the country faced many critical problems. It was dubbed his “malaise speech,” in which he stated that in the future the country faced deeper and more damaging problems than those being struggled with at the time; such as long lines as gas stations, energy shortages, or rampant inflation. He described a “fundamental threat to American democracy,” that was surfacing as a crisis of confidence in the “growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.” We had become a people that valued “owning things and consuming things.” He said that the federal government had become “isolated from the mainstream of our nation's life.” He stated that we must first “face the truth, and then we can change our course.” He went on to request that Americans must relinquish their current wasteful habits and conserve energy by cutting back on car trips, obeying a reduced speed limit, and setting their thermostats lower.

A little over a year later Carter lost his reelection to Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on the slogan “It's morning in America.” Reagan painted a very different picture from Carter—in which he claimed that Americans were embarking on a rosy future and there was no need to trim our appetites at all. It was a comforting message. People preferred Reagan’s slogan to Carter's admonition to face the truth, which was perceived a “fundamental threat to American democracy.” And over the 40 years since we have continued our reckless way, as the Republican Party has continued to push an agenda that denies climate crisis and has brought our democracy to a weakened state.

The party has gone so far that it ignores the will of the majority of citizens. We are in enough of a mess that Republican candidates for political office in November should be routed, but many prognosticators predict that the Republicans will take control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. It is amazing how one party has derailed democracy and sold lies to Americans. If they are not routed in November, our future will look more like a strong-arm dictatorship than a democracy.