Life, Possible Elsewhere? Diversity?
Can life exist elsewhere?
*Answers may vary, therefore, if you give a suitable explanation behind your claim, you get the points.*
Yes, there is a high chance for life to exist elsewhere. Life on Earth has been found in extreme environments, such as deep-sea hydrothermal vents, acidic lakes, and polar ice. Many exoplanets have been discovered in the "habitable zone" of their stars, where conditions may be right for liquid water—a crucial ingredient for life as we know it.
Water is essential for life as we understand it. Evidence of water, both in liquid and ice forms, has been found on several celestial bodies, including Mars, Europa (a moon of Jupiter), and Enceladus (a moon of Saturn).
What is 4 Billion Years Ago?
This proposed theory suggests that life originated near the ocean floor, providing heat and minerals.
What is the Hydrothermal Vent Theory
Modern theory that a mixture of simple chemicals formed to create more complex molecular systems.
What is Chemical Evolution
These cells have membrane-enclosed organelles and a nucleus.
What are eukaryotic cells?
These are five of the seven requirements for life.
D - DNA/RNA, R - Reproduction, G - Growth and Development, E - Evolve, E - Energy (need and obtain), C - Cellular makeup, H - Homeostasis E - Environmental response/stimuli
The Earth lacked an _____ ______, which is a region of the Earth's stratosphere that absorbs the Sun's ultraviolet rays.
What is Ozone Layer
This theory suggests lightning created amino acids and sugars in water environments. This natural process suggests that this could have created the first building blocks of life on Earth in its early days
What is the Electric Spark Theory
This chemical process was an important example of chemical evolution that formed the first free oxygen into our atmosphere.
What is Photosynthesis?
Through endosymbiotic relationships - non-photosynthetic host cells contains photosynthetic cyanobacteria - the earliest form of life on Earth.
Formula - 6CO2 + 6H20 => C6H12O6 + 6O2
This theory suggests that eukaryotic cells originated when a larger prokaryotic cell engulfed smaller prokaryotic cells, which then became symbiotic. The first eukaryotic cell was neither a plant nor an animal but rather a more primitive organism that eventually gave rise to both lineages.
What is Endosymbiotic Theory
These biological entities challenge the definition of life because they can't reproduce on their own and rely on a host cell.
What are viruses?
This vital element was not available in Earth's early atmosphere.
What is oxygen
This theory suggests life on Earth began with a single polymer of nucleic acid that was able to independently copy itself.
What is the RNA World Theory
The process of various chemical reactions combining simple organic molecules into complex macromolecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids (like RNA).
What is polymerization
This group of cells is believed to have been the first on Earth.
What are prokaryotic cells?
Living in Hydrothermal Vents, Hot Springs, and other Anoxic Environments (bodies of water without oxygen)
These levels of organization are the complex biological structures and systems from a reductionistic mindset (list them).
What are cells, tissue, organ, organ system, organism, population, community, ecosystem, biosphere
These three conditions of Early Earth that could have facilitated synthesis of organic molecules
Possible answers: Lightning, UV Radiation, Hydrothermal Vents, Ice, Clay
These two origins of life theories are related to celestial bodies and astronomical possibilities of life.
What is the Big Bang Theory and Panspermia
These are the three stages of chemical evolution
What are the inorganic, organic, and biological/self-assembly stages.
These are the four subgroups of Eukarya
What are Plantae, Fungi, Amalia, Protists
These are the three conditions necessary for diversity to occur
Possible answers
Genetic Variation; Environmental Changes; Natural Selection; Ecological Interactions; Isolation and Divergence; Time
This is one process that first gave Earth's atmosphere free oxygen.
Possible answers:
Radiation of the Sun splits water molecules.
First photosynthetic organisms.
This characteristic of clay allows it to act as a blueprint to organize molecules into more complex structures.
What is Crystalline Structure - Clay's Arrangement of atoms
These 2 scientists' famous experiment showed how organic molecules could form from inorganic compounds under conditions similar to those of early Earth.
Who are Miller and Urey
The first cells reproduced using this process.
What is asexual/binary fission
A straightforward method where one cell divides into two identical daughter cells.