Abiogenesis News - A Small Self-Copying RNA Molecule That Could Easily Arise Spontaneously

AI-generated image (ChatGPT 5.2)

Bridging the gap from chemistry to life: discovery of a tiny RNA that can copy itself | MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

A paper by Philipp Holliger’s group in the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology’s Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry (PNAC) Division, Cambridge, UK, announces the discovery of a self-replicating small RNA molecule that can also synthesise its complementary strand. It was published yesterday in Science Advances.

This effectively resolves one of the few remaining major questions in explanations of abiogenesis: the origin of a simple self-catalysing replicator. Such a molecule must have existed at the very beginning of life’s emergence, and for decades RNA has been the leading candidate, because it can function both as an enzyme and as an information store — capable of copying that information repeatedly, provided there is a supply of nucleotides from which to build itself.

The question of where such a replicator first arose — in Darwin’s “warm little pond”, at a deep-ocean hydrothermal vent, or on wave-splashed rocks providing a steady supply of raw materials — is secondary to the more fundamental question of what could have initiated self-replication in the first place. Once replication began, occasional copying errors would inevitably generate variation, giving natural selection something to act upon. From that point, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that progressively more efficient replicators would emerge, eventually dominating and monopolising the available resources.

Although various RNA molecules are known that can also act as catalysts (ribozymes), most are far too large to self-catalyse, or plausibly to have arisen spontaneously under prebiotic conditions. This newly discovered RNA molecule, at a mere 45 nucleotides long, neatly plugs that gap.

Creationists will no doubt reach for their usual “astronomical improbability” trope, but it only works by assuming the wrong problem. It treats abiogenesis as if one exact, predetermined sequence had to assemble by perfectly random chance in a single step. Real chemistry is biased, real environments concentrate and cycle materials, and—most importantly—the target was never one unique sequence but any of a potentially vast number of small RNAs with even modest replicative activity.

Once replication begins, copying errors generate variation and natural selection can take over, amplifying the better replicators. In short: the relevant question is not the odds of one bullseye in 4⁴⁵, but how quickly chemistry can stumble into a broad foothold and let Darwinian processes do what they inevitably do.

Abiogenesis News - The Genes That Predate Life

Scientists describe a window into evolution before the tree of life | Oberlin College and Conservatory | EurekAlert!

In a paper published recently in the journal Cell Genomics, scientists Aaron Goldman (Oberlin College), Greg Fournier (MIT), and Betül Kaçar (University of Wisconsin–Madison) describe how they were able to study evolutionary history even before the last universal common ancestor of all living things (LUCA) emerged, and discovered that some of the genes associated with LUCA may in fact predate LUCA itself.

Creationists determined to misrepresent the process of abiogenesis often present it as a ridiculous parody in which a fully complex cell is supposed to have spontaneously assembled out of inorganic atoms and molecules. This straw-man caricature is far easier to attack than what science actually proposes: that the first population of self-replicating proto-cells arose through gradual chemical and evolutionary processes within a large and diverse population.

Within such a population, variation would inevitably occur, and whatever produced the most copies of itself would come to dominate. One of the earliest characteristics to emerge would have been rapid replication, because in a vast population with generation times measured in minutes, even “million-to-one” mutations are not rare events — they occur thousands of times a day. Under such conditions, what creationists portray as wildly improbable becomes not only plausible, but effectively inevitable over time.

Several independent evolutionary pathways could also have developed in parallel: RNA molecules coding for particular enzymes, ribosomes assembling from self-catalysing RNA, and primitive membranes forming across which chemical energy gradients could arise. Only once these components were already present could they come together within an enclosing membrane to form the first true prokaryotic cells.

The research team led by Aaron Goldman has now developed a method for determining which genes were likely present in LUCA, and which must already have been available to be incorporated when LUCA first emerged. In other words, some genes appear to predate LUCA itself, pushing parts of evolutionary history even deeper into the pre-cellular past.

What Was LUCA — and What Came Before It? The Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) is often misunderstood, especially by creationists who portray it as the very first living organism. In reality, LUCA was not the origin of life, nor the first cell, nor some single creature that suddenly appeared fully formed.

LUCA is simply the most recent population of organisms from which all life alive today ultimately descends — bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes alike. Crucially, LUCA already possessed a level of biochemical sophistication. Most researchers agree it likely had:

• a genetic code based on RNA and DNA
• ribosomes capable of translating RNA into proteins
• enzymes for metabolism and replication
• membrane structures maintaining internal chemistry
• the ability to exploit chemical energy gradients

This means LUCA could not have been the beginning of life. Instead, it must have been the product of a long evolutionary history that preceded it.

