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Originally Posted by Greg Young
Ken,
That 1E350 is an interesting number. How did you come up with it?
Greg
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I didnt come up with it myself.
It is based on the number of molecules in the most simple - single cell organisms
and the number that have to be right for the (DNA based) cell to live and reproduce.
This is not too hard to understand, since most people are familar with binary counting.
If a molecule has four atoms for example, and each location in that molecule could be oxygen or carbon, then there are 16 possible combinations
OOOO
OOOC
OOCO
OOCC
....
CCCC
or 2^length of the strand, in this case 2^4 = 16. This is not taking into account mirror image (reversed) combinations that look the same
if there could be 4 elements in each position, then you end up with 4^4 = 256 possible combinations. You can start to see how unwieldly this will get
if the molecule is 100 atoms long, and has 4 possible elements in each position, then there are 4^100 = 1.6E60 possible combinations. This is still a realitively small molecule, and you have already matched the number of atoms in the entire universe.
Im only giving a simplified answer here. The 1E350 number has many factors to take into consideration. I think you can google this subject and come up with several websites that go into more detail on the 1E350 number.
This has been part of the evolution vs creation ongoing debate. Some people say the incredible complexity of the most basic lifeforms requires a creator (the watchmaker argument). Some try to dispute the 1E350 number, saying atoms will have some inherent preference to form DNA cells on their own.
But if you take the discussion out of the creation vs evolution debate forum, and look at it strickly from a scientific method (as some people are starting to do), it leads us down a different path.
Scientists, to some extent, assumed the religious concept of life only existing on earth
must be wrong, for the simple reason that the conclusion was based on religion and not on science. Drake assigning a very high probability of spontainious life on almost every possible planet was to some extent a knee jerk reaction - bleedover from the creation vs evolution debate.
If we get past the reactionary thought processes, and look at the data we have, then if life sprang into existance spontainiously it was an extreemly rare event.