All life on Earth can be traced back to a Last Universal Common Ancestor, or LUCA—and it likely lived on Earth only 400 million years after its formation.
I’m not a biologist either, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
But it still points the no life / life transition being extremely easy? Doesn’t it?
Perhaps so, provided the conditions are suitable for that.
In special, going from free-floating to contained self-replicating junk seems to be a damn big leap, since the containment (aka membrane) needs to be selective: it needs to let some material to go in/out to allow replication and get rid of leftovers, but not enough to threat the integrity of the structure.
It was still most likely a hellscape for our standards, though. Just not a barren one.
I’m not a biologist either, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Perhaps so, provided the conditions are suitable for that.
In special, going from free-floating to contained self-replicating junk seems to be a damn big leap, since the containment (aka membrane) needs to be selective: it needs to let some material to go in/out to allow replication and get rid of leftovers, but not enough to threat the integrity of the structure.
It was still most likely a hellscape for our standards, though. Just not a barren one.