I don’t think I’ve ever fully elucidated my thoughts on the possible existence of extraterrestrial life, have I? Well, I’ll put off my Python evolution project a little longer, and write about it now — no time like the present.
Assume first, as I do, that the abiogenesis (or “primordial ooze”) theory is correct. For those of you not in the know, this theory suggests that life on Earth began when certain organic chemicals organized through known means into amino acids, which in turn self-organized into proteins, which in turn used lipids to form the first cell barriers, and gained the ability to pull the components necessary to catalyze RNA from their surroundings. These became the first proto-cells, which populated the world (in the RNA-world theory at least), and competed with one another for these organic molecules and in self-replication naturally selected for structures that would be better equipped at obtaining these molecules before their competitors.