Pre-LUCA Evolution: A World of Competing Proto-Life

Before LUCA, early Earth was almost certainly home to a diverse population of simpler self-replicating systems — sometimes called proto-cells or pre-cellular life. These were not fully modern organisms, but chemical systems capable of reproduction, variation, and selection.

Rather than a single miraculous event, abiogenesis is best understood as an extended evolutionary process in which:

• self-replicating molecules competed for resources
• advantageous variants spread through populations
• metabolic pathways evolved gradually
• membranes formed to enclose and stabilise reactions
• genetic and protein machinery became increasingly integrated

LUCA represents the point at which one lineage became the common ancestor of everything that survived, not the moment life began.

Genes Older Than LUCA

What makes the new research so significant is the finding that some genes associated with LUCA appear to be even older — suggesting that early evolutionary innovations were already circulating in the pre-LUCA world and later became incorporated into the first universal ancestor.

This is exactly what evolutionary theory predicts: life did not begin with a fully formed cell, but with populations of evolving systems, long before anything resembling modern biology existed.

Their methodology is explained further in a press release from Oberlin College, via EurekAlert!.

Abiogenesis News - How a Deadly Poison Could Have Created Pre-Biotic Organic Molecules

Frozen hydrogen cyanide ‘cobwebs’ offer clues to origin of life - American Chemical Society

Dedicated creationists will need to find yet another way to dismiss new research by three scientists from the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Their work shows that, under the right conditions, the deadly poison hydrogen cyanide (HCN) could have provided a medium in which pre-biotic organic molecules accumulated on the early Earth. The findings have been published in the journal ACS Central Science.

The difficulty this presents for creationists arises largely from their habitual black-and-white thinking. Abiogenesis must, in their view, either have occurred via some fully specified, preconceived mechanism or be declared “impossible”. Since the only process they are prepared to accept is supernatural intervention by a magic creator, the conclusion is predetermined: any natural explanation must be rejected out of hand.

That claim, however, is trivially easy to refute. Assertions of impossibility collapse as soon as a single plausible natural mechanism is demonstrated. It is not necessary to establish beyond doubt that a particular hypothetical process is exactly what happened on the early Earth; it is sufficient to show that such a process could have occurred without violating known chemistry or physics.

What the Gothenburg team have demonstrated is that, when frozen, the surfaces of hydrogen cyanide crystals become highly reactive and can catalyse chemical reactions that are not possible at higher temperatures. These reactions could have triggered a cascade of further processes, ultimately producing some of the molecular building blocks of proto-cells.

Nor do pre-biotic chemicals necessarily have to originate on Earth itself. Space is also a viable candidate environment: hydrogen cyanide is abundant in interstellar space, as is water, and the low temperatures required for these crystals to form are commonplace. In the presence of water, HCN can polymerise and give rise to amino acids and nucleobases.

Refuting Creationism - How Consciousness Evolved - No God-Magic Required

Why Do We Have a Consciousness? | Newsportal - Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Having recently watched a grey squirrel carefully plot a route through a line of trees, I was struck by the sophistication of its behaviour. It was not simply moving at random. It clearly knew where it wanted to go and was able to take into account such factors as how much slender branches would bend under its weight, how wide a gap it could safely jump, and—perhaps most importantly—exactly where it was within its own mental map of the environment. It is difficult to see how such behaviour could be possible in a creature that was not conscious and, to some degree, self-aware.

In animal psychology, there is now little doubt that many vertebrates possess some level of self-awareness and therefore consciousness. The remaining debate has centred not on whether consciousness exists in non-human animals, but on how it arose. The fact that consciousness is found across a wide range of vertebrates, and even in molluscs such as cephalopods, suggests either that it originated in a remote common ancestor or that it evolved independently multiple times through convergence. Either way, this strongly points to an evolutionary origin.

According to two papers published in a special edition of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, by working groups led by Professors Albert Newen and Onur Güntürkün at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, consciousness can indeed be explained as the outcome of an evolutionary process, with each step conferring a selective advantage. Moreover, consciousness only makes sense as an evolved biological function. The two open-access papers can be found here and here.

