Reflections on the Nature of "Living" Systems

[Text below adapted from my college astronomy course discussion contributions:]


//Conditions Supportive of Life//
What conditions does Earth have that seem necessary to support the existence of living organisms? Be specific, and relate these conditions to the history and astronomical context of our planet.

Although other combinations of chemical compounds may possibly lead to self-organization, metabolic activity, and replication (and therefore evolution) as xenobiologists are currently studying, the most basic necessities for life in the form we are familiar with, which are provided for on Earth, include:

• The Sun, as a source of electromagnetic energy necessary for photosynthesis and maintaining habitable temperatures on the Earth's surface (i.e. keeping water in its liquid state beyond the Archean Eon, 4.0-2.5 Ga; Note: "Astronomers think that the sun had about 70–75 percent of the present luminosity, yet temperatures appear to have been near modern levels even within 500 Ma of Earth's formation [> 4.04 Ga], which is puzzling (the faint young Sun paradox).  The presence of liquid water is evidenced by certain highly deformed gneisses produced by metamorphism of sedimentary protoliths. The equable temperatures may reflect the presence of larger amounts of greenhouse gases than later in the Earth's history.  Alternatively, Earth's albedo may have been lower at the time, due to less land area and cloud cover.").  Additionally, the Sun's electromagnetic radiation (reduced to a "healthy" level due to the Earth's magnetic field and ozone layer) accelerates evolution by introducing errors in DNA and RNA encoding sequences, a small percentage of which lead to beneficial adaptations [see Genetic Variation].
• A very wide variety of types of elements and molecules from one or more supernovae, (reactants and catalysts) needed for complex chemical reactions, which provided the diverse array of chemical interplay and structures needed for the random creation of biochemical precursor compounds (i.e. amino acids, nucleic acids) necessary for a successful selection of chemically interacting components that could inherently self-organize, self-sustain through metabolic reactions, and replicate (via RNA or simpler precursors such as PNA, GNA, or TNA).
• Liquid water, provided by volcanic activity as well as ice-containing asteroids, meteorites, and proto-planets (particularly during the Late Heavy Bombardment phase of Earth's history, 4.1-3.8 Ga), as a highly efficient medium for the suspension, free movement, and interaction of chemical compounds necessary for the formation of the first organic compounds (by allowing a very high frequency of random encounters of inanimate chemical compounds to occur), and to eventually continue providing cellular life the capacity for homeostasis (via self-containment within a membrane) and the medium in which to carry on cell processes, including metabolic chemical reactions.
• An atmosphere, providing the containment (i.e. avoiding loss into space) of water vapor, a positive pressure environment necessary for cellular life to survive beyond the oceans, and a major source of molecules (such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen) necessary for the metabolic activity of more complex unicellular, and eventually multicellular, organisms utilizing photosynthesis.

How likely do you think it is that other planets in the universe have, or have had in the past, those conditions that seem necessary to support the existence of living organisms? Explain why you think so.

The following quote, which I used part of in my Week 2 discussion about the likelihood of "intelligent" life elsewhere in the universe, provides support for the idea that life must (extrapolating statistically) exist in other locations in the universe because very similar conditions to those on Earth exist in countless other solar systems in the universe:

"The chemistry of life may have begun shortly after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, during a habitable epoch when the Universe was only 10–17 million years old.  According to the panspermia hypothesis, microscopic life—distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and other small Solar System bodies—may exist throughout the universe.  Nonetheless, Earth is the only place in the universe known to harbor life.  Estimates of habitable zones around other stars, along with the discovery of hundreds of extrasolar planets and new insights into the extreme habitats here on Earth, suggest that there may be many more habitable places in the universe than considered possible until very recently.  On 4 November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.  11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars.  The nearest such planet may be 12 light-years away, according to the scientists." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_habitability]

I personally concur with the panspermia hypothesis, that forms of basic animate matter (i.e. "life" and/or its precursor components) exist throughout the universe.  It is quite plausible that Earth was "seeded" with very basic form(s) of animate matter by one or more space bodies entering the Earth's atmosphere during its first billion years or so of existence.  On Earth, and on other planetary bodies in the universe with the right conditions, there as a "nursery" environment that permits the development of more complex animate matter and an evolutionary process, through natural selection, providing ever more complex forms of life to develop.

