What is life?

[Moontanman]

Chaos and complexity theory show that patterns tend to reiterate and persist (like fractals) at all levels of observation: “As Above; So Below.”

 

The study of these field patterns are the foundation of many sciences. Chaos, mathematics, and physics. They are well known, and have been applied to the study of systems biology.

 

According to your post these itinerating patterns are B.S. Have you never heard life referred to as an autopoetic system?

 

Just to say back up your claims are not enough here, what claims have I made that you think are mystical BS? Be specific.

 

Don't you know whow to simplify anything? nutronjohn is trying to ask questions about the basics of life. Not fractal patterns and autopoetic systems. Once you have the basics down then you can start to explore the more complex issues. All you are trying to do is confuse the situation with technobabble and mystery. I've read about the things you keep trying to push and they are not part of the basic or even mainstream thoughts on life or it's make up. One thing is for sure, you have an agenda, pushing this agenda is more important to you than any real truths or understanding.

[Thunderbird]

Don't you know whow to simplify anything? nutronjohn is trying to ask questions about the basics of life. Not fractal patterns and autopoetic systems. Once you have the basics down then you can start to explore the more complex issues.

I do not think you qualified to say what someone is able to understand or not understand. You may have a hard time with these veiws on systems, but that does not mean

nutronjon would not benifit by looking at the forest as a system, before delving into all the parts of the trees. Make sense?

 

 

All you are trying to do is confuse the situation with technobabble and mystery. I've read about the things you keep trying to push and they are not part of the basic or even mainstream thoughts on life or it's make up. One thing is for sure, you have an agenda, pushing this agenda is more important to you than any real truths or understanding.

 

 

There is a difference between having a view point and an agenda, You have a reductionist view point. I have a systems view point. you could have just left my view alone and let people decide for themselves what information is useful. What's the problem? What's your problem? This is the purpose of having these types of discussion.

 

I have a systems view of biology and it is very mainstream at the research level. If this does not suffice you should open your own thread on why systems veiw of biology is to complex.

 

 

Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold to Keynote Institute for Systems Biology´s 2008 Annual Symposium http://http://www.systemsbiology.org/

SEATTLE, WA – November 5, 2007 – The Institute for Systems Biology announces that Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and chairman of Microsoft Corporation and Nathan Myhrvold, l "", president and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, will serve as keynote speakers for the 7th Annual Institute for Systems Biology International Symposium.

The Symposium, which is co-hosted by ISB and the University of Washington College of Engineering, will take place April 20-21 of 2008 and will focus on Systems Biology and Engineering. Leading researchers in the fields of synthetic biology, nanotechnology, biological imagining, single-cell and single-molecule experimentation, and more will attend and present at the Symposium.

"UW College of Engineering Dean Matthew O´Donnell and I are absolutely thrilled to have Bill and Nathan serve as our keynote speakers," said Lee Hood, MD, PhD, president and co-founder of the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB). "Bill is making seminal contributions to global health through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and his leadership in engineering and technology is self-evident. Nathan has spent his entire l "" at the leading edge of science and technology developing novel solutions to the most challenging problems."

"Their credentials as global leaders and visionaries will provide Symposium attendees with a rare opportunity to hear very influential views regarding the convergence of systems biology and technology innovation, and the impact of that convergence on healthcare throughout the world," Hood said.

Systems biology is the study of an organism, viewed as an integrated and interacting network of genes, proteins and biochemical reactions which give rise to life. Instead of analyzing individual components or aspects of the organism, such as sugar metabolism or a cell nucleus, systems biologists focus on all the components and the interactions among them, all as part of one system. These interactions are ultimately responsible for an organism´s form and functions. For example, the immune system is not the result of a single mechanism or gene. Rather the interactions of numerous genes, proteins, mechanisms and the organism´s external environment, produce immune responses to fight infections and disease.

Understanding the nature of biological networks requires conducting research at the molecular level, generating and analyzing billions of data points representing amazingly complex biological interactions and reactions. In order to make rapid progress in this area the tools and methodologies for gathering and analyzing this data must advance significantly. The 7th Annual Institute for Systems Biology International Symposium: Systems Biology and Engineering, will address the most advanced technologies and strategies in use today, as well as examine potential technologies of tomorrow.

Examples of 2008 Symposium presentations include:

Technologies for Engineering Biology by Drew Endy, Ph.D. of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Synthetic Biology in Pursuit of Low-Cost, Effective, Anti-Malarial Drugs by Jay Keasling, Ph.D., of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Using Optical Arrays to Study Single Enzyme Molecules and Single Cells in Large Populations by David Walt, Ph.D., of Tufts University

 

 

 

 

 

Systems Biology poised to revolutionize the understanding of cell function and disease

New ESF report calls for coordinated action to accelerate European Systems Biology research

Systems Biology is transforming the way scientists think about biology and disease. This novel approach to research could prompt a shake up in medical science and it might ultimately allow clinicians to predict and treat complex diseases such as diabetes, heart failure, cancer, and metabolic syndrome for which there are currently no cures.

The European Science Foundation (ESF) has published a Forward Look (FL) report System Biology: a grand challenge for Europe; an attempt to identify how research in Systems Biology could be accelerated and developed further in Europe. The report concludes with a set of specific recommendations that aims at consolidating Systems Biology efforts in Europe. The idea of this ESF initiated FL first came to light with a proposal by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw) and the NWO Council for Earth and Life Sciences in the Netherlands. The proposal was later materialised into concrete effort based on extensive discussions during a number of focused workshops and meetings between scientists and policy makers from academia and industry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Systems Biology: The Big Picture

 

Genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have all vastly advanced our understanding of human biology and disease. But the functioning of even a simple system such as a single yeast cell or bacterium is much more complicated than the sum of its genes or proteins or metabolites; it’s the activity of all those components and their relationships to one another that add up to a living organism. Recognizing that complexity, the emerging field of systems biology attempts to harness the power of mathematics, engineering, and computer science to analyze and integrate data from all the “omics” and ultimately create working models of entire biological systems.