This work is bound to provoke another bout of denialism among creationists, for whom consciousness remains one of the standard “impossible to explain without supernatural intelligence” fallback arguments. As with abiogenesis and the Big Bang, the reasoning typically amounts to: “Science hasn’t explained it and I don’t understand how it could, therefore God did it.” This false dichotomy conveniently removes any obligation to provide evidence in support of the supernatural claim. Creationists also like to flatter themselves that consciousness is a uniquely human trait and thus evidence of special creation. In scientific terms, however, this does not even rise to the level of a hypothesis: it proposes no mechanism, makes no testable predictions, and is unfalsifiable by design. It is, in essence, wishful thinking rooted in the belief that the Universe is obliged to conform to personal expectations.

By contrast, the Ruhr University team have identified three distinct levels of consciousness and demonstrated the evolutionary advantage of each, drawing on detailed studies of birds that show parallel forms of consciousness to those seen in humans. These levels are:

1. Basic arousal — such as the perception of pain, which signals that harm is occurring and that corrective action is required.
2. General alertness — awareness of the broader environment, allowing threats and opportunities to be recognised and responded to appropriately.
3. Reflexive (self-)consciousness — the ability to place oneself within an environment, learn from past experience, anticipate future outcomes, and formulate an action plan; in other words, to construct a narrative with oneself as a participant.

Refuting Creationism - Microbes That Create Life From Non-Life

Mud volcano

Fig. 9: Schematic of microbial succession and biogeochemical processes in serpentinite mud at the Mariana forearc.
This schematic depicts lipid biomarker transitions from pelagic sediment communities to extremophiles adapted to high pH and redox conditions in serpentinite mud. The Mariana forearc biosphere is fueled by alkaline serpentinization fluids enriched in H₂, CH₄, DIC, and organic acids, sustaining specialized microbial communities. Lipid and stable carbon isotope data reveal a shift from relict methanogenic archaea, likely engaged in hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis, to a later ANME-SRB community mediating anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM). Changes in substrate availability likely drove this transition. Distinct lipid signatures, including unsaturated diethers, acyclic GDGTs, and ether-based glycolipids, highlight adaptations to pH stress, phosphate limitation, and fluctuating redox conditions. The presence of in-situ branched GDGTs suggests previously uncharacterized bacterial communities persisting in these ultra-oligotrophic conditions. The Mariana forearc serpentinite biosphere, shaped by episodic fluid flow and substrate shifts, provides insights into deep-sea subsurface habitability. DIC = dissolved inorganic carbon, ANME anaerobic methanotrophic archaea, SRB sulfate-reducing bacteria, AOM anaerobic oxidation of methane, GDGT glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether.

Kumawat, P., Albers, E., Bach, W. et al. (2025).

Fats provide clues to life at its limits in the deep sea

Researchers at MARUM – Bremen University’s Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences – have made a discovery, just published open access in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, which, properly understood, should make depressing reading for creationists.

They have found living organisms both on and within the ocean floor, surviving in conditions where normal life would be impossible. These microorganisms inhabit mud volcanoes with a pH of 14, metabolising hydrogen and carbon to form methane by drawing energy from minerals in the surrounding rock. In other words, they live entirely without oxygen and with almost no organic matter, synthesising all they need from inorganic sources.

Informed creationists will recognise that these organisms directly refute their frequent assertion that life cannot arise from non-life — because producing life from non-life is precisely what these microorganisms are doing.

This also contradicts the biblical claim that all living things were created for the benefit of humans, since there is no conceivable way these organisms could serve any human purpose. Of course, to be fair, the authors of the Bible were completely ignorant of microorganisms, deep-ocean mud volcanoes, and chemosynthetic metabolism. They could only attempt to explain the larger creatures that lived in the limited region around their homes in the Canaanite hills.

And, as any informed creationist should also understand, these are exactly the sort of extreme conditions that biologists believe may have fostered the emergence of the earliest living organisms during the origin of life on Earth — once again undermining any claim that abiogenesis is impossible.

What Were the Chances of Abiogenesis? - Prempting Creationist Misrepresentations

What Were the Chances of Abiogenesis? - Universe Today

One of the oldest and most persistent tactics in creationist and intelligent design (ID) rhetoric is to invoke vast “improbabilities” to suggest that life could not have arisen naturally. The argument usually goes something like this: the odds of complex life emerging by chance are astronomically low, therefore it must have been designed. This is a textbook example of a false dichotomy — and it often rests on simplistic, outdated models of how abiogenesis is understood. A recent preprint by Robert G. Endres, reported by Universe Today, has already begun to circulate in ID circles as supposed “evidence” of just such improbability. But when read carefully, the paper does something very different: it provides a mathematical framework for understanding how life could arise, where the real constraints lie, and why the old “pure chance” caricature of abiogenesis is scientifically untenable.

