Look up the phenomenon of "cymatics". My personal theory is spontaneous organization of cells is possible due to the frequencies created by hydrothermal vents and that this phenomenon might have been a major driver in abiogenesis.
If you have ever seen where they put sand on a vibrating metal plate, and it creates symmetrical patterns, that's what I'm referring to.
Wow! That's definitely me, I forgot I made that post! I was actually studying biology in college at the time. It's a layman theory, I am not a biologist, but wish a real scientist could expound on the idea.
We previously knew about life in the hydrothermal vents. That was indeed the basis for the planned Europa exploration. but this is about life underneath the vents, and if I understand correctly, the way that life travels through cracks in the crust.
>Here, on the East Pacific Rise, an underwater robot was able to turn over sections of volcanic crust to reveal a new-to-science ecosystem teeming with worms, snails, and chemosynthetic bacteria that are seemingly thriving despite living in 25°C (75°F) water.
I don't understand, the temp under the sand is 25C/75F? Or is that a typo?
Got this from the "better source" link. So its 75F in a cave under the vent I guess
>Using an underwater robot, the science team overturned chunks of volcanic crust, discovering cave systems teeming with worms, snails, and chemosynthetic bacteria living in 75 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius) water.
I still dont see why this would be a surprising find in any way. That teperature seems very pleasant and conductive for life. Maybe the extend of the ecosystem is what is shocking? Why point out a relatively normal temperature then though?
Finding life in those conditions isn't as surprising as finding those conditions in the first place, together with a reproductive cycle that seemingly involves traveling through vent fluids?
> That teperature seems very pleasant and conductive for life.
The article is somewhat confusing but I think the surprising thing is that the ecosystem includes species that are known to be extremophiles that are part of vent ecosystems that have very different conditions than the newly-discovered below-the-vents ecosystems, and which it was previously unknown how they arrived at new vents, almost immediately when the vents form.
My fave theory for the origin of life is that the porous spaces in the material around the vents were full of pockets which functioned as different cells in which sets of molecules would interact. Groups of molecules that cooperated to form a successful self-replicating metabolism that excluded freeloaders would then colonise neighbouring pockets. But free loader molecules that could infiltrate a metabolism and contribute nothing, but use it only for their own self-replication would also thrive. according to this theory the evolution of metabolism precedes the development of the cell membrane, the cell membrane might have begun as incomplete barrier to reduce loss and entry to neighbouring pockets and evolved over time to become a complete barrier that eventually removed the dependency on a vent-rock-pocket.
What I love about this theory is that it sets up the contest between co-operation (cells) and infiltration (viruses) as strategies for life right from the get go.
I think it was Alan Watts who described what earth might look like to an observer with a different perspective. “Look at that; this planet is peopling”. His point being that we are all emerging phenomena intrinsically linked to the unfolding processes of earth and the cosmos more broadly, and that our existence is a manifestation of the universe unfolding. For whatever progress science makes, there’s this underlying primordial quality that often gets lost in the academic conceptual descriptions and labels assigned to this phenomena.
I think it’s fair to say earth is alive with a completely straight face, and it’s probably even important for more people to start seeing it this way.
I love this perspective but think it needs to be taken all the way. Are you comfortable saying corporations are alive? Stars? The universe? Once that floodgate of 'aliveness' is open, I don't see that it stops flowing, up and down. And it's and even smaller step to 'everything is conscious'...
Indeed, and Alan Watts’ further point was that we come out of this world, not into it.
In modern western societies we learn that we born into this world, and that our mind, body and soul are seperate entities.
Whereas other cultures and philosophies consider that we are part of the world, that we are born out of it but still connected.
The speeches for Watts are really about the increasingly unhealthy abstraction from this planet that is shaping our thinking.
Ideas that we can and should live on Mars or grow and eat artificial meat are just bonkers really. I’m all for science and advancement, but being restoring our connection to this planet is the answer. :-)
Broadly, it was a half baked thought that our Western culture heavily promotes ideas that are anti-Earth in a way.
Ideas for instance where Elon Musk is talking about saving humanity by getting to Mars, or creating artificial meat as a solution to our food crises.
These ideas suggest that the solution is to engineer our way out of a problem of our own making. The problem rhetoric being that Earth cannot support us.
This runs counter to the thinking that we are bound to this Earth because we are part of it. We are one and the same. So we should respect it and work with it.
Watts talks about seeing the Californian hills in the 60s, being carved up and houses being wedged in to the landscape in an artificial way. Where no consideration is given to working with the land, instead we try to dominate and shape it.
Like I say, it's a half baked idea that I'm not really expressing very well I don't think! :-)
I'd love others to straighten me out, or put me on the right path! :-)
I did laugh a while back when in one of Watts' talks he mentioned Plastics being the solution to Deforestation and Paper Wastage...
Engineering a solution to deforestation using plastics didn't work out so well for us.
Fast forward 50 years and it turns out that Humans just began using more of everything!
