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RE: How Cell Membranes Form Spontaneously
Cell biology is so insanely complicated. Yet, looked at another way, it seems inevitable.
In any case, the more I read about how our bodies work, the more amazed I am that they do work, at all.
In one sense I agree. But in another sense, the fact that we can understand cell biology at all, tells me maybe it's not that complicated, objectively speaking: it's just our brains aren't that great :P
Think of it this way: About 4 billion years ago Earth cooled, oceans formed, so life was made possible. Only about 300 million years after life was made possible, maybe even earlier, the first life (prokaryotic) appeared. See here (I love the phrase "an almost instantaneous emergence of life").
Note that the first euks appeared ~3 billion years after that. You heard right: 300 million years for life to appear, vs 3 billion for proks to become euks. I'm oversimplifying, but euks are just proks with nuclei. I.e. basically more of the same: a membrane within a membrane.
Lots of numbers are thrown out there in the form of statistics, but the facts tell me it's not that difficult to make life (so it shouldn't be that complicated).
Initially I wanted to write a post about how easy (or hard) it is to make life, but decided against it due to the scope, and zoomed in on a particular detail instead: how cell membranes spontaneously form due to the laws of chemistry.