In the abstract to his paper in arXiv, Enders says:

Abstract
The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and algorithmic complexity. Using estimates grounded in modern computational models, we evaluate the difficulty of assembling structured biological information under plausible prebiotic conditions. Our results highlight the formidable entropic and informational barriers to forming a viable protocell within the available window of Earth’s early history. While the idea of Earth being terraformed by advanced extraterrestrials might violate Occam’s razor from within mainstream science, directed panspermia—originally proposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel—remains a speculative but logically open alternative. Ultimately, uncovering physical principles for life’s spontaneous emergence remains a grand challenge for biological physics.

Because we can guarantee that this article will be misrepresented by creationists who will make claims not supported by the paper, I asked ChatGPT for an objective evaluation of the article in Universe Today and Endres arXiv paper:

The following article looks suspiciously like a creationist argument based on notional improbabilities* Can you produce an objective evaluation of it, please.
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/what-were-the-chances-of-abiogenesis

Here is an objective evaluation of the article “What Were the Chances of Abiogenesis?” (by Mark Thompson, published on Universe Today) and the underlying pre-print paper by Robert G. Endres (arXiv:2507.18545). I’ll identify what the article does well, where it is weaker, and how one might interpret it in light of your interest (refuting creationism / intelligent-design arguments).

Abiogenesis News - Scientists Create Geothermal Vents In A Lab - And they Make Precursors For Life

A venting black smoker emits jets of particle-laden fluids. The particles are predominantly very fine-grained sulfide minerals formed when the hot hydrothermal fluids mix with near-freezing seawater. These minerals solidify as they cool, forming chimney-like structures. “Black smokers” are chimneys formed from deposits of iron sulfide, which is black. “White smokers” are chimneys formed from deposits of barium, calcium, and silicon, which are white.

Source: National Ocean Service.

Underwater thermal vents may have given rise to the first molecular precursors of life

A favourite disingenuous creationist tactic is to keep challenging science to achieve something that seems impossible—such as replicating the conditions of a deep ocean thermal vent to demonstrate that this could have been where life began. The trap is then to either gloat over science’s failure or to shift the goalposts and proclaim that any success merely proves that intelligence is required to create life.

So, we can almost guarantee that the news that a team of scientists at Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) in São Paulo, Brazil, have replicated not the thermal vents themselves but the chemical reactions believed to have occurred within them—and shown that these reactions do indeed produce the precursors of living systems—will be presented by creationists as supposed proof of the role of intelligence in the process.

The fallacy, of course, is that a laboratory experiment merely establishes the conditions under which natural forces can operate. By contrast, intelligent design advocates insist that an intelligent entity, working to a plan, must actively direct those natural forces to make chemistry and physics do something they supposedly couldn’t do on their own. Such is the intellectual dishonesty of many creationists that this distinction is either too subtle for them to grasp—or they deliberately ignore it.

Refuting Creationism - Clues to Abiogenesis In Japan's Hot Springs

A panoramic picture of one of five hot springs during winter, showing the source water and CO₂ bubbles.

Credit: Fatima Li-Hau, ELSI

Hot springs in Japan give insight into ancient microbial life on Earth – ELSI｜EARTH-LIFE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

It’s been a dreadful week for creationists as yet another published paper undermines one of their favourite claims and further reduces the god-shaped gap on which they increasingly depend — the so-called abiogenesis gap. This argument rests on the delusional assumption that if science has not yet fully explained something, then it never will — and therefore creationism wins by default. The history of science, of course, shows the opposite: today’s mysteries are tomorrow’s discoveries.

This time, the blow comes from a publication in the journal Microbes and Environments, which describes how five hot springs in Japan provide natural analogues of the conditions in which the first living organisms could have evolved. These springs are rich in diverse chemical and thermal gradients, making them excellent testbeds for exploring how life can thrive in extreme conditions and use non-traditional energy sources.

The study was conducted by a team led by Fatima Li-Hau, then a graduate student at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Tokyo Institute of Science, with Associate Professor Shawn McGlynn as her supervisor. Their work focused on the microbial communities found in these hot springs, which range from moderately warm to boiling.

