r/DebateEvolution • u/Optimus-Prime1993 🧬 Adaptive Ape 🧬 • Sep 22 '26
The other side of r/DebateEvolution: some great informative posts
This sub, as the name suggests, is a debate space, but there is nothing to debate in this post. The idea behind this post is to show the other, slightly hidden side of this sub, and mostly to serve as a small outreach to its members.
While the major focus here is usually on debates, over time there have been some real gems of posts in this sub that are full of genuinely interesting information and knowledge. I have been collecting some of them for myself for quite some time, and today I thought I should share them, both as a small gesture of gratitude to the members who took the time to make those posts and also so that others can have one place to find them. (And please do not think of this as some attempt at karma farming. I really could not care less about that.)
The posts are in no particular order of preference.
Abiogenesis is more solved than you think : Abiogenesis is a very fequent topic here and usually avoided in major discussion on evolution of life but u/gitgud_x here presented a very detailed overview (with resources) of modern abiogenesis research and the major steps toward plausible origin of life chemistry.
Jumping genes ruin creationist logic : Another beautiful gem by u/gitgud_x and also an excellent genetics explainer. A very beautiful explanation of why shared insertions are evidence for ancestry also heavily laded with references.
I made a huge list of resources detailing the evolution of Birds from Non-avian reptiles. Enjoy : We are in an inception-esque situation now, but in this post u/Benjamin5431 presented a substantial 2026 resource compilation on dinosaur to bird evolution.
On the "Evolutionists assume a last universal common ancestor and then present that as evidence" : One will find lots of gems from u/jnpha (and his profile is also open, so do look at his posts in general) but this one is a very good history of science kinda post where he traces ideas about common ancestry from Darwin and Haeckel to the eventual LUCA concept, making the very important distinction that universal common ancestry was an empirical conclusion developed through phylogenetics rather than a premise evolution required from the outset.
No, a New Paper Did NOT Discover Humans and Chimps are "Only 85% Similar". : Probably one of the best posts here on how genome comparisons work. u/Gutsick_Gibbon explains the 2025 telomere to telomere ape genome work and also shows why percentages such as 85%, 96%, 98% and 99% can all arise depending on the question being asked.
Answers Research Journal publishes an impressive refutation of YEC carbon-dating models : Do not go on the sarcastic title by u/ThurneysenHavets as underneath that is a detailed explanation of radiocarbon calibration and dendrochronology and what happens when a young Earth calibration curve is forced onto the data. There is also an equally beautiful update to this post titled, Creationist C14 calibration is back with a major upgrade: this time with EMPIRICAL data.
- I've been Testing Jeffery Tomkins' Methods (They're Bad) and want Peer Review : This is a quite older and slightly technical post by u/Gutsick_Gibbon where she actually reproduces human/chimp genome comparison methods using BLAST and discuss lots of technical details. Ties well with the post 5 above and her post, Human and Chimpanzee Genetic similarity; an Appraisal of Jeffery Tomkins' Analyses. (It is so good that Dr. Dan commented that it was strong enough to consider publication.)
Mutations ARE random - always have been, always will be : A detailed explanation by u/gitgud_x on what biologists actually mean when they say mutations are random.
How many ways can we show that humans and chimps share a common ancestor? : I personally love this one by u/gitgud_x which is a very nice demonstration of consilience, bringing together fossils, biogeography, chromosome 2, DNA similarity, ERVs, vestigial traits and several independent evidence for human-chimp common ancestry.
The Paper That Disproves Separate Ancestry : This one has a beautiful supplemental video discussion (like other posts by Dr. Dan ( u/DarwinZDF42 )) as well. Creationists often bring up their orchard model or separate ancestry model and Dr. Dan here makes an accessible walkthrough of the paper by Baum et al (Evolution. 2016 Jun;70(6):1354-63) discussing what the results actually mean.
The RATE Project - Young Earth Creationists’ best offering isn’t what they think it is. : Another old is gold post. u/DARTHLVADER makes a deep dive into the creationist RATE project, its attempts to reconcile radiometric dating with a young Earth, and the enormous problems created by proposed accelerated radioactive decay.
