# Snow Algae found in ice spires means



## Serendipity (Jul 10, 2019)

There could possibly be alien life on... Pluto.... Snow algae found in ‘ice spires’ could suggest there is alien life on Pluto


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 10, 2019)

Life on Earth is enormously tenacious and adaptable, once it is established. But that does not mean life must be able to originate in extreme conditions. Life is amazing at adapting to almost anything, given the chance. But first life has to originate. And that is the issue?


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 11, 2019)

The conditions are extreme only through the eyes of human beings which means absolutely nothing. Extreme condition life can be anywhere. We only speculate that the type of life on Earth started under "warmer" rather than colder conditions, but doesn't mean that is the only way life can start.. Probably the only way to find out if life is fairly well scattered around by whatever means possible we will have to send people to the Moon and Mars to dig into the dirt, look under rocks, do a real search. The rovers are nice but they are missing far more than they are detecting. I wouldn't be surprised if we had to go down a couple of meters or more to find something. If something found on the surface was not bothered by water or heat it would probably be very hard to kill and might be better off left where it was found.


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## Vertigo (Jul 11, 2019)

As @RJM Corbet says there is a huge difference between existing life adapting to extreme conditions and life originating in those conditions.


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 11, 2019)

Originating and adapting are two very different things but there is a theory floating around that some of the life on planets could be seeded from off planet sources. Any thing that could go through space probably is very well adapted to a wide variety of conditions. I don't believe Earth is the gold standard for representing the variety of life in this universe. That is way too dependent on the view afforded to people based only on personal experience. 

There is a crazy planet wandering around 20 million light years from here that has no sun, maybe a few moons or even other planets orbiting it, and a very strong magnetic field. It is called a brown dwarf but that only gives it's mass but not exactly what is made of. The terms failed stars, brown dwarfs and rogue planets are used interchangeably which makes one wonder what they are made of, especially since they are supposedly like a Jupiter styled gas planet and we have several different gas giants in our solar system. 

The rogue planets could be truly wandering or traveling in extremely huge orbits. The age of most of them is unknown but this particular one is only 200 million years old which is much younger than expected, if is a failed star. If you look up the various articles on rogue planets it can be seen their numbers run from rare to everyday events. With all the confusion about what happens when a star fails to form but still forms something from 12 to 80 times the mass of Jupiter I would say that the formation of life is right in there embedded in the same shroud of confusion. We are only talking about carbon based life which can't be the only kind. We are also only talking about life based on matter, What if there is life based solely on energy? 

Some people say that the only thing "alive" in our bodies is the energy that courses through it and once that leaves the body it's just a pile of junk. That opens up the door for any kind of body in any kind of environment. At very cold, very hot, or intense pressure of any kind, energy has some very strange looking properties, most of which we have no idea how it "works." We don't have a good idea of exactly how many dimensions we are living in. Much of what we know is based on what we can personally experience or observe and that is a very small fraction of this universe.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 11, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> Much of what we know is based on what we can personally experience or observe and that is a very small fraction of this universe.


Yes. We have go by what our five natural human senses and what the telescopes and other extensions of our senses can determine of 'nature'. There is a difference between (correctly) insisting that because 'nature' is all we can observe -- that therefore nothing beyond nature can exist?


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## Vertigo (Jul 12, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> We are only talking about carbon based life which can't be the only kind.


Why can't it? I never understand the why so many people insist other forms of life _must_ exist. The is no _must_ about it. They _may_ exist, though I think it highly unlikely; silicon is one of the other bases for life that many people propose and yet silicon is the most abundant element on this planet and, guess what, there's no silicon life on this planet. The minority carbon element is the base of all life here. I'm not saying there cannot be other forms of life out there just that, based on _all _the evidence we have, it is looking less and less likely.


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 12, 2019)

I would say based on how everything we are discovering is disrupting the old ideas of how the universe is put together the less likely the old ideas are the only game in town.


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## Vertigo (Jul 12, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> I would say based on how everything we are discovering is disrupting the old ideas of how the universe is put together the less likely the old ideas are the only game in town.


But you still haven't said why carbon based life _can't _be the only kind. I can accept that you think it _likely _it's _not _the only kind whilst I think it's _likely _it _is _the only kind. But if you are going to say it _cannot _be the only kind then you must have some evidence to support that. Just because we are always discovering new things about how the universe works it doesn't automatically follow that we will eventually discover non carbon based life. It doesn't even make it more likely really.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 12, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> What if there is life based solely on energy?


This is the one I like.


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## Vertigo (Jul 12, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> This is the one I like.


Now I think this is even less likely than non carbon based life. At least for it to be 'natural.' It's conceivable that some fantastically advanced technology might be able to do something like this but for it to occur 'naturally' you would have to come up with a mechanism whereby energy naturally starts to organise itself and then figure out a mechanism by which that organisation can reproduce itself, all by small incremental advances in that organisation. We can and have figured out how this could happen with carbon based life. But pure energy? I doubt it, pure energy simply does not organise itself. Pure energy is not really a 'thing' it's a potential.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 12, 2019)

Ok, well look, I am surprised at how everything _has_ managed to organise itself. It is all energy? A photon is not a _thing; _it is pure energy? An atom is a state of energy organised at various states and levels, etc? It contains no solid material.

To me, the whole organisation of energy from the big bang onwards appears to be anti-entropic? Energy naturally tends towards the lowest level? Death, not life is the natural state? Life is energy organised not just to avoid entropy, but to reverse entropy. Life 'grows'. At least while it is growing. Ok, it's all a mystery to me.

