Talk:Abiogenesis

"biopoesis"

i propose it should be "biopoiesis", or at least offer both spellings, for ease of understanding & integration with the existing wikipedia article of "poiesis"; feel like this would make it easier to navigate for people searching for etymology? or at least remove an unnecessary google search along the way VenaeCavae (talk) 20:08, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it needs the "i". Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:09, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Meh, it seems too long to me, but unless others feel the same, leave it as is. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 21:30, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

The lead is longer then the overview section

The lead is really too long. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 02:28, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

There is no requirement to be shorter than an overview, which is there just to introduce some concepts, whereas the lead has to summarise the whole article. As for the overview's absolute length, a less-than-500 word summary of a complex and technical 7,500 word article seems perfectly reasonable. Chiswick Chap (talk) 04:14, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Astrobiologists believe..

" astrobiologists assume that life exists and came into being by similar processes on other planets"

… the astrobiology topic itself does not say that astrobiologists believe that, it just says the discipline is predicated on the assumption that life may have originated on other planets (and by any mechanism, for i assume there is not a differently named discipline for other potential mechanisms).

As scientists it would seem odd to me that they assume something without yet any evidence, but I'm not an astrobiologist.

Can someone clarify? Raisins31415 (talk) 14:21, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for discussing. Firstly, this article is reliably cited, all the way through: it depends on the sources it cites, as all Wikipedia articles ought to be doing. Secondly, Wikipedia is not itself a reliable source: no article can cite another Wikipedia article as evidence, as anybody might have edited it, and we can't follow a chain of articles to try to find the actual reliable source, if indeed one has been provided somewhere. So the rule is short and simple: each claim in each article has to stand on its own feet, with its own citation directly to a reliable source. So, whatever some other article (like Astrobiology) says (or doesn't say) is not the concern of this article. Of course, that might be a reason to improve the other article, but that's a different question. All the best, Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:25, 25 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't disagree with the principles, but I see no obvious citation for the claim about astrobiologists in this article. Given that I suggest weakening it. Raisins31415 (talk) 17:35, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

The lead summarizes cited text in the article body (as Wikipedia lead sections should always do). The ref is [2] "NASA strategy 2015". As for why scientists assume life must exist elsewhere, see Drake equation for a mathematically-based argument; or one might paraphrase that by saying that if it has arisen anywhere, there's no reason to suppose it can't arise somewhere else. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:38, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Is it not considered something that ought to be fixed when two articles disagree?

This is one of my first interactions on Wikipedia and I thought this would be an uncontroversial observation but the push back makes me suspect contributing regularly would be a drag. I'm not suggesting that's what you intend. Anyway this particular thread isn't important enough to discuss further. Raisins31415 (talk) 23:31, 27 September 2026 (UTC)

Each article is a stand-alone document. Editors of one article are volunteers; they aren't obliged to fix the rest of the Internet. That said, the two articles seem to be in excellent agreement on the fact that astrobiology is predicated on the possibility (or likelihood) of life on other planets. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:32, 28 September 2026 (UTC)⁰