re: #74 b_sharp

As pointed out earlier, the overall situation in the origin of life field
appears rather grim. Even under the (highly nontrivial) assumption
that monomers such as NTP are readily available, the problem of the
synthesis of sufficiently stable, structurally regular polymers (RNA) is
formidable, and the origin of replication and translation from such
primordial RNA molecules could be an even harder problem. As
emphasized repeatedly in this book, evolution by natural selection
and drift can begin only after replication with sufficient fidelity is
established. Even at that stage, the evolution of translation remains
highly problematic.
The emergence of the first replicator system, which represented
the “Darwinian breakthrough,” was inevitably preceded by a succession
of complex, difficult steps for which biological evolutionary
mechanisms were not accessible (see Figure 12-6). Even considering
environments that could facilitate these processes, such as networks
of inorganic compartments at hydrothermal vents, multiplication of
the probabilities for these steps could make the emergence of the
first replicators staggeringly improbable (see Appendix B).
This profound difficulty of the origin of life problem might
appear effectively insurmountable, compelling one to ask extremely
general questions that go beyond the realm of biology. Did certain
factors that were critical at the time of the origin of life but that are
hidden from our view now significantly change these numbers and
make the origin of life much more likely? Or is it possible that the
processes that form the foundation for the origin of life are as difficult
as we imagine, but the number of trials is so huge that the appearanceof life forms in one or more of them is likely or even inevitable? In
other words, is it conceivable that our very concepts of probability are
inadequate?
The first possibility has to do with finding conditions that existed
on primitive Earth and somehow made the origin of life “easy.” Russell’s
compartments go some way in that direction, but apparently not
far enough: Even in these flow reactors rich in energy and catalysts, the
combination of all the necessary processes would be an extreme rarity.
The second possibility may be addressed in the context of the
entire universe by asking, how many planets are there with conditions
conducive to the origin of life? That is, how many trials for the origin
of life were there altogether? In this section, we pursue this second
line of inquiry from the perspective of modern physical cosmology.

An so on.