u/wellwisher-1

If all the water in the oceans was in the atmosphere, the atmospheric pressure would be about 270 times higher than today. Water as a gas is a good greenhouse gas. In this early earth scenario, the surface would be molten, causing the water to remain boiled as steam, with the steam gas holding in the heat; hot vapor phase reactor.

This scenario would also have acids in the atmosphere, but not much in the way of bases. Many acids stem from gases like hydrochloric, nitric, sulfuric, etc. While simple bases like sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium hydroxide stem come from minerals and would stay molten, until liquid water appears. for the base reactions. When liquid water appears the pH begins to increase as more bases dissolve and interact with the acids.

If you look at the protonation states of phosphate, H3PO4 is favorable in strong acid conditions, while PO4-3 is favorable in strong base conditions. The middle state used by life would appear in a transitional zone; hot stormy atmosphere and boiling brine.

There is also a thing called steam distillation where steam can be used to vaporize oils way below the normal boiling point. Steam becomes a good solvent for oil. The Miller Urey experiments produced resinous solids which turned out to be polymers of HCN, which at high enough heat, break down into ammonia and oil; atmospheric oil/emulsion.

My approach to abiogenesis is to look for seams common in all stages of life, that could exist early in the story of life, are still used and that can be used to leverage the early steps. I am not so much about the specific changes, but developing basic tools to help promote continuous change even before templates.

One such seam that life uses is what is called entropy of mixing, which is the basis for osmosis. Besides osmosis, this form of entropy has many other uses. It is a unique form of entropy, mostly found in the liquid and gas states. Life in water is in the liquid state and therefore life can leverage entropy of mixing and entropy of mixing can be used to leverage pre-life.

Entropy of mixing has the goal of maximizing space. It is not about inefficiency. But it still involves a 2nd law endothermic process. As an example, you can do at home without any equipment; take a bottle of perfume and open it in the center of a close room. Your nose will be the only tool you will need.

The perfume will evaporate, which will make more space between the liquid molecules. Then, these close together gas molecules will expand in the air space, to fill in the room with fragrance. At uniform room concentration the most space between the perfume particle will exist; steady state. This is driven by the 2nd law and has the same goal each time.

If we made the room incrementally larger, in steps, each size has the same end goal; weakening uniform solution. This form of entropy increase, has a logical and predictable conclusion, it is goal orientated. If we open the window, it will keep expanding. The perfume would never spontaneously go backwards, into the bottle, since that would lower the space between.

Entropy of mixing is the basis for osmosis. In this case, a semi-permeable membrane is used to prevent the solute from mixing and spread out to balance the concentration on both side; uniform solution. But since the water can move freely, it does the entropy of mixing for the solute. The water will diffuse in the direction of higher solute concentration to make more space, where space is needed most.

The osmotic pressure is a measure of the entropic potential to mix and how hard the water will push to make more space between solute particles, even going upward against gravity. This is a significant pressure.

Osmotic pressure is force/area. If we multiple by area we get the osmotic force. But since this is based on entropy of mixing, I call it the entropic force. There is a fifth force of nature driven by entropy of mixing. It is common to life and needs semi-permeable membranes. It has been called the life force. The value of this entropic force is it has a force vector that can be used to steer, as well as a goal; expand.

Like all forms of entropy increase, entropy of mixing is also endothermic, picking up macro energy along the way and moving that energy into the quantum state, as it spreads out. Reverse osmosis reverses the entropy of mixing, allowing life to extract energy from the quantum state.

This most common way life uses to reverse entropy of mixing is ion pumping. Ion pumps segregate and concentrate ions; put the perfume back in two bottles. Ions in water is life's main way is harnesses entropy of mixing. Trees can use it to pump water against gravity; entropic force can oppose the gravitational force. Osmosis is also used in cell cycles. It is used by the brain to steer trillions of axon and dendrites to specific synapses, and also to move the bulk currents of the brain; expansion throughout the brain, before being reversed by the ion pumps for an another work cycle.

An argument can even be made that even the expansion of the universe; all matter expanding, in spite of gravity, in the near vacuum of space, is based on entropy of mixing. The red shift would reflect the endothermic nature of this cosmic expression of the 2nd law. Dark energy may be connected to entropy of mixing. Gravity can reverse this and retrieve quantum energy, while trees can oppose gravity, like the expansion.

Chirality is the geometric property of an object or molecule that cannot be superimposed onto its mirror image. In chemistry this is associated with left and right handed stereo isomers. Life uses mono-chirality, limiting itself to either left or right handedness, but not both together. B-DNA double helix is right handed.

Chirality is like having 50/50 LH and RH steering in cars, at the same time, on a busy highway. This would add complexity to driving, since the line of sight is different for each. Reducing this double handedness down to one, lowers this complexity.

This lowering of complexity implies a reduction in entropy; exothermic, thereby adding free energy to the system, as well as the need to increase entropy in another way 2nd law. However, this cannot to happen with doubling the handedness, since reduction to one, makes that path irreversible. Now we have a built in potential for change, based on the 2nd law, and some extra free energy to do it.

The DNA double helix can be both right handed b-DNA and left handed z-DNA. The difference between the two is the amount of hydrated water, with b-DNA having the most water of hydration. B-DNA has a double helix of water in the major and minor grooves. Water uses more than twice as many hydrogen bonding sites on the base pairs, as the base pairs use.

Water plays a key role in assigning single handedness and thereby lowering structural entropy to give DNA an added entropic potential, expressed by an active template, to add the needed complexity, to satisfy the 2nd law in a dynamic cyclic fashion.

If we have a closed system, the second law of thermodynamics says the entropy of the system will increase. Increase is the spontaneous direction of entropy. As entropy increases, it absorbs energy; endothermic.

Say I made the system that was semi-open. I periodically add things to system to lower the entropy, before I closed it again. Now the 2nd law will need act again, since I have added potential for entropy to increase in this closed system. As long as I keep doing this in a cyclic fashion, entropy will perpetually increase, in this semi-closed system, and never reach steady state, due to the periodic open state.

A good engineering example is a heat pump, which can move heat from colder to warmer. This seems counter intuitive, since heat naturally flows from warmer to cooler; endothermic nature of entropy increase.

However, the heat pump is a process, that requires energy, but can make heat and entropy go the wrong spontaneous way. Since there is no such thing as perpetual motion, due to machine inefficiency, there will be a net increase in system entropy, which add to the complexity. In this case, there is constant loss of energy going into net increase in entropy, added by the process.

Photosynthesis, by going from gases to a larger fuel molecule, lowers chemical entropy. Now we have a potential in a molecular material that needs to increase entropy, back to gases. This took solar energy and would not happen without it. Like the semi-open example above, the need to reverse the lower entropy material, makes free energy favorable.

Since photosynthesis is not reversible, the food cannot reverse in place to increase entropy via the same reverse chemical process. It needs a new process; metabolic enzyme, to express the built in entropy potential; increase.

Life is like a bunch two cycle irreversible entropy engines, allowing many ways to keep entropy increasing in others ways, while inefficiency by increasing entropy sets the potential needed for continuous change in the direction of increasing entropy; complexity and evolution.

The brain does the same thing with ion pumps reversing ionic entropy. Synaptic firing was an inevitable 2nd law expressive to increase ionic entropy. While process inefficiencies leading to net increasing brain entropy; advancing complexity. Abiogenesis is part of this basic schema. Those detail are a work in progress.