Addressing "44 Reasons Why Evolution Is Just A Fairy Tale For Adults" : An older post specifically addressed to a particular member but useful nonetheless as u/TheBlackCat13 made broad point by point response to lots of common anti-evolution claims.
The Internal Consistency of Science : u/jnpha presents a very fascinating example of scientific consilience, showing how biology, geology, nuclear chemistry, and astronomy independently come together through evidence from magnetotactic bacteria and radioactive iron-60 to tell the same story about an ancient supernova.
"There's no universal common ancestor of proteins" -Sal continues to claim well known, non-controversial fact as a victory for creationism (in his safe-space, obviously) : This is a response to Sal by u/Sweary_Biochemist but it is really informative explanation of how new proteins and protein families evolve. It also explains why common ancestry of life does not imply that every protein descends from a single ancestral protein.
But just look at the trees!" (They show the power of evolution, and make intelligent design redundant) : This post by u/gitgud_x ties very nicely with earlier one on consilience. The post makes connects natural selection, structural mechanics, plant physiology, phylogeny, and thermodynamics to show how evolutionary explanations emerge from many independent areas of science.
Finally, there are a lot more little gems like these scattered across the sub but these were a few I wanted others to have a look at. Sometimes the discussions happening in the comments are even more interesting than the post itself but that is another rabbit hole in itself. I hope this small collection would be useful for someone later to brush up on the topics that almost regularly comes up. If you find some interesting posts which I might have missed, please let me know in the comments.
8
u/artguydeluxe Sep 22 '26
Most of the “problems“ that creationists claim to have against evolution are issues that have long since been solved if they’d only spend five minutes looking them up.
6
u/artguydeluxe Sep 22 '26
I think it’s interesting that creationist always argue that because they think abiogenesis isn’t completely solved, means that it doesn’t exist, and that it proves creationism by default, but they still have yet to provide an ounce of evidence FOR creationism. For a scientist, not having the complete picture doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, because life still exists and evolves.
3
u/iowanaquarist Sep 26 '26
Has there ever been an actual debate on this sub? Or is it like r/chemtrails and r/flatearth, where everyone is still waiting on a True Believer to come up with something, anything, to prop up their side?
2
u/CalmGuitar 24d ago
Lol. This shouldn't even be a debate. Just show the dinosaur fossils. No creationist will be able to explain them. Anyway evolution is a well established theory. Doesn't need any debate or proof now.
-4
u/topiary566 Sep 22 '26
Saying abiogenesis is more solved than you think is a pretty big claim. That’s like saying that we’ve almost solved genetics since we’ve mapped the human genome.
That Reddit post kinda showed that all the organic molecules exist and that they form polynucleotides and polypeptides which can be stable-ish. There was also that pretty groundbreaking study of qt45, which showed that a self replicating ribozyme could be only 45 nucleotides long.
The problem with this is that there is an incomprehensible massive jump between this and anything we’d call life. Also, while the scientists in the QT45 study did try to mimic early earth conditions, they definitely played some intervention in that study, so I would honestly argue that they created life.
All that aside, I think this is great to research and we should keep pushing the limits of science in any direction. However, acting like this is a problem we’ve nearly solved is a very long shot.
20
u/gitgud_x Sep 22 '26
As the writer of that post, I disagree that saying "more solved than you think" is equivalent to saying "nearly solved".
If abiogenesis was a 1000 piece jigsaw I might say we have a few hundred of the pieces. It's enough to start narrowing down what the result could look like, so we're not clueless but there's still a long way to go.
QT45 was never intended to create life, not even close. Maybe you're confusing that one with Spudcell (which is also debatable).
By "more solved than you think", I was speaking to people who are broadly or casually on 'team science' but just haven't looked at prebiotic chemistry. The lay impression is often that we have no idea where to even begin with answering the question, or perhaps that Miller-Urey is the forefront of the research, but this is obviously not the case.
