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Vesta presumably was originally in a resonance with Earth that allowed it to reside for a long enough time in a temperature zone conducive to the origin of life.
This combination of a lack of surface pressure and temperature extremes from 100 kelvins to 390 kelvins would preclude the existence of liquid water on its surface and thus it would be a poor candidate for the development of life.
I said that the location was in a "warm spring".
Extremes in temperature are necessary to drive the purification of solvents, reagents, and biochemicals, e.g., by the fractional freezing of aqueous solutions. Formamide is an important secondary solvent. It is more polar than water and freezes at about the same temperature. Swings to a much lower temperature are necessary to generate a slowly alternating electric potential to purify by electrophoresis.
You might as well posit that warm spring as being on Earth then, rather than on some object that we don't know even existed.
We don't know the conditions necessary for the formation of life.
The Earth is a hostile environment for the formation of life, because of the abundance of water. Without a sophisticated cellular membrane biochemicals are rapidly diluted. The necessary high energy molecules are also rapidly destroyed.
Unless we resort to vitalism, they have to lead to the formation of life by mostly known physics, chemistry, and biology.
So what's the difference between a warm spring on a hypothetical satellite of Vesta and a warm spring on Earth? Moreover, why assume that it was on a satellite of Vesta? Why not on one of the other countless asteroids in the asteroid belt?
The difference is between being in a friendly environment and being in a hostile environment.
No other body in the Solar system is supported by as much evidence as I gave for the hypothetical satellite of Vesta.
What makes a warm spring on that satellite more friendly to life than a warm spring on Earth?
Seriously? You think there we have more evidence for the existence of Vesta's satellite than we have for Earth, the Sun, Mars, etc?
The context was friendly for the origin of life - for the reasons I gave.
The context was existence as a location for the origin of life - also for the reasons I gave.
Those same conditions can exist in springs on Earth.…Which goes back to what I was saying about any number of other asteroids being just as good a candidate.
Instead of just repeating yourself, go back to my OP and reply #2 to see the conditions I laid out.
You don't know that those conditions you specified are capable of producing life, nor do you know that alternative conditions can't also produce life. Regardless, formamide and ammonium sulfate could have existed on the prebiotic Earth as well. There are locations on the Earth even today where the ferroelectric temperature you speak of can be reached. So again, your arguments do not preclude life from forming on Earth.
The first phrase in my OP says that I am presenting an hypothesis.
I'm more confused as to why you are trying to point to one particular object in the asteroid belt (and one that we don't know ever existed at that). Why would it be so uniquely suited for the development of life when compared to other asteroids?
Vesta is the second most massive asteroid and would have been a good source of sulfur dioxide.
They are abundant in the nebula around very hot stars and would be created in much higher concentrations by the intense radiation from a neutron star merger.
As complex organics appear in water, and the tides mix the water and organics, water and organics will phase separate out at low tide, into order; simple organelles.
Actually, they would be destroyed in those conditions.
Formaldehyde readily and reversibly polymerizes to polyoxymethylene