Buffman

About two years ago, I found a group (URL) in Spain that was doing research on evolution based on radio-active decay rates.

As I recall, their starting position was that the earth was far more radio-active 3.8-4.5 billion years ago. Though I do not recall them making the claim, they seemed to be seeking a radio-active explanation for the origin and diversity of life. Having done some similar undergraduate work in chromosome mutations, I had hoped to monitor their efforts and findings. Unfortunately the PC gods were unkind and my old computer took nearly 2000 "favorites" to an untimely death with no backup.

Has anyone heard of this group (research effort) and if so, do you have a current URL for their home page? Thanks all!

[ August 13, 2002: Message edited by: Buffman ]</p>

beausoleil

Coincidence?

<a href="http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/dptos/ener/uranio/" target="_blank">http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/dptos/ener/uranio/</a>

"ARCHEAN URANIUM DEPOSITS AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE"
by León Garzón

<a href="http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/dptos/ener/sintesis/" target="_blank">http://www.etsimo.uniovi.es/dptos/ener/sintesis/</a>

"THE PREBIOTIC SYNTHESIS: THE URANIUM AS A UNIVERSAL ENERGY SOURCE"
by León Garzón

[ August 13, 2002: Message edited by: beausoleil ]</p>

Buffman

beausoleil

I apologize for the delayed reply.

Yes! These are the URL's I was seeking. I rather wish that they had additional research reports beyond the 1995-96 period. Personally, I do not have the expertise to do anything more than extrapolate backwards from my own work of many decades ago. (i.e.: If today's chemical or radio-active materials can interfer with the biological reproductive process role of the chromosomes enough to produce mutations, then I could not help but wonder what the specific influences were placed on the genes and their composite chemical properties... RNA/DNA/bonding materials...by the these same items as they existed in the early cooling period of earth.)

Coincidence?

Possibly...perhaps even probably! However, as an initial localized energy source, influencing certain potentially recombinant chemical soups of a cooling earth, well before the earth had reached its better known stages of chemical equilibrium interaction, radio-active sources seemed to offer a very exciting avenue of basic research into the potential origins of life. Simplistically, radio-activity, rather than electrical pulses, as the original battery necessary to create the first spark of biological life.

Thanks again.