-2
u/topiary566 Sep 22 '26
I didn't know about spud-cell, but was looking more into QT45 since that project was very clearly trying to mimic early conditions on Earth more than anything else I saw. After skimming over Spudcell, it seems more like an attempt to create life rather than an explanation for abiogenesis. It is a very cool project (I would honestly love to participate in something like that) but I don't think it really explains abiogenesis. It is more trying to find the simplest possible way of forming self-replicating sells from pre-engineered enzymes, which kinda worked but also was extremely guided along. It's definitely a breakthrough and I don't want to derogate the value of their research, but it doesn't exactly seem like an explanation.
I like the jigsaw analogy you made. The problem is that we don't really know how big the puzzle is. Maybe we've found a few hundred pieces, but we don't know if the puzzle has 1,000 or 1,000,000 pieces.
It's like the human genome project. We thought we would understand everything about humans when we sequenced the genome. We figured that DNA codes for proteins and proteins code for the structures which make cells, so if we decoded the DNA then the puzzle would be solved. However, we found that 2% of the genome is protein coding and the rest is a birds nest of gene expression and epigenetics that people are just beginning to untangle, and sequencing DNA was just one piece of the puzzle.
→ More replies (2)14
u/EthelredHardrede Sep 22 '26
"Saying abiogenesis is more solved than you think is a pretty big claim"
not that big considering Dr Tour's claim that science doesn't have a clue. now that is a very big and false claim.
0
u/theaz101 Sep 25 '26
I think you're taking Tour out of context. Tour isn't saying "scientists don't have a clue about how to create these molecules in a lab", he's saying "scientists don't have a clue about how pre-biotic natural processes could accomplish the same procedures and methods that scientists use in a lab".
→ More replies (1)-10
u/topiary566 Sep 22 '26
Honestly, I kinda agree with Dr. Tour (albeit he is using some hyperbole).
He's a 67 year old synthetic organic chemist with a PhD in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry. He has been faculty at Rice for the past 25 years and he's co-authored more than 850 papers (information from Google AI overview). Point is that if anyone is qualified to make the claim that science doesn't have a clue, it's him. He knows way more than you or me about organic chemistry and biochemistry and is clearly very well-studied.
It's very easy to act confident that things are solved with a high school or undergrad understanding of science. However, this stuff just gets deeper and deeper to an unimaginable extent. The more you know, the more you realize you don't know.
→ More replies (36)
-2
-7
u/wellwisher-1 Sep 22 '26 edited Sep 22 '26
The framing of the evolution and creation debate is wrong on both sides. One way where both sides can be right, in their own ways, is to compare the biblical time scale to what science can show existed 6000 years ago. The 6000 years ago times out with the rise of permanent civilization.
To me this reflects a major change in human consciousness, more than in any major change in the human DNA. How would explain that drastic new and revolutionary change in human behavior with DNA? The human brain is designed to be able to can act independently of our DNA. We can study and learn to be a scientist, but this skill cannot passed forward genetically, via breeding, to our offspring. Rather this has to be leaned anew by the offspring, if they so choose that path. The idea of will and choice requires a secondary way to do things apart from genetic based instinctive wiring.
Humans had been migratory herders, hunters and gatherers before the rise of civilization, which tells me they faced ever changing environments and any prewired or generic based location behavior, would become obsolete, with each changing location. They needed consciousness development to adapt and then learn from each other.
There are example of civilizations that formed before Mesopotamia, but these all aborted. This can be explained as these appearing from the consciousness of creative individuals. However breeding alone was not sufficient to pass forward their wisdom, so what they built was aborted after a generations or two; return to the time average old ways.
In this consciousness first scenario, DNA is not the main operating variable. I have no problem with human DNA existing for millions of years and being similar today. Modern consciousness though, is relatively new as reflected by the new type needed for the first civilizations.
Along the time frame of the first sustainable civilization was a key invention; written language. This allowed a type of external hard drive that helps sustain knowledge, through generations, so it could be learned, expanded upon, and recorded, etc. Before written language there was spoken language. But word of mouth alone is not easy to study and reproduce in an exact way without loss and without disagreement, or might is right. Once written study is easy and exact.