Refuting Creationism - Scarey Days For Creationists As More Signs of Life on Other Bodies Are Found

Artist's impression of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus. With a frozen surface covering a deep ocean, Enceladus is a fascinating target to search for signs of habitability elsewhere in our Solar System.

Graphic composition: ESA; Surface: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Lunar and Planetary Institute
(CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)

An artist's depiction of water erupting from the "tiger stripe" fractures in the surface of Enceladus's south pole

© ESA.

ESA - Cassini proves complex chemistry in Enceladus ocean

In a soccer manager’s jargon, this is squeaky bum time for creationists who cling to the notion that science will never demonstrate that abiogenesis is even possible, let alone explain how it happened.

Squeaky bum time for a football manager is when the team’s league position — and with it qualification for European tournaments, and often the manager’s job — hangs on a single unpredictable result.

So it is with creationism. One single piece of definitive evidence that life has arisen independently on another world in the Solar System, or on an exoplanet orbiting a distant sun, would comprehensively consign creationism to the dustbin of history where it has been struggling to avoid ending up since 1859. Such a discovery would refute the claim that ‘life from non-life’ is impossible. Instead, it would show that under the right conditions, life is simply a natural product of chemistry and physics.

And the signs are as dire for creationism as for the embattled football team that finds itself 2–0 down in stoppage time. Scientists at the European Space Agency have just announced the detection of possible signs of life in the ocean beneath the icy crust of one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, as revealed by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. This follows close on the heels of strong evidence that life once existed on Mars.

The tentative evidence from Enceladus points to processes in its subsurface ocean producing organic precursors to amino acids — the basic building blocks of proteins and a fundamental requirement for prebiotic chemistry that could eventually lead to organised cells. Researchers also report the detection of previously unknown molecules, including aliphatic and (hetero)cyclic compounds, esters, alkenes, ethers, and tentatively nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing compounds.

These organics were detected by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) in ice crystals ejected in plumes through cracks in Enceladus’ ice covering. These plumes are thought to form when water seeps into the moon’s rocky core, is heated, and then forced back up to the ocean floor as hydrothermal vents — much like those found in Earth’s oceans. The hot water increases the pressure in the subsurface ocean until the ice cracks and jets of vapour and ice crystals erupt. Most fall back to the surface, but some escape Enceladus’ weak gravity and contribute to one of Saturn’s rings, within which the moon orbits.

'Refuting Creationism - Scientists Have Found Strong Evidence of Life On Mars!

The Jezero Crater as it may have looked billions of years ago, when it was a lake.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

'Potential biosignatures' found in ancient Mars lake | Imperial News | Imperial College London

Scientists analysing data from NASA’s Perseverance rover have reported a tantalising discovery from Jezero Crater on Mars: rocks rich in minerals and chemical patterns that could represent potential biosignatures — the traces left behind by ancient life. The findings, published by an international team led from Imperial College London, point to the remains of an ancient lake where conditions may once have been favourable for microbial life to take hold.

The evidence comes from mudstones, clays, silica, iron-phosphate and iron-sulphide nodules, along with carbon compounds that appear to have undergone redox reactions. On Earth, such processes are often associated with biology, though the researchers are careful to stress that non-biological explanations are still possible. It will take the return of rock samples to Earth, with far more powerful laboratory techniques, before firm conclusions can be reached.

Abiogenesis News - UCL Scientists Show How LUCA Arose - No God(s) Required

Liquid brine veins, where RNA molecules can replicate, surround solid ice crystals in water ice, as seen with an electron microscope.

Credit: Philipp Holliger, MRC LMB

Graphic abstract

Attwater, J., Augustin, T.L., Curran, J.F. et al.(2025)

Chemists recreate how RNA might have reproduced for first time | UCL News - UCL – University College London

The day creationists dread — the final closure of their favourite god-shaped abiogenesis gap — moved a little closer last May, when scientists at University College London (UCL) announced that they had shown how the first RNA could have reproduced. In a selective environment with competition for resources, this would have led inevitably to ever-increasing efficiency in replication, kick-starting the whole evolutionary process and the emergence of self-organising systems (or “life”) from prebiotic precursors (or “non-life”). This is, of course, the very process that creationists insist is “impossible”, clinging to the idea that “life” is some magical essence that must be granted by a supernatural deity.