Google: 'does life violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics' and its throws up a lot of confusing and conflicting replies. Nothing that is easy to get a handle on. Just words really. But life _is_ anti-entropic, by any understanding?

There's no proper value that can be called_ energy_ either, really? I think that to define energy either as some sort of mathematical
potential or detritus is not really getting towards any proper sort of definition.

These are interesting questions, and I am looking forward to hearing from people who have reasonable knowledge of the science.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 12, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Life is energy organised not just to avoid entropy, but to reverse entropy. Life 'grows'. At least while it is growing. Ok, it's all a mystery to me.



Life on Earth is powered by energy from the sun. One key feature of ecology is tracking how energy and materials moves between species as part of the food web.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 12, 2019)

Brian G Turner said:


> Life on Earth is powered by energy from the sun. One key feature of ecology is tracking how energy and materials moves between species as part of the food web.


Ok. I understand. Thank you.


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 12, 2019)

There are colonies of chemotroph animals clustered around undersea hydrothermal vents where there is no sunlight, no photosynthesis. They get their energy from the 700 degree highly acidic water coming out of the vents that have large amounts of minerals and sulfides dissolved in them. There are many kinds of chemotrophs which live on the surface under normal conditions and do utilize products from photosynthesis. The ones by the undersea sulfur vents are probably completely free of any connections to photosynthesis or energy from the sun. This kind of life ranges from bacteria to small crustaceans. It is not know if the bacteria that starts the whole food cycle originated in the vent colonies or something that originally came from the surface. This type of life could exist on Mars, Venus, maybe even the Moon and Europa.

The chemotroph life is all carbon based and is built exactly like regular life, only the life providing energy reactions are different but it shows how the energy source is not connected to the sun. These life forms have been looked at as originators of life on Earth. The different kinds of bacteria can process methane, iron, nitrogen, all kinds of materials for energy in place of photosynthesis. There are many different strategies for harnessing energy on this planet, almost as if there were many different planets rotating on the same axis.

While I can't prove that is it possible that all life can't be based on carbon, I can use a reverse proof. Start with the archaeologists who say that if proof of a way of life, way of doing things, manipulation or use of materials can't be found in the dig site then the ancient people who lived at the dig site didn't have it. On one level it makes a lot sense, keeps everything straight, but I just don't like way it makes the facts are fit to then draw conclusions.

We had people walking around on the Moon several times and found no signs of life. We have machines crawling all over Mars and found no signs of life. Our powerful telescopes have found no true signs of life on any of the planets in the solar system. We have never found any radio signals that can be decisively labeled as made by alien civilizations. The only thing we got are UFO sightings which tip the scales way over to the life is out there side but never positively proves it. Maybe it's some kind kind of game space aliens play with Earth. The formerly empty space around us is filling up with more and more things within 20 million light years of Earth that we never knew existed, found by new sensing techniques, but still no signs of life.

Following the archaeologists lead, if we can't find any signs of life in outer space then there is no life out there. If Earth is the only planet that has life, then supposedly, human beans are the highest form of life in the universe. If there were just a couple of million of planets out there, that reasoning might be reasonable. Since there are millions of different kinds of planets and and an almost infinite number of planets out there, without any real proof I will say that there is also life out there. With so many possibilities I am willing to believe life has many different forms in this universe. It could be that the basic gene model is standard for most matter based life but that in no way proves that another element couldn't be the foundation of a genetic type structure.


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## Serendipity (Jul 12, 2019)

Huh? I put one link up to an interesting article and there's whole conversation!

I did once write a short story in which the background work was to devise how life could survive on Mars as the planet died. Whilst I'm not a biological / chemical expert, I found the results surprising and worrying. I think we underestimate how much life can cling on in very constrained terrain (or whatever you want to call extraterrestrial spaces). 

We don't fully know the history of Pluto, but if it had live earlier on in its existence, then that live could find a place to hide on the planet - which may be in its snow pinnacles - or somewhere else on the dwarf planet.


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## Vertigo (Jul 13, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> There are colonies of chemotroph animals clustered around undersea hydrothermal vents where there is no sunlight, no photosynthesis. They get their energy from the 700 degree highly acidic water coming out of the vents that have large amounts of minerals and sulfides dissolved in them. There are many kinds of chemotrophs which live on the surface under normal conditions and do utilize products from photosynthesis. The ones by the undersea sulfur vents are probably completely free of any connections to photosynthesis or energy from the sun. This kind of life ranges from bacteria to small crustaceans. It is not know if the bacteria that starts the whole food cycle originated in the vent colonies or something that originally came from the surface. This type of life could exist on Mars, Venus, maybe even the Moon and Europa.
> 
> The chemotroph life is all carbon based and is built exactly like regular life, only the life providing energy reactions are different but it shows how the energy source is not connected to the sun. These life forms have been looked at as originators of life on Earth. The different kinds of bacteria can process methane, iron, nitrogen, all kinds of materials for energy in place of photosynthesis. There are many different strategies for harnessing energy on this planet, almost as if there were many different planets rotating on the same axis.
> 
> ...


You are absolutely correct that hydrothermal vents are quite likely to be the origin of life on Earth. But there are a couple of other points. The highest temperature vents get up to is around 800F which is around 450C. However life doesn't actually exist in these temperatures:


> 'While these fluids are hot, they tend to cool very quickly as they mix with seawater,' explains Maggie. 'The vent might be very hot, but when you move away from it a little, you can have a temperature of 20°C or so, which is quite nice for lots of animals.'