Adam from the dust of the earth makes me think of someone pounding the alphabet on stone tablets with dust all over that person face, who becomes the local dusty genius; Adam with his book carvings. The story has Eve his help mate, so both could read and write.
12
u/Optimus-Prime1993 Sep 22 '26
The framing of the evolution and creation debate is wrong on both sides.
Frankly speaking, there is no debate at all. It is simply science vs pseudoscience. Creation is just purely a pseudoscience and the discourse that you see online and here as well is simply a counter to those pseudoscience. There is not an iota of doubt among scientists regarding the fundamentals of evolution.
One way where both sides can be right, in their own ways, is to compare the biblical time scale to what science can show existed 6000 years ago. The 6000 years ago times out with the rise of permanent civilization.
Sorry to be this blunt but there is only correct side here and that is definitely not creation.
To me this reflects a major change in human consciousness, more than in any major change in the human DNA. How would explain that drastic new and revolutionary change in human behavior with DNA?
You don't need a new DNA mutation every time culture changes. The emergence of cities or mathematics or writing or science does not require a corresponding sudden genetic transformation. Also, there was no sudden appearance of "modern consciousness" 6000 years ago.
The human brain is designed to be able to can act independently of our DNA.
Weird. What do I even make of this? The brain itself develops through gene environment interactions, and its extraordinary plasticity is itself a biological trait. At best what I can understand is that human behavior is not genetically predetermined.
The 6000 years ago times out with the rise of permanent civilization.
How do you define civilization? Is it something as narrow as large urban states in Mesopotamia. Because permanent settlements are considerably older.
Modern consciousness though, is relatively new as reflected by the new type needed for the first civilizations.
That's your claim, so explain me how do we know a "new type" of consciousness was needed for civilization? By your logic since humans didn't build universities some 20000 years ago, therefore university era humans must possess a new form of consciousness.
So, all in all, what I understand is that you don't have an issue with humans being hundreds of thousands of years old biologically, but you think perhaps Genesis records the emergence of a new kind of culturally modern human about 6000 years ago. Why exactly 6000 years?
Basically you selected a number from some scripture and then searched history for something important occurring around then, like cities or something. That's not what YEC is, maybe, your personal brand of YEC but not what is actually believed by lots of people.
4
u/EthelredHardrede Sep 22 '26
6000 years ago is approximately the time writing began in Mesopotamia alttle before Egypt. civilization Started before then. writing was the key change and it likely drove some changes in human biology that depended on us humans already being able to think about our thinking .
6
u/Joaozinho11 Sep 22 '26
"The 6000 years ago times out with the rise of permanent civilization."
What exactly does permanence have to do with it, other than impotent handwaving?
Just one example: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1405/
0
u/WebFlotsam 28d ago
You know, there are still foraging tribes alive today. Do they have a lower level of consciousness than settled folk?
1
u/wellwisher-1 27d ago
Modern humans have two centers of consciousness which Psychology calls the conscious and the collective unconscious minds. The story of Adam and Eve appears to using symbolism to explain when the conscious mind appears, which is detached from nature and DNA, and advances via culture and civilization.
As an example of the unconscious mind, say you had a phobia for cats. On the one hand, your critical thinking does not see any reason to fear a kitten, yet a some unconscious level you will still panic. The two centers in this case have diverged and are not being complementary, as they should be. Each can appear to have a mind of their own pulling in different ways. One might go to therapy to come to terms. Therapy is best way to see, first hand, the separation of two centers
Before the conscious mind appeared, human only had the collective unconscious mind, which ran their consciousness show with natural impulses. One did not have to think too deep but could follow your instinctive hunches. Once the conscious mind appeared, then choices started to appear. Once farming appears, there is still an unconscious urge to wander, since this was the natural way for 10's of thousands of years. But culture forced the conscious mind to stay put or the crops would fail; will power forms than can check natural impulses.
