If the mechanistic view of life is correct, then the origin of life can be explained only by the chance formation of amino acids, followed by the chance union of amino acids to form proteins. However, the chance formation of even the smallest useful protein would be a rare event. Because of this, large spans of time would be needed to improve the probability that useful proteins had been formed.

The story often is told of a group of gibberish- typing monkeys who, by chance, will produce Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roma" Empire if they type long enough. Nobody ever seems to ask, "How long must they type?"
A typical statement in this kind of literature is:

"So that if we had amino acids, we then would have proteins, and if we had proteins we would be well along the road to life. Given trillions upon trillions of possibilities for chemical combinations, given a few million years-for it all to happen, the components of life would have appeared. And once that had been accomplished, once the bricks and the stones and the lumber for the building of life were present, then all that would have been required were a few more million years for life to actually appear."¹

The current most widely accepted estimate for the age of the universe is around 10 billion years,² while the earth is believed to be only 4-5 billion years old. Is this enough time for the useful protein combinations to be formed?

In the case of insulin, Asimov estimated that there are 8 x 10²⁷ (8 followed by 27 zeroes) different possible combinations of an insulin like protein.³ For the sake of argument, let us assume that each second that the universe has existed, a different combination of an insulin-like protein is produced. After 10 billion years, we would have approximately 3 x 10¹⁷ (3 followed by 17 zeroes) different combinations, or approximately one ten-billionth of all the possible combinations of insulin. To be positive that the one combination which the body uses is produced, we would need to wait an additional 10 billion times the presently supposed age of the universe. In other words, we would need to wait one hundred quintillion years longer until all combinations of insulin had been produced.

In the case of hemoglobin, the chance formation of life is even less probable. Asimov estimates 135 followed by 165 zeroes as the different combinations of hemoglobin .⁴ Once again only a limited number of combinations are useful. This time let's assume that 10¹⁰⁰ (10 followed by 100 zeroes) different combinations are produced each second the universe has existed. Actually, this would be impossible because the total number of atoms in the observable universe⁵ is only 10⁷⁸. Thus, our hemoglobin factory would consume approximately 10 sextillion universes every second, just to maintain this rate of production. Even so, it would take ten trillion trillion years to produce all of the different combinations of hemoglobin.

Examples like this are easy to find. It doesn't take much imagination to realize how improbable the chance formation of the smallest known virus is. DNA is composed of four smaller chemicals which are arranged in ladder-like fashion. In the smallest known virus, the DNA has only 5,000 of these smaller chemicals-2,500 per side of the ladder.⁶ There would be approximately 10 followed by 1,505 zeroes different combinations. Thus, it would appear that there has not been enough time in the universe to explain the chance formation of life.

NOTES
1. Clifford D. Sirnak, Trilobites Dinosaurs and Man, New York: St. Martins Press, 1966, p. 54. 2. Frank Wilczek "The Cosmic Assymetry between Matter and Antimatter", Scientific American, Dec. 1980, p. 83.
3. Isaac Asimov, "The Genetic Code", New York: The New American Library, 1962, p.92.
4. Ibid..
5. P.C.W. Davis, "Dirac Completes His Theory of Large Numbers", Nature 250:460,1974, cited in Mysterious Universe: A Handbook of Astronomical Anomalies, compiled by W.1liam R. Corliss, published 1979 by the Source Book Project.
6. Lawrence Lessing, DNA: "At the Core, of Life Itself", New York: Macmillan Co., 1966, p. 15.