> 'Most animals can't cope with anything over 40°C. Very close to the hot fluid, there are typically only microorganisms. These can survive in temperatures up to around 120°C,'


Those two quotes are taken from this rather good article from the National History Museum: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/survival-at-hydrothermal-vents.html
These organisms would probably struggle to survive on Mars and the Moon due to the lack of water, the gas giant moons are much more likely. It is possible life many have existed on Mars in the past but we have so far found no evidence. The search goes on however with new probes planned that will be capable of drilling down to moderately significant depths. It will of course be massively exciting if we do find evidence of life, either past or present in any of these places.

With regard to the rest of your post; archeologists (or at least those that I know) almost never make absolute negative judgements because it is almost impossible to prove a negative. They will generally say that it something is unlikely as they can find no evidence. To simply say that because there are so many planets it is inevitable there is non carbon based life out there is, I'm afraid, faith not science. Again I repeat that I do not deny the possibility but until I see evidence of any non carbon based life I will still maintain that the evidence we do have suggests it is unlikely.

The thing is, other mechanisms for life based on another chemicals typically require massively more energy for their reactions than carbon based organic reactions and none of them come anywhere near close to the extraordinary versatility of carbon based organic chemistry. Which certainly doesn't make it impossible but it does mean that any such mechanisms are going to be at a huge disadvantage in competition with carbon based life and is therefore only likely to occur in environments where carbon is rare. However as carbon is an extremely abundant element this is going to significantly reduce your count of places where this might happen.

No one can ever prove there are no other kinds of life or even that there is no other life. Again you can't prove a negative. However the longer we keep coming up with no other traces then the less likely it is. And I'm afraid UFO 'sightings' are not going to convince me or any scientist.


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 13, 2019)

Perhaps Earth is an example of the lowest common energy denominator in the game of life. Earth's temperature range that allows water and other substances to easily exist as liquids, solids, and gas probably makes a very easy gateway for starting up life compared to other planets. Any kind of mechanical motion like tides, winds, storms, or even the movement of frozen material might speed up the formation of life. If there is bacteria on Mars it is probably very tough, and lives a very sedate life. It could take years for bacteria to get enough energy to divide in two. It could also have genes that allow it to repair it's genetic structure due to radiation damage. I would suspect that bacteria like that might not be a big player in evolving into something else which would make for a very stable but hardly noticeable population.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 13, 2019)

Enceladus? Life is almost _bound_ to originate in total darkness in frigid water below 10 miles of ice? It HAS to, because there's liquid water there? Devise a spacecraft to go there and drill through the ice? Looking for black smokers. Where life is_ bound_ to originate. I hope they're not using my money. I would rather we do something to stop death of the Amazon, plastic clogging the arteries of our planet, etc.


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## StilLearning (Jul 13, 2019)

Life is more likely to originate in the dark, as solar UV breaks up organic molecules. There's no need to drill as material from the ocean appears to be transported to the surface. And the point is not so much to find life, but to discover where conditions we think are suitable for life and its origins exist, and if they have led to it's arising, or any significant distance towards that from simple organic chemistry. By comparing abiotic but life friendly environments to our own teeming planet we can test our theories of how life arises and evolves. I can provide peer reviewed scientific papers and policy documents to support the above points, if you'd like. Such fundamental science is the root of major new discoveries and solutions, although you can seldom tell in advance where they will lead, so I'll pay your share gladly mate. Are you in the uk? We contribute, per tax paying capita, about £12 a year to the whole of space exploration, including climate, weather, crop etc monitoring missions. I'll BACS you your share, just PM me an account you'd like it sent to.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 14, 2019)

I'm not anti science or space exploration and appreciate your explanation. You can donate £12 to some Amazon forest tree rescue organisation if you want to.


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## StilLearning (Jul 14, 2019)

Ok, I'll do that, and make it a regular donation. Sorry about if I came at that like a bull in a china shop, Facebook has left me short on patience with people. Well. People - who assume they're right on all things without having to actually learn about them - have left me short of patience with people, via Facebook.


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 14, 2019)

I think there are a lot of discoveries in space and other places where it is hard to see what is going that relate directly to what is happening on the Earth's surface everyday. The messing up the Earth zone that we occupy has been going on for 500 years. In the last 50 years the myth of sustainability has been torn to tatters. It's going to take a lot more than money to put things back on track. That means a lot of research that no one wants to pay for. At this point in time if we want sustainability we would have to return three quarters of what we take out each time and leave that three quarters alone for a hundred years. Kill 1 tree, plant 3 trees and leave them alone for a hundred years. Watch a tree die from bug bites, plant 3 more trees and leave them alone. Not going to happen. No one is saving the planet, the planet has seen far worse and is doing just fine. The extreme life forms that exist in the frozen methane hydrates or hydrothermal vents are probably what the second string junior varsity teams look like. There are plenty of life forms that don't like what we like just waiting for some freed up space for their turn at bat. The only thing that is dying on this planet is the zone we live in and the plants and animals that live in it with us. There are plenty of other life zones on this planet. We are trying to save our own way of living, not the planet's. There was plenty of life in the oceans before the hard shell and the internal skeleton life came along. Jellyfish do just fine in low oxygen environments. Insects probably have no use for us either.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 14, 2019)

StilLearning said:


> Ok, I'll do that, and make it a regular donation. Sorry about if I came at that like a bull in a china shop, Facebook has left me short on patience with people. Well. People - who assume they're right on all things without having to actually learn about them - have left me short of patience with people, via Facebook.


Facebook! 





Genuinely thank you for the update about Enceladus. I look forward to doing more research on the subject.



Robert Zwilling said:


> It's going to take a lot more than money to put things back on track. That means a lot of research that no one wants to pay for


Bingo!