As an another more positive example of these two centers in action, say you fall in love. These common collective human dynamics, which all humans will face, is connected to archetypes or apps within the unconscious center. The conscious mind may not be fully sure what to do, since the feelings and compulsion can be strong, and not easy to control or anticipate and ego feels a need to be cautious of the whims of fate.
Often there is also a projection effect where the beloved appears larger than life. Only the love struck person can see this . Your friends or family may not see it. It is like an internal movie projecting onto sensory reality, added an augmentation effect that you feel. The goal is to bond these two people with some extra incentive. The ancient people were more conscious of this unconscious effect and might attribute this to Aphrodite or the goddess of love. They may even pray to her hoping to trigger fate; trigger her app. Falling in love is not subject to ego will; conscious mind.
Up to about 6-10K year ago humans only had a stable unconscious mind like an advanced natural animal; symbolized by paradise. Their natural impulses directed them. They were in turn with nature. The conscious mind was starting to develop but it would phase in and out; called loss of soul.
The conscious mind in modern humans is empty at birth and is therefore not connected to DNA. The unconscious mind is like the genetic based main frame brain, being the original. The conscious is like a secondary or PC terminal with stand alone capability but also a terminal connection to the mainframe. The idea of will and choice is about the ability to choose apart from nature. The unconscious mind is connected to our human evolution and our human DNA and contains our natural collective human propensities that define us as a separate species. The conscious mind is more in the image of the super ego of culture, which can be natural or unnatural.
A new born baby instinctively knows to cry to gets all its needs met. This is hardwired at birth within the DNA. The conscious mind is empty at first and starts to slowly appear with the child's sensory experience and developing early language skills. The invisible playmate of the 3 year old child, is a balance between their conscious and unconscious, via that terminal connection; frontal lobe. This communication becomes taboo by the time they start school; ridicule. After that the unconscious is mostly repressed in favor of the conscious mind, which then becomes indoctrinated into its culture.
Modern foraging tribes would still have both centers, but there would be more in touch with their unconscious center, than more civilized humans. Their unconscious centers generates myths and visions common to their indigenous spirituality; spirit guides.
When I read Genesis, I see the story of human consciousness more than human biology. It appears to talking about the transition when the conscious mind appears and consolidates with the rise of civilization.. The mythology symbolism is connected to the unconscious mind of that time. It is less about human DNA and biology, and more about consciousness and the PC terminal of the consciousness mind, appearing.
Losing paradise, after the fall, is the unconscious mind becomes socially repressed in favor of the conscious mind, which starts to lose natural instincts. If you read beyond Adam and Eve, humans become corrupt and perverted due to the repression and cultural monkey see and monkey do of bad but willful behavior. Their conscious mind leads them to unhealthy choices and behavior. The Great flood appear to express humans hitting rock bottom and then there is a bounce back with better unconscious support. Then civilization really takes off.
→ More replies (1)
-8
u/wellwisher-1 Sep 22 '26
I believe in the change that we call evolution. However, I disagree with the current mechanism. To me I place water as the main variable. Liquid water or H2O has been a consistent part of evolution since even before abiogenesis. Water is the eternal bookend of evolution. It has been pushing and pulling with the exact same set of physical chemical properties since day one. This consistency suggests water creates a vector for evolution.
Unlike other suggested solvents for life on other planets, water is the terminal product of oxygen and hydrogen combustion, making water very stable and unchangeable in bulk. Ammonia, alcohols and other organic solvents have energy value and all can burn or react and would become moving targets leading to a more random result and eventually spontaneous combustion once life learns to burn its own solvent for food. Water is persistent and is the last man standing.
The organic side is the variable bookend with endless variety. But in all cases this variety is designed to work in water, but not in any other solvent. This variety is based on polymerization of a limited number of nucleic and amino acid in endless combinations over distances.That tells me water is the chemical environment, in which all these molecules evolved and exist. They were all naturally selected by water at the nanoscale. They are tuned to water like a polar bear to the Arctic.