//Variety Possible in Forms of "Life"//

Many people often forget that there is a vast middle-ground of possibilities when it comes to the "variety spectrum" for animate systems.  For them there is either little, if any, forms of life beyond our planet or solar system, or there are countless other intelligent species in the universe that are generally very similar in their biochemistry and physiology to homo sapiens.  Yet, xenobiologists (and astrobiologists) have made significant progress in the last decade in expanding our realization of the vast variety of forms in which "living" things can potentially exist—forms of animate systems that are not carbon based, use a different molecular liquid besides water to provide an emulsion medium for metabolic-related chemical reactions, and even perhaps "life" that has advanced beyond biochemistry altogether (e.g. self-organized and evolving electromagnetic energy matrices that take full advantage of the significant evolutionary freedom the quantum mechanical characteristics of matter-energy systems provide at the microscopic level (the average photosynthetic efficiency in plants and photosynthetic bacteria is a staggeringly high ≥90-98%^, as compared to our most recent "cutting-edge" advance in solar cell efficiency in the lab of 46.0%, because those biochemical systems provide for the quantum process of photonic energy pathway self-selection called "quantum walk"*).

* "A phenomenon known as quantum walk increases the efficiency of the energy transport of light significantly. In the photosynthetic cell of an algae, bacterium, or plant, there are light-sensitive molecules called chromophores arranged in an antenna-shaped structure named a photocomplex. When a photon is absorbed by a chromophore, it is converted into a quasiparticle referred to as an exciton, which jumps from chromophore to chromophore towards the reaction center of the photocomplex, a collection of molecules that traps its energy in a chemical form that makes it accessible for the cell's metabolism. The particle's wave properties enable it to cover a wider area and try out several possible paths simultaneously, allowing it to instantaneously "choose" the most efficient route, where it will have the highest probability of arriving at its destination in the minimum possible time. Because it takes place at temperatures far higher than quantum phenomena usually occur in, quantum walking is only possible over very short distances, due to obstacles in the form of destructive interference that will come into play. These cause the particle to lose its wave properties for an instant before it regains them once again after it is freed from its locked position through a classic "hop". The distance towards the center is therefore covered in a series of conventional hops and quantum walks." [Source]

^ "Plants 'seen doing quantum physics'"; "Quantum Biology: Better Living Through Quantum Mechanics - The Nature of Reality"; "Quantum coherent energy transfer over varying pathways in single light-harvesting complexes"; "Environment-Assisted Quantum Walks in Energy Transfer of Photosynthetic Complexes"

Metaphysical Physics Propositions for Your Consideration

//Universal Quantum Entanglement?//
Since the universe began with the "Big Bang" in which all matter, energy, and space-time in the universe we see today were once infinitesimally adjacent and combined, would that not make it the case that all particles in the universe are quantumly entangled from that moment forward?  Since the nature of the "Big Bang," including the property of the "inflationary period," caused the even distribution of matter throughout the universe wherein any random pair of entangled particles could be on completely opposite sides of the universe, or anywhere within the boundaries of the universe, is it not the case that any particles observed by conscious beings throughout the universe would cause their entangled partners throughout the other areas of the universe to instantly take on a specific state?  If this is the case, the implication is that localized conscious observation has instantaneous effects on the behavior of matter in every region of the universe.


//The 3 Primary Qualities of the Universe and How they are Linked//
On macroscopic scales, there are three relatively distinct phenomenon of the universe: matter and energy (including dark matter and dark energy), space-time itself, and consciousness.  While they seem relatively distinct aspects of the universe from the vantage of the human scale, in truth, they are intimately interconnected to the point that they are actually indistinguishable from each other (meaning that there is no identifiable threshold of interaction between them where there is a significant, definable distinction between each of these three aspects of the universe).  Through what we call "forces" which are the ways in which matter and energy interact within the parameters of the innate properties of space-time's geometry, physicists have already well-established that these two aspects of the universe are completely interconnected and interrelated to each other, and can even be considered to constitute a unified structure or construct.  The unified nature of matter-energy and space-time has been identified and well-established on the macroscopic scale, including our understandings of the direct connection between the behavior of electromagnetism and motion relative to space-time, as well as the forces of gravity and dark energy and their direct effects on both the macroscopic behavior of matter-energy and the fabric of space-time throughout the entire universe, and also on the smallest of scales, including through our understandings of quantum mechanics.  But what of the relation between these two aspects of the universe and consciousness?