Robert Zwilling said:


> No one is saving the planet,


'Just' saving the Amazon would do for now, imo.


Robert Zwilling said:


> the planet has seen far worse and is doing just fine.


Not really. There have always been lots of trees?

(post edited)


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 14, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Ok, well look, I am surprised at how everything _has_ managed to organise itself. It is all energy? A photon is not a _thing; _it is pure energy? An atom is a state of energy organised at various states and levels, etc? It contains no solid material.
> 
> To me, the whole organisation of energy from the big bang onwards appears to be anti-entropic? Energy naturally tends towards the lowest level? Death, not life is the natural state? Life is energy organised not just to avoid entropy, but to reverse entropy. Life 'grows'. At least while it is growing. Ok, it's all a mystery to me.
> 
> ...



Realy RJM! Do you want me to attempt an answer and discuss (I'm tempted, but I will probably write an essay)   

Seriously, your questions are fascinating; although some of them I can clear up, others require a more open-ended discussion!


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 14, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> Realy RJM! Do you want me to attempt an answer and discuss (I'm tempted, but I will probably write an essay)
> 
> Seriously, your questions are fascinating; although some of them I can clear up, others require a more open-ended discussion!


Thanks VB. Essay away! You write well enough to keep it understandable. Let's take it from there, lol


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 14, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Thanks VB. Essay away! You write well enough to keep it understandable. Let's take it from there, lol



 

Unfortunately I have to do a garage tidy this afternoon, but I will be mulling over everything, so that hopefully it will all splurge out quickly afterwards


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## hitmouse (Jul 14, 2019)

Robert Zwilling said:


> I would say based on how everything we are discovering is disrupting the old ideas of how the universe is put together the less likely the old ideas are the only game in town.


I think this statement lacks rigour, and the logic is dubious.
Science and knowledge mostly advance in stages. Generally, there is an appreciation of where there are gaps or uncertainties in our knowledge. There are some surprises, but complete revolutions are uncommon.


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## hitmouse (Jul 14, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> But life _is_ anti-entropic, by any understanding?



No it isn't. There is a lot of bollocks on the internet about this, sometimes based on some elementary misunderstanding of physics, but also frequently related to an apparently willful need to justify mystical/religious positions.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 14, 2019)

hitmouse said:


> There is a lot of bollocks on the internet about this, sometimes based on some elementary misunderstanding of physics,


So please take a moment to give me your understanding of the physics of the apparently anti-entropic need for anything to attach to anything else, instead of simply not bothering to go to all that trouble of forming atoms, etc? Why should _anything_ _originate_?  Why do the proton/electron charges exactly balance? Entropy has no desire towards cohesion. Entropy desires dissolution?

I'm quite anxious to be educated. Fire away.

@StilLearning






Thanks. I got a lot from this. Seems new mission will take 20yrs  to start sending results ... so ...


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## hitmouse (Jul 14, 2019)

OK.

Firstly, entropy does not _desire_ anything at all.  There is no such thing as anti-entropic _need. _Entropy and thermodynamics are simply mathematical descriptions of how energy behaves. Biological systems do not form atoms. They do form molecules.

The thing about entropy is that one has to thing in terms of the whole system, i.e. the Universe. The overall entropy of the universe is increasing. Expenditure of energy in any form contributes to this. Lifting a weight up on to a shelf, assembling a Lego Deathstar, or building an Opera House, all superficially appear anti-entropic because there is locally increased order, but the point is that the work put in to reach that state will always have increased the net entropy of the universe. Biological systems are fundamentally no different. Living organisms are complex assemblages of highly organised bio-molecules. A large amount of energy has to be expended to build _and maintain_ these systems (food, photosynthesis, respiration etc) and in fact a living organism is a pretty good entropy machine (products of respiration, body heat, excretion etc.) The instability of these systems is demonstrated by the fact that they start to degrade rapidly once the energy supply stops i.e. at death, and why death occurs if the basic fuel for respiration is interrupted.

Grateful if any of the physicists here wish to correct my simplifications. I am just a humble zoologist.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 14, 2019)

hitmouse said:


> Entropy and thermodynamics are simply mathematical descriptions of how energy behaves.


I know this. It's my whole point.

Let's start with sound. It exists. The note B on the western music scale is derived (inevitably) from picking a 'sound' and calling it 'middle C'. It all goes from there. So you take a unit (of pure energy) and call it a photon and everything works from there. Because it works. Therefore the proton and electron charge exactly balance, because that is the maths. That is the definition and the quantization. And it works because it works. It's there because it's there and it's true because it's true.

But, to continue the music metaphor: there are other ways and scales of music, that quantize sound differently -- not using middle C as 'centre'. So the whole 'quantization' of reality is not possibly the end-all. There are very big gaps and it's based on measurement of 'nature' to suit the natural understanding of reality of our limited five senses.


hitmouse said:


> Biological systems do not form atoms. They do form molecules.


But why did atoms choose to form?


hitmouse said:


> Living organisms are complex assemblages of highly organised bio-molecules.


Why did they just not bother to assemble?


hitmouse said:


> The overall entropy of the universe is increasing.


You throw a ball, it goes up then comes down. So?


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## hitmouse (Jul 14, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> I know this. It's my whole point.
> 
> Let's start with sound. It exists. The note B on the western music scale is derived (inevitably) from picking a 'sound' and calling it 'middle C'. It all goes from there. So you take a unit (of pure energy) and call it a photon and everything works from there. Because it works. Therefore the proton and electron charge exactly balance, because that is the maths. That is the definition and the quantization. And it works because it works. It's there because it's there and it's true because it's true.
> 
> But, to continue the music metaphor: there are other ways and scales of music, that quantize sound differently -- not using middle C as 'centre'. So the whole 'quantization' of reality is not possibly the end-all. There are very big gaps and it's based on measurement of 'nature' to suit the natural understanding of reality of our limited five senses.



