Extreme Biology – Life at All Scales and Energies
A variety of fixations plaguing the astrobiology community concerning the pre-standards for lifestyles is retarding the improvement of biology and the look for new life within the universe. These fixations paintings as smokescreens to obscure the myriads of different varieties of lifestyles forms that can be thriving even in our Solar System. Astrobiologists, specifically at NASA, seem to have a dogmatic fixation on analyzing existence best on the biochemical stage, a pre-career with water as a substrate for lifestyles, adamant on best studying carbon-based lifestyles forms, limited to a completely slim temperature variety and scale; and no longer even noticing that every one the life bureaucracy that they’ve imagined in their wildest fashions are most effective based totally on particles in the (physicists’) Standard Model.
Physics influences biology in a more essential way than even chemistry or biochemistry. New traits in physics should open up regions to recall greater extreme lifestyles forms. If we find darkish rely and supersymmetric particles – could biologists then begin considering darkish count number and supersymmetric lifestyles paperwork? Should we be speakme approximately “quantum biology”? When physicists speak of parallel universes, might biologists don’t forget symbiosis between life paperwork in parallel universes? Is Darwin’s tree of life whole? Where are its roots?
Bacteria can be no large than 10 microns; viruses no larger than one hundred nanometers; molecules about 1 nanometer and atoms about zero.1 nanometer. Does scale impose a barrier to life or even focus? If viruses are considered existence bureaucracy (as some leading astrobiologists argue) then they constitute “nano-existence”.
Consciousness may also even exist on the quantum scale. “In a few ordinary manner an electron or a photon [or any other elementary particle] appears to ‘realize’ approximately changes inside the environment and appears to reply hence,” says physicist Danah Zohar. A group at the Weizmann Institute in Israel has carried out a version of the famous “double-slit” test. They used electrons, rather than photons, and observed how the ensuing interference pattern (which shows wave-like houses of the particle) dissipated the longer you think the electrons undergo the slits. As a wave the electron passes via each slits concurrently but if, according to E Buks, it “senses” that it is being watched, the electron (as a particle) goes via only one direction, diminishing the interference pattern. Elementary particles (along with photons and electrons) seem to own a positive diploma of “intelligence” and awareness of the environment. Renowned plasma and particle physicist, David Bohm, says “In a few sense a rudimentary mind-like best is present even at the extent of particle physics. As we visit subtler stages this thoughts-like nice becomes more potent and extra evolved.”
In a new area known as “quantum metaphysics”, Jay Alfred has proposed that focus is as essential a property to standard particles as residences that make it “remember” or a “physical force” (as an instance, mass, spin and rate) (see Conscious Particles, Fields and Waves, 2007). And just as mass, spin and charge fluctuate from one particle to some other; it’s miles probable that exceptional particles have exclusive stages of consciousness. He has argued (see Jay Alfred, Our Invisible Bodies, 2006) that focus can take place depending at the diploma of quantum coherence and the intrinsic properties of the unmarried particle. (This can be noted as the “Quantum Coherence Theory of Consciousness”.)
In analyzing particle awareness we must no longer get distracted through their scale. In truth, (underneath quantum field theory) debris are excitations in a area that may be infinitely large. Every particle has a corresponding area. If a particle is taken into consideration a “unicellular existence shape” then a field of debris can be taken into consideration a “multicelluar life shape” – besides that those “cells” pass inside and outside of life within the discipline. This obviously begs the question – Is the biochemical cellular the smallest unit of lifestyles? If not, then a biological revolution, extra vital than the Corpernican revolution in phrases of its impact on society, is around the corner.
Life in any respect scales are in all likelihood – along with at the planetary, stellar and galactic scales; or even the universe and multiverse. The Gaia hypothesis has been proposed with the aid of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. Jay Alfred has proposed existence at cosmic and international scales through using the “plasma metaphysics” version which believes that an intensive net of currents in area and on Earth exists which is each anatomically and physiologically just like a neural network inside the human mind. (See Are We Living in a Gigantic Brain? 2007) This internet of currents in area not most effective looks as if a neural community, it features like one. We must now not be amazed to see existence being engineered using an electromagnetic substrate. A biochemcial cellular’s membrane is now idea to characteristic like a semi-conductor.
Perhaps a thought test can be enlightening. Imagine yourself as a cellular within your mind carefully staring at your environment with a nano-telescope. Would you keep in mind your mind as being capable of assist focus? What you will see are neural cells alternately firing and resting; chemical compounds dashing to synapses and the zapping of nasty electric currents – genuinely not a very “liveable region” for lifestyles or recognition to exist – from your microscopic factor of view. But we recognize better.