<< The gross chemical output is very nearly the same each time if
conditions were the same, right? But I submit that trace molecules do
not occur in statistially the same proportions each time, rather one of
them might occur in one run of the experiment and some others in
another. 

TH
Correct we have some variation in the heat cycle.
But life is a series of chemical reactions. And chemical reactions are very
heat sensitive. The higher the heat the faster the chemical reactions. So in
the end we have some variation - granted, but we have a symbiotic type
chemistry where all the life processes happen within a very narrow zone of
temp. At first I would suggest it is much more narrow than even the 0-100C of
liquid water.





We have no way to measure exactly every molecule that occurs,
so I guess we're comparing your intuition against mine as to whether
such is true or not.

Furthermore the Miller experiment is a small experiment with only a few
different locales that have significantly different conditions and any
isolation from each other. The stuff produced mostly mixes throughout
the whole experiment. But in the real experiment over the Earth's
oceans, there were many orders of magnitude more semi-isolated locales,
where each locale can build up a different mix of bulk materials, with
mixing between them not fast enough to homogenize them all to a single
mix. The mix in the center of each locale may be accurately predictable
as in Miller's small experiment, but in the regions between locales
several different compositions may mix together in a time-dependent way
due to tides and other dynamic differences in environment. I really
doubt the only result of such semi-random mixing is merely a
duplication of the same results that any individual locale had achieved
all by itself.

The constancy of Miller's output tells me that whenever some
interesting catalyst appeared at random, with food for it at least
temporarily, 

TH
I can't accept that a catalyst needs food. Why?
I don't think it does. I think the sun forces chemical reactions of which
dumping heat (leads to metabolism) was one strategy to surive.

The basic question is why would any molecule profit
from needing food? Or we can go a step further and say what profits RNA by
having protein?
We can't take anything for granted in OOL scenarios.




the supply of food drifting in from nearby locales was
mostly constant over time, so "temporarily" wasn't such a short time
after all, so the interesting catalyst didn't "starve to death" for a
long time, but instead could float there catalyzing its reaction
products nearly endlessly, building up a significant pool of the
reaction products.

> The greatest enzyme would be destroyed by heat that day unless it
> first was able to survive the heat cycle.

Only if it's close to the surface where there *is* a big heat cycle.

TH
See the post of -  tale of two ribozymes.

> A rock that can survive the heat will last longer than any
> autocatalytic cycle that is burned up.

The rock definitely has fecundity less than one, no question, right? If
the autocatalytic cycle can reproduce faster than it burns up, so the
net fecundity is greater than one in a sufficiently large locale (so
that its instance-count is always large, so that statistical
fluctuations have no reasonable chance of ever making its
instance-count hit zero), it'll survive indefinitely, unlike the rock.

> if you are searching for a magic ribozyme,

Oh no, nothing that complicated, nothing even remotely close to that
complicated. Just a small organic molecule, probably with some
transition metal ion(s) trapped in it, which is capable of catalyzing a
medium-wide range of possible reactions, but given available food it
mostly catalyzes one particular reaction, whose reaction product is
another similar enzyme, etc. around the loop.

Note that only one of the reactions in the loop need take in highly
reactive naturally-occurring foods

TH
Why need food?


 (for example from present-day: H2
and O2, which combine energetically enough to make a flame, something
different back then such as H2S or H2 and some oxidizing agent I can't
guess). Whichever was the first catalyst to form, would build up a lot
of reaction product, but that reaction product itself could be
metastable, so that it can be used as foodstock to some of the later
reactions that eventually form the cycle. So one step in the cycle is
like the big boost at the start of a roller coaster ride, and the rest
of the steps are coasting downhill using the already-captured energy to
push the cycle along. Maybe it'd be more like a roller coaster ride
with two lifts along the route: Two independent catalysts formed,
unrelated to each other, each catalyzing an energy-capturing reaction
between two natural chemicals with high energy of combination, each
producing a meta-stable reaction product that built up locally. Each of
those meta-stable reaction products was used by other
randomly-occurring catalysts to produce additional secondary reaction
products, until by chance one of the ends of one of the chains was
either one of the original catalysts or some intermediate along the
branching from it, at which point the two chains connected together to
make one big branching chain, and sometime later another link-up
occurred closing a loop somewhere.

> A sun powered life for billions of years till it got its chemical act
> together or a fluke event to the fifth power (that flat out can't
> happen)

My guess is the Sun's UV radiation created a steady conversion of
low-energy stable chemicals into highly activated (meta-stable)
chemicals which then drifted down into the more placid regions. So a
combination of volcanic activated chemicals from the deep, and
Sun-activated chemicals from the surface, fed into the random-mix
experiments in the semi-deep which I've described (speculated about).

TH
But when it goes down deep, it goes into hibernation - little change, any
chemicals on the surface would be more active, more variants, more selection,
more change, more chance to survive. Being hit by UV/sun is both a harm and a
generator of life.

 >>
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