There has been a lot of quite deep philosophical thought about the reality of perception (Is the taste of an apple more real than its shape? etc, etc.) and in particular, whether pure mathematics is fundamental or a function of human perception. I am not an authority on this, though it makes for some interesting reading.

Also look up the "Anthropic Principle" which may be relevant to your query.



RJM Corbet said:


> But why did atoms choose to form?


Atoms didn't choose anything. The fact of the matter is that after the big bang the universe rapidly became heterogeneous (according to current mainstream theory) and out of that emerged matter, suns, and a variety of atoms. Some Chronners know a lot more about astrophysics than me and may be willing to chip in here.



RJM Corbet said:


> Why did they just not bother to assemble?


Again, personal feeling and choice do not really apply to molecules. However, there are some natural situations where complex organic molecules will spontaneously start to form.



RJM Corbet said:


> You throw a ball, it goes up then comes down. So?


That is a good illustration of how you can put work into a system to increase its potential energy, which is roughly analogous to order. This is released when the ball comes down. The point is that energy has inevitably been lost during this process, which is never 100% efficient, in other words, the system does not exactly return to its starting state. Entropy has increased.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 14, 2019)

hitmouse said:


> Atoms didn't choose anything. The fact of the matter is that after the big bang the universe rapidly became heterogeneous (according to current mainstream theory) and out of that emerged matter, suns, and a variety of atoms.





hitmouse said:


> Again, personal feeling and choice do not really apply to molecules. However, there are some natural situations where complex organic molecules will spontaneously start to form.


Don't be silly. Of course I know molecules/atoms don't have personality choice. The point is: what reason does energy have to cohere, when it is easier and more logical for it not to do so? Why does the proton/electron charge balance so exactly, to make it all happen?


hitmouse said:


> That is a good illustration of how you can put work into a system to increase its potential energy, which is roughly analogous to order. This is released when the ball comes down. The point is that energy has inevitably been lost during this process, which is never 100% efficient, in other words, the system does not exactly return to its starting state.


But where's the extra energy sent it up, in the first place?


hitmouse said:


> Also look up the "Anthropic Principle" which may be relevant to your query.


It is because it is? Great scientific explanation, Prof ...


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## Venusian Broon (Jul 15, 2019)

Right-o, have time now. Let's get down to it. 



> Ok, well look, I am surprised at how everything _has_ managed to organise itself. It is all energy? A photon is not a _thing; _it is pure energy?



I'm not sure how metaphysical you want to get here. A photon is a thing. It's a quanta of Electromagnetic radiation. An elemental particle. It's our current understanding on what we think light is (or X- and Gamma rays, infrared and radio etc.) And it _has _an energy - it is _not_ energy. It's energy is related to the photon by its frequency. 

Of course it's a thing that is really just our model of reality, so we expect it to do X,Y when we do A,B to it etc. So we can interact with these things and observe them. But then I could say the same about a macroscopic object like a tiger or a pansy, if a photon isn't a thing then neither are those. 

What photons do tell us is that we are just not equipped to understand the deep underlying reality of our universe. They are both waves and particles. And when we look at other elementary particles, such as fermions, they too exhibit the same paradoxical position. We're just not equipped to understand the fundamental nature of the nano-universe. 




> An atom is a state of energy organised at various states and levels, etc? It contains no solid material.



No I disagree. An neutral atom consists of a nucleus with a positive charge, say +N, which has bound to it N electrons. Both of these objects have mass and an electrostatic (well electromagnetic really, given that the electron is reasonably free to move about) interaction. It is the wave-like nature of the electron (the nucleons are wavelike too, however they are bound in a very small and tight area by the strong nuclear force) and this EM interaction, given that positive and negative charges attract between both, that give rise to the electron 'wanting' to be bound in very specific and discrete orbits. or quantum states, near the nucleus. Now due to observation, we further believe Pauli's exclusion principle holds - that no two electrons can co-exist in the same quantum state. So if another electron comes along, it is forced to go into another quantum state or orbit. Hence, from these humble beginnings we can see, at least I hope you can see, that is these set of forces and principles that make something 'solid'. 

So an atom is a collection of particles and fields that, depending on the energetic conditions, will organise itself into various configurations. Again energy is a property of the system, like the photon above. It is a useful property for physicists because we can use it to calculate low-temperature ground states and a whole bunch of other things. 

But wait a minute, your saying 'What about the Energy mass equivalence. E = mass times c squared. Mass is just energy. Right?' 

No, not really. 

So, to give a specific example, when a Uranium 235 atom undergoes fission a lot can happen, but essentially the Uranium nucleus splits into two smaller daughter nuclei. It also emits somewhere between 2-4 neutrons...but including these, it can be seen that the mass of the resultant fission products is _less_ than the original 235 nucleus. So some mass has gone...but gone into producing photons. Photons that have an energy that equates to the energy of the missing mass that the above relativistic equation demands. We can therefore use these energetic photons in further interactions to 'tap into nuclear energy'. 





> To me, the whole organisation of energy from the big bang onwards appears to be anti-entropic? Energy naturally tends towards the lowest level? Death, not life is the natural state? Life is energy organised not just to avoid entropy, but to reverse entropy. Life 'grows'. At least while it is growing. Ok, it's all a mystery to me.