Because of what we know through quantum mechanics and verified experiments such as the two-slit experiment, we know that the act of observing any particular particle at any specific moment decides the particular location and/or vector for that particle.  Since, by definition, the act of observation requires a consciousness to be involved in the measurement process, it follows from our vast empirical evidence that consciousness directly effects the behavior of all matter-energy that is observed at any given region of space-time observable by a consciousness.  Therefore, consciousness is indistinguishably interconnected with the behavior of the matter-energy component of the universe.

As far as the interconnection of consciousness with space-time, we know through the theories of Special and General Relativity, which have been empirically proven repeatedly, that the movement of a conscious observer through space distorts space-time in specific ways, including that the observer must use exponentially increasing amounts of energy to continue accelerating as they come ever closer to the speed of light limit, which shows that the distortion of space-time is not just an external perception but a reality within their own frame of reference.  As modern physicists agree, there is not a universal frame of reference in space-time, only relative frames of reference from the point of view of individual observers.  It necessarily follows that consciousness and space-time are completely and indistinguishably interconnected.  To add one additional argument, which is a logically deductive one, involves the fact that a conscious observer can only observe one finite moment of space-time at any particular moment, which we call being in "the present."  The total pattern of brain and nervous system activity of a conscious being can only be in one specific state at any one instant in time.  That is why a consciousness can only experience one infinitesimal slice of space-time from moment to moment.  Now, consider that the total qualia experienced by that consciousness at a particular instant is a direct effect of the total interaction the entire universe's influences have had on that conscious being at that instant in time.  The exact conscious state of the observer and the exact state of the "observed" part of the universe are directly and completely co-dependent and interconnected.  If the observed universe were even slightly different, the pattern of the observer's conscious state would necessarily be slightly different, and vice-versa.  If an observer's conscious state were slightly altered, say by electrically stimulating a part of their brain, from what it otherwise would have been, then the universe would be in a slightly different state than would otherwise have been, because the person's observation of particles would have been slightly altered, thus altering the state the universe ended up being in at that precise moment.

To reiterate, with what we know from quantum mechanics, consciousness, which is the basis of the kind of observation that determines the particle-wave properties and locations of particles, directly determines the exact state of the observable universe at any instant in time, and that the exact state of the observer's universe directly determines the conscious state of the observer in that same instant in time.  In summary, the three seemingly unique aspects of the universe, space-time itself, matter-energy, and consciousness are not distinct from one another, but are instead completely interconnected and interrelated and all three can only be addressed as being along a smooth spectrum of what makes up the whole universe.


//An Infinite, Fractalinear Structure within the Omni/Multi-Verse?//
[If you are unfamiliar with the multi-verse interpretation that is strongly suggested by the findings of multiple major fields of study in physics (particularly in the ways in which they support the "many-worlds" interpretation through how these originally-segregated fields are now understood as complimenting one another supporting the same conclusion (that existence is a multi-verse within which our own universe is merely one small part), I suggest reviewing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation .]

It is a reasonable conjecture that every time a blackhole forms, a new, "child" universe is born within the blackhole (the blackhole's singularity being the source of the "big-bang" for the child universe; the "arrow of time" is inverted within the blackhole's space-time geometry as compared with the "parent" universe) whose matter-energy content is determined and provided by the massive amount of matter-energy that is already present within and immediately surrounding the blackhole at the moment it is formed, and that everything the blackhole consumes in its "lifetime" continues to add to the total matter-energy content of the child universe, which is a likely explanation for the impetus (driving force) behind the accelerating cosmological expansion that cosmologists observe in our own universe and which physicists currently can only attribute to some mysterious anti-gravity force they have dubbed "dark energy." Since the blackhole / child universe is completely self-contained within the blackhole's infinitely curved space-time, the child universe is completely cut-off from the parent universe and any internal observer would be unable to directly observe that there is more to "existence" than just their own universe, and certainly unaware that their perception of the unidirectional flow of time is reversed as compared to their parent universe and their own child universes forming within their own.


//Quantum Neurology//
This is perfect for understanding how our perception of time and quantum computing power is derived.