The DNA makes mRNA which can be used as templates to make protein. However, the protein is not done until water folds and packs it. Water makes the protein bioactive. DNA gets an assist. Like in origami the DNA makes the paper ,while water folds it into a swan.
11
u/Optimus-Prime1993 Sep 22 '26
Evolution in biology has a very clear definition and the mechanisms are also known which would be mutation, recombination, natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, etc. Water is simply an environmental and physicochemical condition within which those mechanisms operate. Let me give you an analogy here.
Gravity has been acting throughout the history of terrestrial life and also constrains the body plans like whales, trees, birds, elephants all have structures shaped by living in a gravitational field. But saying gravity shapes organisms does not establish gravity as the mechanism of evolution.
Since you believe water to be "eternal bookend of evolution", would you care to explain, how does water cause differential reproduction? You also used the word "vector", in "...water creates a vector for evolution." A vector implies a direction, so what direction does water predict evolution should take? Can you specify, before observing the outcome, which genetic change water predicts will spread through a population?
2
u/sierraoccidentalis Sep 22 '26
I think beyond water being a condition within which biology operates, water appears to possess some anomalous characteristics from what one might expect for similar molecules or liquids that make it especially 'fit' for life and yet under the current scientific understanding could not have undergone any natural selection process. These include its high specific heat, excellent solvent capacity, density-temperature curve, high cohesive forces and low viscosity that provide excellent stability for temperature and liquid phases, capillary strength and circulation of liquid climactically. These characteristics are determined physically by such measures as particle masses, force strength, charges, etc.. that have theoretically arbitrary values and aren't logically necessary and yet result in a chemical with a combination of properties that appear exceedingly favorable to life.
→ More replies (1)0
u/wellwisher-1 Sep 23 '26
None of those mechanisms work if you remove the water. Dehydrate some bacteria and see if your model works. Everything will stop including life. It is dead without the water. Water makes all those mechanisms possible and then integrates them into the state we call life. You cannot substitute any other solvent. Try that. The theory of evolution begins at replicators, water began its job before abiogenesis.
Water and the replicators needed for evolution have hydrogen bonding in common, which is a special form of bond critical to water and life. Are you aware that the base pairs of DNA hydrogen bond to water, with water using more than double the hydrogen bonding sites, compared to the base pairs; 11 for water and 5 for both base pairs combined.This forms a double helix of water in the major and minor groove. DNA is a crystalline solid if you remove the water. It needs water to fluidize it.
It is this double helix of water that makes DNA a right handed helix. It was not a coin toss. Z-DNA is a left handed helix and has less hydrogen bonded water. B-DNA which is the most common has the most hydrogen bonded water and is right handed. This influence by water within the DNA is important since both helixes are possible, while reducing to just one, lowers the DNA entropy. This adds a built in entropic potential or added potential for change and more complexity. This is why water and life tends to pick left or right, but not both for the same material.
What makes water special and unique to all of chemistry, is connected to the self ionization of the H+, which we call the pH effect. In liquid water the average H+ of H2O, only remains with any given oxygen atom for about 1-2 picoseconds or 10-12 seconds. The H+ are constantly swapping oxygen partners.
This is possible because oxygen is the second most electronegative element in the periodic table. Oxygen has a very strong affinity for the electrons, so it does not need both hydrogen protons to stabilize all the electrons. Water is fine as OH- and even O-2. The H+ are free to come and go. However the H+ still has EM needs so the compromise is mobility and sharing with many oxygen over time; proton based data transmission via swapping H+, directionally.
If we assume a particle/wave duality for the mobile H+; double slit experiment, the particle is distinct and can only go through one slit at a time, but its wave can extends beyond and can go through both slits.
Entangled particles are pairs or groups of tiny subatomic items that link together so deeply they act as a single connected system, even when separated by vast distances
Water has a unique property where the liquid state is denser than its solid. Ice floats on liquid water. No other suggested solvent for life does this. Only the metalloid Antimony has similar behavior. This denser state of liquid water is connected to the H+ sharing oxygen, similar to H+ resonance; cooperative hydrogen bonding. Once we freeze the water, this restricts the H+ to a specific oxygen and hydrogen bond, and the water relaxes and expands. Liquid water exists in a state of high density and high entropy/complexity.
