Ian Pitchford

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No one has managed to spontaneously generate anything as extraordinary as DNA in the lab. The chances of that are very small. But that’s the point, because given the billion billion or so possible planets available in the universe on which to try out this experiment, together with the billion or so years to let the experiment run, it would be more striking if that outside chance of creating something like DNA didn’t happen. Keep rolling 36 dice on a billion billion different planets for a billion years and you’d probably get one roll with all 36 dice showing 6. Once you have a self-replicating ...more
What We Cannot Know: Explorations at the Edge of Knowledge
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