When this God-shaped gap is finally and conclusively closed — as all the others have been — creationists will need to scramble once again to reframe their beliefs and cling to whatever shrinking space remains for their god. Just as their old claim that evolution was “impossible” collapsed, to be replaced with notions of a short burst of warp-speed evolution “within kinds” after “The Flood” (and supposedly still happening today, but conveniently “guided” by God), so too will abiogenesis inevitably be rebranded as yet another process directed by divine intention — naturally, with the eventual production of (American) humans as the goal.

Abiogenesis News - Fully Synthetic 'Life' Evolving in a Laboratory

Illustration showing the formation of new vesicles from the reorganization through self-reproduction of amphiphiles expelled into the bulk

S.K. Katla,C. Lin, & J. Pérez-Mercader (2025).

A step toward solving central mystery of life on Earth — Harvard Gazette

(A) Illustration showing the different stages of polymer vesicle growth leading to the action of expulsion of amphiphiles. (B) Illustration showing the formation of new vesicles from the reorganization through self-reproduction of amphiphiles expelled into the bulk.

S.K. Katla,C. Lin, & J. Pérez-Mercader (2025).

The frequent creationist assertion that abiogenesis is impossible without invoking supernatural intervention has taken another significant blow with the recent open‑access publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study, Self‑reproduction as an autonomous process of growth and reorganization in fully abiotic, artificial and synthetic cells, demonstrates, for the first time, the successful laboratory creation of simple, non‑biochemical self‑reproducing vesicle‑like systems exhibiting Darwinian evolution: each generation varies slightly in traits that influence their ability to replicate.

This breakthrough indicates that such self‑sustaining systems could plausibly arise through natural processes, and gradually—through Darwinian mechanisms—evolve into the first simple biological life forms, from which all life subsequently diversified. It also lends empirical support to the principle that when self‑replication with small variation occurs in a selective environment, evolution in the direction of increased fitness is inevitable.

Abiogenesis News - Organic Precursors to Life Detected In Deep Space.

Planet-forming disc around V883 Orionis. This star is currently in outburst. The dark ring midway through the disc is the point where the temperature and pressure dip low enough for water ice to form.
Orbits of the planet Neptune and dwarf planet Pluto in our Solar System are shown for scale.

Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/L. Cieza

This article is best read on a laptop, desktop, or tablet

This artist’s impression shows the planet-forming disc around the star V883 Orionis. In the outermost part of the disc volatile gases are frozen out as ice, which contains complex organic molecules. An outburst of energy from the star heats the inner disc to a temperature that evaporates the ice and releases the complex molecules, enabling astronomers to detect it. The inset image shows the chemical structure of complex organic molecules detected and presumed in the protoplanetary disc (from left to right): propionitrile (ethyl cyanide), glycolonitrile, alanine, glycine, ethylene glycol, acetonitrile (methyl cyanide).

© Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/T. Müller (MPIA/HdA) (CC BY 4.0)

The evolution of life may have its origins in outer space

If you listen to creationists, you might be persuaded to believe that the formation of inorganic chemicals—often deliberately conflated with 'life' to evoke an emotional reaction—is, for all practical purposes, impossible without the intervention of a supernatural intelligence. This is, of course, nothing more than the familiar creationist fallback: the god of the gaps argument, coupled with a false dichotomy, and dressed up with a spurious veneer of mathematical ‘proof’.

But this tactic suffered yet another fatal blow recently with the publication of a study led by Abubakar Fadul of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), which reported the discovery of organic molecules in the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star V883 Orionis. This finding provides compelling evidence that the formation of prebiotic molecules can begin even before planets form—suggesting that Earth may have developed with a complement of organic compounds already present in the accretion disc from which it emerged.

An alternative, but equally plausible, hypothesis is that these molecules could have been delivered by meteorites or other interplanetary bodies.

Abiogenesis News - Not Random Chance Or Divine Magic But Natural Selection

The sugar ribose is more quickly phosphorylated compared to other sugars with the same chemical formula but a different shape. This selective phosphorylation could explain how ribose became the sugar molecule in RNA.

Credit: Scripps Research

Where did RNA come from? | Scripps Research

One fallacy with which anyone who has tried to engage a creationist in debate will soon become familiar is the false dichotomy. This is where a creationist attempts to make a "god of the gaps" argument appear logical by presenting it as a binary choice between something so simplistic or absurd that no serious scientist would argue for it—and "God did it!" In doing so, they ignore the actual scientific explanations and exclude all other plausible natural mechanisms.

