The whole question of the jump from non-life to the simplest known
bacteria has left me wondering about what would constitute life
_simpler_ than that of a bacteria, or more basically, what would the
"primordial soup" out of which bacteria or first life would have
spawned.

A bacteria has a membrane that separates itself from its environment.
It is also capable of replicating itself.

A compost pile, in contrast has no clear boundary separating its
environment, but it can grow over time. Could it be useful
conceptionally to "dumb down" the definition of life or protolife to
basically a self-perpetuating process?

Granted, _today_ a compost pile (or soil) contains all kinds of
bacteria within it, but perhaps the "primordial soup" have been
basically a bacteria-less "compost pile" that even without bacteria
grew in size and complexity over time.

Even simpler examples of self-perpetuating phenomena include fires and
storms.

Expansion: Big Bang or Stretching? 4

Central Stars. About forty stars are orbiting within a few dozen light-
hours of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Those
stars could never have evolved that close to a black hole, which has
the mass of 4,000,000 suns. The black hole’s gravity would have
prevented gas from collapsing to become a star (7). However, those
stars could have formed in a much denser environment (8), before space
was stretched out during the creation week.

7. “The black hole’s inactivity [today] suggests that the central few
light years doesn’t contain enough raw material to make stars. And the
enormous gravitational tidal forces around the black hole would seem
to prohibit stars from forming even if the material were there: it’s
hard for a cloud of gas to contract into a star under its own gravity
when something that weighs as much as four million stars is sitting
next door.” Jeff Kanipe, “A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Not So Far
Away,” Nature, Vol. 446, 5 April 2007, p. 601.

Internet Daily Chapel
Thursday, May 1, 2008
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By Rev. Bill McGinnis, Pastor - InternetChurchOfChrist.org
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