Which of the Following Is a Highly Speculative Issue About

question 8

Multiple Choice

Which of the following is a highly speculative issue about the early origin of life?

• A) Sufficient evidence exists that RNA might have been the first informational molecule.
• B) Amino acids could have originated by Krebs cycle acids complexed to a dinucleotide.
• C) Bacterial redox metabolism can be evidenced through ³⁴S/³²S ratios from 3.47 Gyr ago.
• D) Ancestors of methanogens using H₂ and CO₂ to make CH₄ and H₂O evolved early.
• E) Panspermia, life forms originated elsewhere, were seeded on Earth by meteorites.

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Definitions:

Population Distributions

Represents the spread of values, or observations, of a particular variable across an entire population.

Nonparametric Tests

Statistical tests that do not assume a specific distribution for the data, used for analyzing ordinal or nominal data with unknown parameters.

Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test

A nonparametric test used to determine whether there is a significant difference between two independent samples by comparing their rank sums.

Significance Level

The threshold below which a statistical result is considered significant, typically reflecting the probability of wrongly rejecting the null hypothesis.