A classic example of this is the argument that abiogenesis—often deliberately misrepresented as the spontaneous assembly of a complex, living cell from inorganic materials—is far too improbable to have occurred by chance alone, and therefore must have required a supernatural intelligence. In their minds, the very existence of complex life is "proof" of their particular deity.

This line of reasoning overlooks the crucial role played by natural processes, such as chemistry and physics, and what amounts to an evolutionary process at the molecular level. In such a process, chemical pathways that are more efficient at producing copies of themselves are naturally favoured, leading over time to increased refinement and complexity. For instance, why was the five-carbon sugar ribose selected as the backbone sugar in RNA?

This is the question that two researchers at the Scripps Research Institute have tackled. They demonstrated that ribose is far more efficiently phosphorylated than its alternatives, forming the chemical basis of nucleotides—the building blocks of RNA (and later DNA). This efficiency gave ribose a natural advantage, allowing it to "win" the competition against other sugars.

Their findings show that the emergence of ribose was not the result of random chance, but the predictable outcome of the underlying chemistry and physics. The study has been published in the international edition of the journal of the German Chemical Society, Angewandte Chemie.

The work is also summarised in accessible terms in a Scripps Research press release.

Refuting Creationism - The 'Abiogenesis Gap' Just Got a Little Bit Smaller

Image generated with Adobe Stock by Josef Kuster / ETH Zürich)

How urea forms spontaneously | ETH Zürich

Graphical representation of urea formation in a droplet.

Figure: Luis Quintero / ETH Zürich.

Creationism's ever-shrinking, gap-shaped creator god has just lost a little more ground. New research suggests that the formation of basic organic molecules may have been far easier under early Earth conditions than previously thought. Remarkably, scientists have found that urea—a key organic compound—can form spontaneously from ammonia and carbon dioxide on the surface of water droplets. This process requires no catalysts, no high pressure or heat, and consumes minimal energy.

Although vitalism was refuted as early as 1828 — decades before Darwin — creationists still claim that life cannot arise from non-living matter. Yet they quickly retreat when asked how dead food becomes living tissue, or what exactly they mean by ‘life’: a substance, a process, or some kind of magical force. In reality, life is a set of chemical processes, and at its core, it’s about managing entropy—using energy to maintain order against the natural drift toward disorder.

The discovery was made by researchers at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich in collaboration with colleagues from Auburn University in Alabama, USA. Their findings have just been published in Science.

Refuting Creationism - That Ever-Shrinking Little Creationist God Just Got Even Smaller

Liquid brine veins, where RNA molecules can replicate, surround solid ice crystals in water ice, as seen with an electron microscope.

Credit: Philipp Holliger, MRC LMB

Chemists recreate how RNA might have reproduced for first time | UCL News - UCL – University College London

The problem with having a god who exists merely to fill gaps in human knowledge and understanding — as the god of creationism does — is that science has been steadily shrinking those gaps ever since the scientific method emerged and the Church lost its power to persecute scientists for discovering inconvenient truths. Today, only a few small gaps remain, scattered throughout the body of scientific knowledge —particularly in biology, which holds special interest for creationists.

Creationism persists because there are still people with such a poor understanding of science that they believe the authors of ancient religious texts — written during the Bronze Age, when humanity's knowledge gaps encompassed nearly everything in their small world — had access to some deeper, divine insight. Although what they wrote is often naively simplistic and demonstrably wrong in almost every respect, creationists insist that it somehow surpasses anything modern science has produced in terms of accuracy and reliability.

One of the few remaining gaps where creationists attempt to place their god — the abiogenesis gap — has just shrunk further. Predictably, this will be ignored, dismissed, or misrepresented by creationist frauds who exploit carefully maintained ignorance to preserve their cult followings and income streams.

This discovery by chemists at University College London and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology reveals how a simple RNA molecule can self-replicate under conditions thought to have existed on prebiotic Earth. Many scientists believe this marks the origin of RNA-based life, which eventually gave rise to the more complex protein- and DNA-based life we see today. A self-replicating RNA molecule, competing for limited resources, will naturally evolve to become more efficient — leaving more copies of itself than rival variants. This is classic Darwinian evolution, operating in a context Darwin himself could scarcely have imagined, knowing nothing of RNA or DNA.

The new research is published open access in Nature Chemistry.

Abiogenesis News - Closing Creationism's Favourite God-Shaped Gap - Still No God(s) Found

Diagram of an early cell membrane.