We should be clear on what we mean by entropy. It is a confusing topic, I admit. (I never really took to statistics  )

In brief it is a property of a thermodynamic system. It is essentially related to the number of possible configurations of a system. I don't think the term 'anti-entropic' really makes sense from that perspective (can their be a system of things that cannot have _any_ different configurations at all?). But, I think you are meaning something to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. 

So again let's be clear what that is: The entropy of an _isolated_ system never decreases. (My italics.) Such isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermodynamic equilibrium - the state with maximum entropy. 

_Non-isolated _systems can decrease entropy, provided that the other systems connected to this one increase their entropy by at least the same amount. So in the case of life, if it is decreasing entropy (I'll have to think about that, I'm not sure) it is doing so because it is relying on a big connected system that is increasing entropy (in our case the Sun...probably dramatically more.) 

Note that as far as we know the universe is not connected to anything else, so it would seem that makes it isolated, therefore in the broadest and most general case, we think universal entropy must always be increasing. And therefore all the various sub-systems of the universe will be chained to this.


--


I think there is mis-match when it comes to Entropy, generally because it is usually introduced to people using the thought experiment of mixing of two different gases in a specific volume. You know the drill:  start with a container with a sheet of wood splitting two different gases apart. You then remove the sheet and then both gases start to mix. As time goes on the gases just mix perfectly and we would be shocked to see, at some point down the line the original combination of gas A on one side and gas B on the other. Life _seems_ to be something akin to the original starting point coming around again. 

I don't think this analogy makes sense. Bear with me. 

You see the problem with the gas box analogy is that we assume that both gas molecules are like little atoms or balls that _don't interact_ with each other, other than bouncing off each other. In the real universe we have a bunch of laws we believe operate. So negative and positive charge attract, masses attract, different configurations of atoms will 'prefer' to be in certain configuration much more so than in other ways: Carbons atoms love to 'hold hands' with each other. Oxygen is highly reactive etc. The configuration space of something as complex as the universe has to take these laws into account. It's going to skew the possible set of configurations. 

Maybe an extremely simple example. Take two fair die. Numbered 1 to 6. In the configuration space of rolling the two die and adding the result, rolling a 2 or a 12 are most unlikely. But rolling a 7 is most likely. It is so because of the property of adding two independent numbers and the type of dice we have. 

We clearly have a similar situation, thermodynamic and entropy-wise, albeit it's much _much_ more complex here in our universe!

At our current time, we are very aware that carbon absolutely loves to form a _vast _number of structures at the sort of temperatures and conditions we observe, along with other elements. And it is this massive numbers of situations that organic compounds form (and then interact together with) that must be related to the emergence of life in the universe. To look at another possible candidate for making long chain molecules, Silicon, it _can_ do so, but only under very much more restrictive conditions. Carbon seems a better bet for increasing complexity. 

So, yes entropy is increasing, but the interaction of the particles has to be taken into account too.



> There's no proper value that can be called_ energy_ either, really? I think that to define energy either as some sort of mathematical
> potential or detritus is not really getting towards any proper sort of definition.



Nah!  Mathematical definition is a great way to define something. We can therefore actually test it. The problem is we tend to use the term in everyday life very loosely: 'I was a bit sluggish, but then a got a burst of energy.' Did you receive a holy sphere of white light...or do we mean that our actions quickened and we moved faster? (Oh, look _Kinetic _energy )

It doesn't help that energy, as a term, is used by woo-woo technicians to explain any old cobblers. Energy is a _property _of something. When a psychic is sitting on a seance and tells you 'I sense a dark "energy" nearby' really, what does that mean? I think they just mean they sense (or profess to sense) _something _somewhere. 

--

As for 'beings of energy'. I think you mentioned it earlier. I think I know what you mean. The sort of non-corporal thing like a ghost, angel or the beings in Stargate SG-1 that Daniel became for after series 6. Lots of glittery light and usually very wise. Yes perhaps they are really a thing - we've still got so much to learn about the cosmos (and perhaps the multiverse, I hope!!), but they are not really beings of 'energy'. Like I said above, energy is a property of other things. Perhaps such a being is a complex form of space-time and not made of fermions, but utilises these structures to move, think and interact but is still constrained by the conservation of energy and the laws of thermodynamics. 


Anyway, I'd argue that we are already 'beings of energy'. We convert it from one form to another to power ourselves and our struggles. It's just that we use a certain number of fermions in our bodies that act as a scaffold' to allow us to observe and interact with the universe. 

Right, too late now. 

Hope the above gives food for thought!


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## Robert Zwilling (Jul 15, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> It's just that we use a certain number of fermions in our bodies that act as a scaffold' to allow us to observe and interact with the universe.


I like that explanation. I would like to think that scaffolding is pretty extensive, possibly an internal road to far away places.



RJM Corbet said:


> Not really. There have always been lots of trees?


There were 6 trillion trees at one point, geologically not too long ago. Now there are 3 trillion trees and we are running short 10 million trees a year in the sustainability program. I think we are very short on trees. The trees are in the zone we occupy which is not doing too well. There are other zones with life in them, some of them will survive very well because we need them but they don't need us. The Earth has been completely covered with ice, once, and has been covered by vast volcanic activity multiple times, not sure if having no ice on it is a bad situation but getting there too fast can't be helpful. Plus all the big meteorite and comet strikes are not helpful. For our zone things don't look too good but for other life zones they are just waiting to expand any time an opening opens up. There is always more life waiting in line, it just doesn't look like us.



hitmouse said:


> I think this statement lacks rigour, and the logic is dubious.
> Science and knowledge mostly advance in stages. Generally, there is an appreciation of where there are gaps or uncertainties in our knowledge. There are some surprises, but complete revolutions are uncommon.



