• BremboTheFourth@piefed.ca
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    8 hours ago

    i didn’t say earth was special. do you know what it takes for those elements to come together in a way that even begins to approach life? do we ever get brand new single celled organisms that have no relation to anything that currently exists? why does every organism we’ve studied seem to descend from a single ancestor if it’s so easy for life to arise from a barren soup?

    we don’t even know if we arose from that soup. maybe we’re actually the aliens, delivered as a single frozen cell from some asteroid that crashed into earth. maybe! who knows! if people wanna write fanfic about the universe that’s their business, but it’s wildly frustrating how so many people pretend that fic has any scientific basis

    • frongt@lemmy.zip
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      5 hours ago

      why does every organism we’ve studied seem to descend from a single ancestor if it’s so easy for life to arise from a barren soup?

      That one was successful. A million others could easily have arisen before it but been unsuccessful. A million others could have arisen afterwards but failed to compete with that single ancestor. And it’s nearly impossible for them to leave any evidence of their existence.