"Cognitive System Level 1" (S1) Individual Neuronal Quantum Computing:
is the base layer of information processing in which individual neurons use the biological structure that's within each of their nuclei which permits basic quantum processing of incoming signals from other, physically connected neurons that results in useful/meaningful outgoing patterned signals to other neurons to which they are connected.

"Cognitive System Level 2" (S2) Subconscious Processing:
involves the subconscious processing by clusters of neurons (many of which have a particular type of information processing that is their specialty) in the brain that inherently maximize their collective processing power through the utilization of "parallel (entangled) quantum computing" with other neuronal clusters in order to determine the most relevant, therefore most useful information results to pass on to S3, which is selective in what incoming S2 information to pay attention to and consciously analyze, due to S3's inherently limited conscious capacity.

"Cognitive System Level 3" (S3) Conscious Awareness:
is the conscious, serial (temporally non-parallel), "active" thinking that serves to evaluate 'relevant' information passed to it by S2 sources, and initiates requests to S2 clusters to conduct additional, followup subconscious analyses.


//A Quantum Field Proposal//
There is a quantum "aether" (the Higg's Field?) through which information/matter-energy propagate, within which there is a constant distortion of the quantum probability fields/waveforms (QPFs) of individual particles, and consequently, that of the aggregate QPF fabric (the ether, which is actually just the overlapping, interacting QPF's of all matter-energy).

Relative velocity can be expressed as an elongation of the QPF relative to all the other QPFs, with the particle's median line of symmetry of its elongation coinciding with / being its velocity vector.

The inertial force experienced during acceleration (positive or negative) would therefore be the effect experienced by the changing geometry of a particle's QPF relative to all other QPFs.  Our classical physics view of inertia would therefore, in fact, be describing the property of QPFs to want to maintain their current geometry (as opposed to Newton's ideas of "at rest" and "in motion," which are clearly arbitrary notions given the relativistic nature of the universe.  In other words, the underlying nature of relative inertial frames of reference and the transference of information/matter-energy between particle-waves (certainly the ones that have "mass") is the aggregate influences of all particles' QPFs on one another.  "Friction" can perhaps by seen as being the result of the QPFs of the various particles involved becoming partially entwined geometrically, causing inter-particle resistances to changes in the individual particles' momentums.

The reason matter can never achieve absolute zero is because that would result in an infinitesimal, 1-dimensional QPF and the particle would then cease to have a past or future, which would require suspending the law of causality and the law of conservation of information.  This is because changing the energy level of a system of particle, or altering the "temperature" if you prefer, has the effect of expanding and shrinking the QPF for each particle in the system.

Perhaps, some of the odd effects of Special Relativity, such as relativistic compression of space-time dependent on relative velocity, as well the exponentially increasing energy demand required to maintain a constant acceleration as one approaches the speed of light, can be better comprehended as an increasingly elongated quantum probability field that is approaching a maximum geometrical limit.

The quantum probability field (QPF) of a particle-wave does not "collapse" into a specific state, location, and/or velocity upon observation, but continues to exist as a probability field/wave during and after observation, but beyond our ability to perceive from our particular frame of reference at the moment of observation.  That of course means that conscious beings are only experiencing one infinitesimal "slice" of the QPF "halo." There is amble support in the physics community for this interpretation of conscious perception of a universe that is, at all times from our individual perspective, fully and specifically defined (reduced to) one particular "state."  This perception cannot be used a premise in arguing that there are not an infinite number of states behind our consciousness' "field-of-view."

In the two-slit experiment--as classically setup, with one photon at a time and the placement of a photon detector before the placard with the two slits--the photons start to behave like "particles" over time (instead as "waves" over time) if and when a chain of causally-defined events (or alternatively, "space-time cross-section") link a conscious perception with the photon's existence. Everything on the future side of that moment/point of observation is perceived as 'defined' (as limited by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle) only for each particular conscious observer. In other words, the truth is that matter-energy, space-time, and "forces" are simply the consciously perceived aspects of the aggregate QPF waveform rippling, flowing, and distorting over time, and a consciousness is both the creator of the future it will experience, over time, and the conscious observer's "present" is uniquely defined by the observer's past "observations," over time. Your "now" is the conscious perception of only an infinitesimal cross-section of a timeless, infinitely complex waveform.