Like building roads to reduce traffic and you end up just promoting more car usage! :-)
This reminds me of this quote from Jill Tarter of SETI:
“Might it be the discovery of a distant civilization and our common cosmic origins that finally drives home the message of the bond among all humans? Whether we’re born in San Francisco or Sudan or close to the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy, we are the products of a billion-year lineage of wandering stardust. We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.”
"It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact, but in some universes men spend ages looking for other intelligences in the sky without once looking under their feet. That is because they've got the time-span all wrong. From stone's point of view the universe is hardly created and mountain ranges are bouncing up and down like organ-stops while continents zip backward and forward in general high spirits, crashing into each other from the sheer joy of momentum and getting their rocks off. It is going to be quite some time before stone notices its disfiguring little skin disease and starts to scratch, which is just as well."
Maybe not exactly what you’re looking for, but the Gaia hypothesis is the theory that the inorganic and organic parts of the Earth influence each other such that you might describe the convoluted system as “alive.”
If you haven't already read it, then I can highly recommend Nick Lane's 'Transformer - The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death', which goes into deep detail on this hypothesis.
He's touched on this in a couple of his earlier books, I think The Vital Question and one other, but in general all his works are relatively easy to read, and worth the effort.
Haven't read "Transfomer..", but I did read "the vital question" earlier this year. I thought it was a good book and it does indeed touch on this, plus it was relatively easy to read for someone without too much context like me.
Nick Lane's Power Sex & Suicide, and The Vital Question are excellent and relatively easy for anyone.
Transformer is much more difficult and dense.
There are also some excellent talks in yt.
Thanks for the reference, I didn't know he had a more thorough book on this. I remember reading "Life Ascending" and being amazed at the descriptions of the hydrothermal vents.
> But free loader molecules that could infiltrate a metabolism and contribute nothing, but use it only for their own self-replication would also thrive.
Could you please explain the "mechanical" distinction between molecules that contribute to self-replication and molecules that contribute nothing during replication?
somewhere on the internet are some videos in which an italian scientist describes what he means by a system. I think that's probably enough to google.
So if you're willing to accept that sometimes we are able to recognise a phenomenon that fits our definition of a category, even though we are not capable of explicitly defining that category, then we could say that a cell fits out intuitive definition of a system, even though I think despite being employed as system achitect, I'm not sure I could tell you what a system is. I like the attempts at definitions of living systems that discuss phenomenon that enable the persistence of information that are robust against the entropy.
Anywhy on to my attempt at answering your question:
If we could identify a set of molecules in the pores of vent rock back in the early pre-biotic earth, each with a distinct catalytic function, that were the using energy available, perhaps as electric charge, perhaps chemical energy and interacting to replicate that same set of molecules in neighbouring pores, then we could look at the actions of each molecule, and determine how each molecule participates in the chemical processes that result in the replication of the whole set of molecules.
If a molecule is mutually dependent on on other molecules in the set for their mutual replication, I think we can call them a contributing part of the system.
If a molecule depends on the other molecules to be replicated, but the replication of no other molecule is improved from its presence in the set, then it is not a contributing part of the system, but a freeloader.
I think this sets up two maximal strategies:
A system is most efficient if it has no freeloaders.
Life on Earth is essentially pumping electric charges to create a potential and then discharging it to drive its processes. The outside of the cell is charged positively with hydrogen ions, the inside is negative. The membrane is an insulator. The chemistry of the vents on early Earth where life emerged acted like a battery and had an electric gradient on which the life fed. A membrane has competitive advantages like storing more charge for immediate disposal than what is naturally available, ability to charge to a higher potential difference than what is naturally available and drive processes that would not be possible without it, and crucially an ability to survive outside of the vent.
Well, "must" is a bit absolutist, but if the assertion is that life COULD live there, then sure!
The question then is: did it form there independently from life on earth, or does it have a common ancestor? If the former, then we can assert that the universe has to be teeming with life; then the Fermi paradox kicks in. If the latter, then we really have to think about things; did life form on earth and somehow find its way to Europa? Or did it come from somewhere else?
It's interesting to think about. I hope they will launch a permanent orbiter and / or a lander to Europa soon. Although that comes with its own dangers of contamination.
Given the assertion that "More Than Half of Earth's Species Live Underground" [0] it makes sense that some significant amount of life exists below the seabed.
Fun story for the HN crowd: The research vessel Falkor (too), named after the luckdragon from the Neverending Story, was paid for by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, ex-Google CEO.
Lots of philanthropic funding in marine research vessels: another deep sea research vessel, DSSV Pressure Drop, was sold to Inkfish, which is owned by Gabe Newell of Valve/Steam-fame.
It would seem that life covers every inch of this planet in some capacity. The more we look, the more there is. Life under the ocean, life inside rocks, life floating around in the air, life just persists everywhere. It’s gotta be elsewhere too, right?
59 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadIf you have ever seen where they put sand on a vibrating metal plate, and it creates symmetrical patterns, that's what I'm referring to.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/p504b/cymatics_a...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWLtTP07FCw
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper
I don't understand, the temp under the sand is 25C/75F? Or is that a typo?
