cosmictotem
Registered Senior Member
In an attempt to try to understand how life could arise in the Universe, I found myself thinking about what pro-life would look like. In other words, something one step down from what we generally understand as "self-sustaining" life.
If we accept there are degrees of complexity to different life-forms, perhaps there are different degrees of proto-life.
Jeremy England is using physics and math to come to similar conclusions about how energy is absorbed and dissipated and raises some questions for me.
Since it's obvious that energy is driving the production of life, what would it look like for a system to absorb energy such as sunlight but be just under our definition of what we think qualifies as "life"?
What if this proto-life form can absorb energy (sunlight) to sustain the appearance of life while that energy is applied to it, but have no capacity to store that energy? For example, when sunlight first strikes such a collection of Matter, the appearance of growth and vitality occurs but quickly disappears once the application of sunlight ceases.
Such a collection of Matter would have no ability of motion or to reproduce and thusly would permanently "die" when the first "animating" instance of energy (sunlight) disappeared. However, if there was an abundance of Matter similarly organized being produced of Earth, the next time the sun appeared, a new collection of this short-lived proto-life, dependent on direct external energy for "animation", would rise forth in response and also "perish" with the sunset.
Now since such a primitive interaction is dependent on external energy input (sunlight), what if one of these pieces of proto-life accidentally "figured out" how to absorb the dissipating energy of the transformed decaying matter of the previous "generation" of proto-life to sustain its own "life" long enough (longer than the previous one day "life" span) to still be "alive" when the next sunrise appeared?f
If you have something that can be "animated" by the absorption and transformation of light energy, in feeding off the decaying structures of its predecessors, such an existent would still be feeding on the same sunlight that provided it with the appearance of animation and "life", would it not?
In effect, the sun acts like the electrical socket and matter, the device. And later incarnations of matter later incorporated a portable "battery", probably from the fusion and/or absorption of other "living" structures. This onboard battery significantly extended the length and appearance of "life" and animation than having to be dependent on direct sunlight.
Of course, this all exemplifies a way of looking at life. It's solely the transformation and absorption of external energy that makes us appear alive. Once you have biological systems that can do that, pretty much any ability can evolve out of it, including consciousness. Consciousness, as a consequence, is really no more an remarkable result than is photosynthesis. Without the energy input, all of it stops. We ourselves are nothing but walking batteries, perhaps, in this view.
Even the language and mediums involved lend themselves to extend the metaphor:
We are made of matter and that matter came from the Earth. Earth and soil, in a certain configuration, can be used to create an earth battery. We store energy just like a battery and power the various emergent processes that give us animation,etc...
If we accept there are degrees of complexity to different life-forms, perhaps there are different degrees of proto-life.
Jeremy England is using physics and math to come to similar conclusions about how energy is absorbed and dissipated and raises some questions for me.
Since it's obvious that energy is driving the production of life, what would it look like for a system to absorb energy such as sunlight but be just under our definition of what we think qualifies as "life"?
What if this proto-life form can absorb energy (sunlight) to sustain the appearance of life while that energy is applied to it, but have no capacity to store that energy? For example, when sunlight first strikes such a collection of Matter, the appearance of growth and vitality occurs but quickly disappears once the application of sunlight ceases.
Such a collection of Matter would have no ability of motion or to reproduce and thusly would permanently "die" when the first "animating" instance of energy (sunlight) disappeared. However, if there was an abundance of Matter similarly organized being produced of Earth, the next time the sun appeared, a new collection of this short-lived proto-life, dependent on direct external energy for "animation", would rise forth in response and also "perish" with the sunset.
Now since such a primitive interaction is dependent on external energy input (sunlight), what if one of these pieces of proto-life accidentally "figured out" how to absorb the dissipating energy of the transformed decaying matter of the previous "generation" of proto-life to sustain its own "life" long enough (longer than the previous one day "life" span) to still be "alive" when the next sunrise appeared?f
If you have something that can be "animated" by the absorption and transformation of light energy, in feeding off the decaying structures of its predecessors, such an existent would still be feeding on the same sunlight that provided it with the appearance of animation and "life", would it not?
In effect, the sun acts like the electrical socket and matter, the device. And later incarnations of matter later incorporated a portable "battery", probably from the fusion and/or absorption of other "living" structures. This onboard battery significantly extended the length and appearance of "life" and animation than having to be dependent on direct sunlight.
Of course, this all exemplifies a way of looking at life. It's solely the transformation and absorption of external energy that makes us appear alive. Once you have biological systems that can do that, pretty much any ability can evolve out of it, including consciousness. Consciousness, as a consequence, is really no more an remarkable result than is photosynthesis. Without the energy input, all of it stops. We ourselves are nothing but walking batteries, perhaps, in this view.
Even the language and mediums involved lend themselves to extend the metaphor:
We are made of matter and that matter came from the Earth. Earth and soil, in a certain configuration, can be used to create an earth battery. We store energy just like a battery and power the various emergent processes that give us animation,etc...
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