When someone spots something interesting happening on a nearby planet I like to hear about it and if it can be connected however tenuously to life here or in other places I'm going to listen. When I was a kid, there were these things called quasars, then came black holes, which seemed to be rare but eventually they seemed to be everywhere. Then massive black holes were figured to be in the center of every galaxy. Quasars turned out to be super giant black holes hiding inside a big ball of visible energy. Black holes went from an oddity to a possible part of the formation of every galaxy. The closest one is 3,000 light years away, which is way too close for me. Prehistoric people went from being simple cave dwellers to sophisticated people living complex lives. We went from thinking the planet could take anything we could dump on it without missing a beat to realizing we can rival the enormity of the emissions of the natural world, interfere with them and even change their impact, and none of it to our advantage. But with all this information we don't really seem to be getting anywhere. 

50 years ago people may not have known as much as we do now but they were able to get to Moon multiple times, build spacecraft that could be used multiple times, realized that the environment needed protection from people, and did it all without relying on super computers or everyone being connected by a handy dandy handheld computer. Perhaps the information is so plentiful, new and conflicting, even having opposing facts proven to be true, that any true revolutions have been snuffed out, only the shows being pushed by big money gets any notice. I often wonder what the world would have looked like if the computer industry hadn't been snuffed out by male chauvinism 180 years ago and instead had developed alongside the horse and the steam engine instead of rocket engines and plastic powered lifestyles.


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 15, 2019)

Venusian Broon said:


> I'm not sure how metaphysical you want to get here. A photon is a thing. It's a quanta of Electromagnetic radiation. An elemental particle. It's our current understanding on what we think light is (or X- and Gamma rays, infrared and radio etc.) And it _has _an energy - it is _not_ energy. It's energy is related to the photon by its frequency.
> 
> Of course it's a thing that is really just our model of reality, so we expect it to do X,Y when we do A,B to it etc. So we can interact with these things and observe them. But then I could say the same about a macroscopic object like a tiger or a pansy, if a photon isn't a thing then neither are those.
> 
> What photons do tell us is that we are just not equipped to understand the deep underlying reality of our universe. They are both waves and particles. And when we look at other elementary particles, such as fermions, they too exhibit the same paradoxical position. We're just not equipped to understand the fundamental nature of the nano-universe.


Thanks for the response. That's the thing though, isn't it: the photon is the starting point for the whole of the rest of the system and it IS eventually a mathematical convenience? It works and it proves itself. But it may not be the only way of understanding reality? So to get back to the music analogy: call the photon 'middle C' and everything else inevitably falls into the unique pattern of seven full notes and five half notes, repeating octaves up and down – from radio waves to x-rays, the standard model, so to speak?

Also, of course, the note 'C' is a point (particle) that is also a wave?

But there are other music systems that sound weird to the western ear, as does western music to them.


Venusian Broon said:


> What photons do tell us is that we are just not equipped to understand the deep underlying reality of our universe.


Refreshing candour from someone 'in the business'.


Venusian Broon said:


> No I disagree. An neutral atom consists of a nucleus with a positive charge, say +N, which has bound to it N electrons. Both of these objects have mass and an electrostatic (well electromagnetic really, given that the electron is reasonably free to move about) interaction. It is the wave-like nature of the electron (the nucleons are wavelike too, however they are bound in a very small and tight area by the strong nuclear force) and this EM interaction, given that positive and negative charges attract between both, that give rise to the electron 'wanting' to be bound in very specific and discrete orbits. or quantum states, near the nucleus. Now due to observation, we further believe Pauli's exclusion principle holds - that no two electrons can co-exist in the same quantum state. So if another electron comes along, it is forced to go into another quantum state or orbit. Hence, from these humble beginnings we can see, at least I hope you can see, that is these set of forces and principles that make something 'solid'.


Of course the +ve/-ve (yin/yang) balance between proton and electron is in a way a result of the quantization of the photon and that quantization also results in the Pauli principle and the strong nuclear force and so on? It all falls into place. But eventually it remains a convenient notation system for reality that we are able to employ and that works pretty well. It is something we can read: like the music notation for a Beethoven symphony. Does that make sense?

I shouldn't force the analogy too far, but there are also going to be other music systems that use completely different notations -- and a different (alien) quantization of sound, which are just as valid. So effectively the development of quantum mechanics is  really a 'northern' understanding that has in a way become the only game in town. There are the divisions between 'colleges', but the photon and the speed of light are central.


Venusian Broon said:


> Hence, from these humble beginnings we can see, at least I hope you can see, that is these set of forces and principles that make something 'solid'.


Yes. That is elementary.


Venusian Broon said:


> So, to give a specific example, when a Uranium 235 atom undergoes fission a lot can happen, but essentially the Uranium nucleus splits into two smaller daughter nuclei. It also emits somewhere between 2-4 neutrons...but including these, it can be seen that the mass of the resultant fission products is _less_ than the original 235 nucleus. So some mass has gone...but gone into producing photons. Photons that have an energy that equates to the energy of the missing mass that the above relativistic equation demands. We can therefore use these energetic photons in further interactions to 'tap into nuclear energy'.


Interesting. So are these photons the light radiation of, say an atomic bomb blast, in the form of gamma rays, etc?



Venusian Broon said:


> We should be clear on what we mean by entropy. It is a confusing topic, I admit. (I never really took to statistics  )
> 
> In brief it is a property of a thermodynamic system. It is essentially related to the number of possible configurations of a system. I don't think the term 'anti-entropic' really makes sense from that perspective (can their be a system of things that cannot have _any_ different configurations at all?). But, I think you are meaning something to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
> 
> ...