>Using an underwater robot, the science team overturned chunks of volcanic crust, discovering cave systems teeming with worms, snails, and chemosynthetic bacteria living in 75 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius) water.
The article is somewhat confusing but I think the surprising thing is that the ecosystem includes species that are known to be extremophiles that are part of vent ecosystems that have very different conditions than the newly-discovered below-the-vents ecosystems, and which it was previously unknown how they arrived at new vents, almost immediately when the vents form.
"Is a rock that gets stuck in your shoe just trying to travel?"
Does this theory have a name or a place I can ready more about it?
I think it’s fair to say earth is alive with a completely straight face, and it’s probably even important for more people to start seeing it this way.
In modern western societies we learn that we born into this world, and that our mind, body and soul are seperate entities.
Whereas other cultures and philosophies consider that we are part of the world, that we are born out of it but still connected.
The speeches for Watts are really about the increasingly unhealthy abstraction from this planet that is shaping our thinking.
Ideas that we can and should live on Mars or grow and eat artificial meat are just bonkers really. I’m all for science and advancement, but being restoring our connection to this planet is the answer. :-)
…live on Mars or grow and eat artificial meat…
Not sure what your train of thought was there.
I was typing on my phone and running out of time.
Broadly, it was a half baked thought that our Western culture heavily promotes ideas that are anti-Earth in a way.
Ideas for instance where Elon Musk is talking about saving humanity by getting to Mars, or creating artificial meat as a solution to our food crises.
These ideas suggest that the solution is to engineer our way out of a problem of our own making. The problem rhetoric being that Earth cannot support us.
This runs counter to the thinking that we are bound to this Earth because we are part of it. We are one and the same. So we should respect it and work with it.
Watts talks about seeing the Californian hills in the 60s, being carved up and houses being wedged in to the landscape in an artificial way. Where no consideration is given to working with the land, instead we try to dominate and shape it.
Like I say, it's a half baked idea that I'm not really expressing very well I don't think! :-)
I'd love others to straighten me out, or put me on the right path! :-)
I did laugh a while back when in one of Watts' talks he mentioned Plastics being the solution to Deforestation and Paper Wastage...
Engineering a solution to deforestation using plastics didn't work out so well for us.
Fast forward 50 years and it turns out that Humans just began using more of everything!
Like building roads to reduce traffic and you end up just promoting more car usage! :-)
They’re highly entertaining, and also deeply thought provoking. I know they helped shift how I see myself relative to the world quite a bit.
> Whereas other cultures and philosophies consider that we are part of the world, that we are born out of it but still connected.
> The speeches for Watts are really about the increasingly unhealthy abstraction from this planet that is shaping our thinking.
What makes you call one of those abstractions unhealthy, and the other (presumably) healthy?
IOW, why do you feel one is more valid than the other? To me, they are either both equally valid or equally invalid.
Just a pale blue dot, a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
“Might it be the discovery of a distant civilization and our common cosmic origins that finally drives home the message of the bond among all humans? Whether we’re born in San Francisco or Sudan or close to the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy, we are the products of a billion-year lineage of wandering stardust. We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.”
source: https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_tarter_join_the_seti_search (@ 3:02)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylozoism
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
-- Terry Pratchett, "Equal Rites"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
He's touched on this in a couple of his earlier books, I think The Vital Question and one other, but in general all his works are relatively easy to read, and worth the effort.
> But free loader molecules that could infiltrate a metabolism and contribute nothing, but use it only for their own self-replication would also thrive.
Could you please explain the "mechanical" distinction between molecules that contribute to self-replication and molecules that contribute nothing during replication?
What does it mean to contribute?
Anywhy on to my attempt at answering your question:
If we could identify a set of molecules in the pores of vent rock back in the early pre-biotic earth, each with a distinct catalytic function, that were the using energy available, perhaps as electric charge, perhaps chemical energy and interacting to replicate that same set of molecules in neighbouring pores, then we could look at the actions of each molecule, and determine how each molecule participates in the chemical processes that result in the replication of the whole set of molecules. If a molecule is mutually dependent on on other molecules in the set for their mutual replication, I think we can call them a contributing part of the system. If a molecule depends on the other molecules to be replicated, but the replication of no other molecule is improved from its presence in the set, then it is not a contributing part of the system, but a freeloader.
I think this sets up two maximal strategies:
A system is most efficient if it has no freeloaders.
A molecule is most efficient if it can freeload.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardigrade
The question then is: did it form there independently from life on earth, or does it have a common ancestor? If the former, then we can assert that the universe has to be teeming with life; then the Fermi paradox kicks in. If the latter, then we really have to think about things; did life form on earth and somehow find its way to Europa? Or did it come from somewhere else?
It's interesting to think about. I hope they will launch a permanent orbiter and / or a lander to Europa soon. Although that comes with its own dangers of contamination.
0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37047858
It is still entirely possible that there is something (or some things) unique about Earth that are exceedingly rare in the Universe as a whole