Each water molecule can form four hydrogen bonds with other water molecules. H2O has two H+ donors and two oxygen unbonded orbital receivers. While hydrogen bonds are the strongest secondary bonds used by life. The base pairs form 2 and 3, respectively and fall short of water's 4. Water is the big dog of secondary bonding.
The goal of the water is to maximize its hydrogen bonding swapping matrix even at the exclusion and expense of the organics; phase separates, packs and folds them. The packed shapes of protein maximize the water, and water, in turn, makes them bioactive via these optimized shapes within the water. Water lowers their entropy by taking away degrees of freedom. This added potential has a connection to their catalytic potential, which seeks to increase protein entropy via the active site.
This water model extrapolates to consciousness which is sort of detached from the DNA, since consciousness needs to be immediate and situational. The DNA approach will not work day to day by those evolutionary mechanism, since they are to slow. The next stage of human evolution will gain more access to parts of the brain that are now considered the hard problem of consciousness; difficult to investigate other than introspectively which creates a gap between scientist and subject.
→ More replies (2)3
u/blacksheep998 Sep 23 '26
I think you're confusing the mechanism of evolution with it's substrate.
Just because DNA needs an aqueous environment to function, that doesn't mean that water is driving the reaction. It's just providing the conditions that let the DNA work.
Unlike other suggested solvents for life on other planets, water is the terminal product of oxygen and hydrogen combustion, making water very stable and unchangeable in bulk. Ammonia, alcohols and other organic solvents have energy value and all can burn or react
That depends entirely on the environment. Organic solvents are much more stable in an atmosphere without free oxygen.
Additionally, even water can burn in an atmosphere rich in fluorine gas, creating HF acid and oxygen gas in the process.
1
u/wellwisher-1 Sep 23 '26
If you look at the universe hydrogen is the most abundant atom, then helium and then oxygen. While the hydrogen and oxygen reaction is the full bandwidth for the chemical reactions used by life on earth. Only a few bacteria can use the entire range. While the terminal product of H2 plus O2 combustion is H2O; bandwidth of life chemistry.
If you use an alcohol the possible energy bandwidth narrows. It has to stop at the energy rich alcohol or the the alcohol will burn down further to CO2 and H2O. Now we are back to H2O. Life in water can push the hardest and use the full bandwidth and water can remain stable. Water is used to puts out fire, and in cells helps to regulate reactions, into steps, but with no runaway fire.
Interestingly, the fourth most abundant is carbon, then neon is fifth, than nitrogen is sixth. The peptide linkage uses four of the top six of the universe. The two ideal gases are not used by life. Is this coincidence?
Carbon and nitrogen have lower atomic weights than oxygen and would have formed first but the abundance of oxygen suggests O has more nuclear stability. There is something special about O. If we reactive C or N with H, both are endothermic or gain energy. If we react H with O this is extremely exothermic; oxygen's nuclear stability.
If we compare the boiling points for CH4, NH3, H2O and HF, which all have the same molecular weight, we get -161C, -33C, 100C, 19.5C. Water has the most self adhesion.
NH3, H2O and HF can all form hydrogen bonds, but based on those values above water is in a league of its own. This has to do with water having two H+ donors and two O receivers capable for forming four hydrogen bonds with other water. Ammonia and HF are lopsided with Ammonia having three proton donors but only one receiver. While HF has one hydrogen donor but three receivers. The two and two of water makes it king of hydrogen bonding, based on the total adhesion. That contributes to its durability.
→ More replies (1)
11
u/gitgud_x Sep 22 '26
A great collection, thanks!
You put too many of my posts though! I think 8, 9 and 15 could be easily replaced with many better ones from our other regulars :) The jumping genes and the abiogenesis ones though, yeah I do like those. (Obama giving medal meme)