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How membranes may have brought about the chemistry of life on Earth | Department of Biology

Another hefty spadeful of science has just been shovelled into one of creationism’s favourite god-shaped gaps: the ever-shrinking mystery of abiogenesis. This is the gap that, through the intellectually dishonest tactic of the false dichotomy, creationists claim as evidence for their chosen deity.

Not only is this approach scientifically bankrupt, it also conveniently spares them the bother of providing any evidence or a testable mechanism of their own. For a target audience conditioned to see science as an attempt to disprove their god, the logic goes: if science is wrong—or even just incomplete—then “God did it!” wins by default.

But that dreaded moment for creationists, when science finally closes the gap and, like every other gap in history, finds no need for gods or magic in the explanation, draws ever nearer. The latest discovery bringing us closer comes in the form of new research into the origin and function of membranes—an essential step on the path from chemistry to life.

This particular piece of gap-filling comes from a paper published in PLOS Biology, authored by a team led by Professor Thomas Richards, Professor of Evolutionary Genomics in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. The researchers demonstrate that early cell membranes could not only have formed through natural processes, but also had the crucial ability to control what passed through them.

In doing so, they explain what had been something of a mystery and a favourite claim of ID creationists - the chirality of 'living' molecules where all amino acids have the same chirality. Creationists claim this shows the hand of an intelligent designer. This work shows it has a natural explanation.

Refuting Creationism - Homing In On Consciousness - No Gods Involved

Landmark experiment sheds new light on the origins of consciousness - Allen Institute

Consciousness, like the Big Bang and abiogenesis, represents a gap in scientific understanding that creationists eagerly exploit as a place to insert their evidence-free deity — the classic “God of the gaps” fallacy. This false dichotomy is the lifeblood of creationism, which appeals to the scientifically illiterate and culturally chauvinistic creationists who view science as a rival to their preferred local religion. According to this view, if science cannot yet explain something, or if it has ever been wrong, then “God did it” wins by default.

However, a major new study suggests that science is closing in on a natural explanation for consciousness. The findings support the idea that consciousness is an emergent property of neurophysiology, leaving no room — or need — for supernatural explanations. In a landmark 2019 collaborative experiment involving human subjects, researchers from the Allen Institute tested two competing theories of consciousness against one another. They published their findings today in Nature, claiming the study marks a pivotal moment in the quest to understand this elusive phenomenon. Further details are available in an Allen Institute news article.

Creationism in Crisis - Scientists Are Questioning Human Evolution - But Not In The Way Creationists Had Hoped

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A new model upends the decades-old “hard steps” theory that intelligent life was an incredibly improbable event and suggests that maybe it wasn't all that hard or improbable. The team of researchers said the new interpretation of humanity’s origin increases the probability of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.

Credit: NASA. All Rights Reserved.

Does planetary evolution favor human-like life? Study ups odds we’re not alone | Penn State University

An interdisciplinary team of astrophysicists and geoscientists has questioned the evolution of a human-like intelligent species. But the question is not about whether, as creationists have been predicting for 50 plus years, but just how easy or difficult was it? That we evolved was never in any doubt.

The relevance of the easy/difficult question is that it affects our calculation of the probability of similar intelligent life evolving on other planets. If each step in its evolution was hard (the 'hard step' model), then we may be alone in the Universe; if easy, then the Universe could be teeming with life.

Abiogenesis News - Closing Another of Creationism's God-Shaped Gaps - Still No God Found

Formation of polyester protocells under early Earth-like conditions Polyester microdroplets, possible precursors to life, were formed from alpha-hydroxy acids (αHAs) in early Earth-like conditions even at low reaction volume, low reactant concentrations, and/or high NaCl or KCl concentrations.

Credit: Associate Professor Tony Z. Jia

How life’s building blocks took shape on early Earth: the limits of membraneless polyester protocell formation – ELSI｜EARTH-LIFE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

Creationism’ ever-shrinking little god that sits in the abiogenesis gap, just got smaller with the news that researchers led by PhD student Mahendran Sithamparam of the Space Science Center (ANGKASA), Institute of Climate Change, National University of Malaysia, working at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) in the Institute of Science, Tokyo, Japan, have shown how primitive protocells could have formed under a wide range of realistic probiotic Earth conditions. The research team included scientists from Taiwan and China.

The research showed that membraneless protocells could have formed by polymerization of alpha-hydroxy acids (αHAs) to form polyester microdroplets, not to be confused with the modern plastic polyester. These polymers were polymers of esters - simple organic compounds which are chemically similar to the monomers that make modern polyester fibres.