You, @Brian G Turner, @StilLearning and @hitmouse have helped educate me a bit here.


Venusian Broon said:


> Maybe an extremely simple example. Take two fair die. Numbered 1 to 6. In the configuration space of rolling the two die and adding the result, rolling a 2 or a 12 are most unlikely. But rolling a 7 is most likely. It is so because of the property of adding two independent numbers and the type of dice we have.
> 
> We clearly have a similar situation, thermodynamic and entropy-wise, albeit it's much _much_ more complex here in our universe!


Nice.


Venusian Broon said:


> Nah!  Mathematical definition is a great way to define something. We can therefore actually test it. The problem is we tend to use the term in everyday life very loosely: 'I was a bit sluggish, but then a got a burst of energy.' Did you receive a holy sphere of white light...or do we mean that our actions quickened and we moved faster? (Oh, look _Kinetic _energy )
> 
> It doesn't help that energy, as a term, is used by woo-woo technicians to explain any old cobblers. Energy is a _property _of something. When a psychic is sitting on a seance and tells you 'I sense a dark "energy" nearby' really, what does that mean? I think they just mean they sense (or profess to sense) _something _somewhere.
> 
> ...


I don't think the mathematical definition of energy can claim ultimate authority on the subject. I think energy is going to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, that isn't always woo.


Venusian Broon said:


> Hope the above gives food for thought!


Indeed, indeed, indeed -- as always VB. Thanks again.


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## Vertigo (Jul 15, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> I shouldn't force the analogy too far, but there are also going to be other music systems that use completely different notations -- and a different (alien) quantization of sound, which are just as valid. So effectively the development of quantum mechanics is really a 'northern' understanding that has in a way become the only game in town. There are the divisions between 'colleges', but the photon and the speed of light are central.


I think you are taking this analogy too far. Music is a subjective, qualitative thing, science is the opposite; it is objective and quantitative (as far as possible). With music 'systems' there is no right and wrong some like one some like the other. In science there should only really be three 'states'; right, wrong, don't yet know. So just because there are 'other music systems' does not mean there are other physics systems.


RJM Corbet said:


> I don't think the mathematical definition of energy can claim ultimate authority on the subject. I think energy is going to mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, that isn't always woo.


We are taking science here where there is only one correct definition of energy. Other philosophies might use the word for other things but that doesn't mean that science should. Energy is very well defined in science. I'm afraid if this discussion is going to go down the more spiritual side of things then I'll just drop out.

And thank you @Venusian Broon for your, as ever, illuminating science post!


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## RJM Corbet (Jul 15, 2019)

Vertigo said:


> We are taking science here where there is only one correct definition of energy. Other philosophies might use the word for other things but that doesn't mean that science should. Energy is very well defined in science.


Did I say science should change its definition? I said science goes as far into describing the mechanism of nature as what science can do, based on the quantization of the photon, etc. It does a wonderful job. But do you not even accept the possibility that 'energy' may be more than that?


Venusian Broon said:


> What photons do tell us is that we are just not equipped to understand the deep underlying reality of our universe.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 15, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> So to get back to the music analogy



You may find this book interesting: Introducing Quantum Theory: A Graphic Guide (Introducing...) eBook: J.P. McEvoy, Oscar Zarate: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Aside from being a simple introduction to quantum theory, you reminded me that it includes how thinking about music theory was considered in its development.


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## Vertigo (Jul 15, 2019)

RJM Corbet said:


> Did I say science should change its definition? I said science goes as far into describing the mechanism of nature as what science can do, based on the quantization of the photon, etc. It does a wonderful job. But do you not even accept the possibility that 'energy' may be more than that?


That is not what I said. What I said is the analogy is inappropriate; The assumption that because you can do different things in music that the same should be or even is likely to be true of energy. I am perfectly prepared to accept, in fact I am sure, we do not know everything about energy. but, as @Venusian Broon says, things aren't 'energy,' they _have _energy; particles have energy etc. and there's nothing that we have yet seen that suggests energy (a property of something) can organise itself independently of the things it is a property of.

At the same time I have been careful to say that I don't reject anything, just that nothing we have so far been able to observe (and by observe I mean in such a way that it can be documented and reproduced) about energy suggests it can behave in this way. And _therefore _I think it highly _unlikely _that there might be some form of life consisting of pure energy.

I am always ready to change my expectations based on new _evidence_. But until I see such evidence I will maintain my stance of its unlikeliness.


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## CTRandall (Jul 16, 2019)

I think this thread is an excellent example of the second law of thermodynamics at work.


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## thaddeus6th (Jul 17, 2019)

Late to this party, but Brian, that's not 100% correct. Whilst the vast majority of life is dependent on the sun, in the depths of the oceans life has evolved around underwater sulphurous vents, where no sunlight reaches. It is possible for life that isn't contingent on the sun (although a tiny minority on Earth).


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## Ursa major (Jul 10, 2020)

Sorry if this has been mentioned elsewhere (or covers old ground) -- I've just watched something I recorded last night -- but the BBC Horizon programme had an episode on Pluto (first broadcast at 21:00 on the 6th of July and which is on iPlayer** for another 29 days) and one of the (many) items covered was the existence and production of organic compounds on Pluto (a process driven by the sun, at least with regard to the compounds formed in Pluto's atmosphere).


** - Note: I am ignorant regarding the availability of the programme (and iPlayer in general) outside the UK.


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