“Traditionally, scientists--toxicologists included--have relied on a reductionist approach to biology,” says William Suk, director of the NIEHS Center for Risk and Integrated Sciences. Even now, many studies examine complex systems by looking at cellular components in isolation. For instance, a common experiment involves using DNA microarrays to observe the effect of a chemical exposure on thousands of genes at once. This technique can quicklytell a scientist which genes may be vulnerable to that exposure. But a systems biology approach would attempt to model not only the chemical’s effect on gene expression but also how that expression will affect protein function, and in turn

how the exposure will affect cell signaling. “There’s nothing wrong with what we’ve been doing,” Suk says. “But systems biology is going to take it to another level.”

Building a New Science

From one perspective, systems biology is nothing new. At the turn of the twentieth century, physiologists such as Walter B. Cannon were developing the concept of homeostasis--the self-regulatory mechanisms, hunger and thirst for example, that a living organism uses to keep its internal systems in balance despite an ever-changing external environment. The term “systems biology” was first used in the 1960s, when theoretical biologists began creating computer-run mathematical models of biological systems.

But the field took a leap forward beginning in the 1990s, when the high-throughput tools developed for the sequencing of the human genome brought experimental scientists up to the speed of theoretical biologists. The widespread use of the Internet has also made possible for the first time the international collaborations and sharing of huge amounts of data that systems biology requires. “The way that computer science has responded to genomics is one of the great stories of the sociology of twentieth-century science,” says Charles DeLisi, senior associate provost for bioscience and chair of the Bioinformatics Program at Boston University. Computer scientists have taken a great interest in biology and have stepped up to collaborate with biologists to develop the tools needed to sequence genomes and analyze the resulting data.

http://http://www.ehponline.org/txg/members/2004/112-16/focus/focus.html

[nutronjon]

Don't you know whow to simplify anything? nutronjohn is trying to ask questions about the basics of life. Not fractal patterns and autopoetic systems. Once you have the basics down then you can start to explore the more complex issues. All you are trying to do is confuse the situation with technobabble and mystery. I've read about the things you keep trying to push and they are not part of the basic or even mainstream thoughts on life or it's make up. One thing is for sure, you have an agenda, pushing this agenda is more important to you than any real truths or understanding.

 

You are right, Moontanman, I didn't intend for this thread to bend into the mystical, but my mind is so fickle and driven in that direction. The book "A Beginner's Guide to the Constructing the Universe, The Mathematical Archtypes of Nature, Art and Science" by Michael S Schneider, turns me on. This piece of the nucleic acids explanation caused me to turn to that book

In conventional nomenclature, the carbons to which the phosphate groups attach are the 3' end and the 5' end carbons of the sugar

For the Greeks these are the numbers for the potential for life (3) and 5 is regeneration. When we come to 5, we get the Fibonacci sequence, and also the Golden Mean, a sequence of numbers that comes closer and closer to to the ideal of 1.61803398875.... In a graph these numbers look like a heart beat.

 

Now I really don't understand these matters, but my experience with cooking tells measure in ingrediants, temperature and motion, is important. If we don't have the right amount of ingredients and treat them correctly, not too little beating and not too much, not too hot or too cold, we don't get the desired results. We represent all these things with numbers, but these numbers are representations of truths. So if the carbons, to which the phosphate groups attach, are 4' and 5' end carbons would we get life? I suspect not.

 

Nature is full of patterns which we represent in numbers, and I suspect these patterns are essential to life.

 

My question begins as one of when energy and matter become life and as I stumble through this mental effort, I conclude, it is not just the mixing of chemicals that becomes life. We can't turn matter into life, without a rhythm that starts a pulse of life. :D I need pictures. My encyclopedia doesn't have pictures of nucleic acid. What does a nucleic acid look like? What does DNA and RNA look like? Virus is either DNA or RNA, what happens when they join? I am talking numbers, form, interaction. Perhaps, it isn't life unless it us both DNA and RNA? Maybe if it isn't DNA and RNA that dance of life can't begin?

[Moontanman]

You are right, Moontanman, I didn't intend for this thread to bend into the mystical, but my mind is so fickle and driven in that direction. The book "A Beginner's Guide to the Constructing the Universe, The Mathematical Archtypes of Nature, Art and Science" by Michael S Schneider, turns me on. This piece of the nucleic acids explanation caused me to turn to that book

 

For the Greeks these are the numbers for the potential for life (3) and 5 is regeneration. When we come to 5, we get the Fibonacci sequence, and also the Golden Mean, a sequence of numbers that comes closer and closer to to the ideal of 1.61803398875.... In a graph these numbers look like a heart beat.

 

Now I really don't understand these matters, but my experience with cooking tells measure in ingrediants, temperature and motion, is important. If we don't have the right amount of ingredients and treat them correctly, not too little beating and not too much, not too hot or too cold, we don't get the desired results. We represent all these things with numbers, but these numbers are representations of truths. So if the carbons, to which the phosphate groups attach, are 4' and 5' end carbons would we get life? I suspect not.

 

Nature is full of patterns which we represent in numbers, and I suspect these patterns are essential to life.

 

My question begins as one of when energy and matter become life and as I stumble through this mental effort, I conclude, it is not just the mixing of chemicals that becomes life. We can't turn matter into life, without a rhythm that starts a pulse of life. :doh: I need pictures. My encyclopedia doesn't have pictures of nucleic acid. What does a nucleic acid look like? What does DNA and RNA look like? Virus is either DNA or RNA, what happens when they join? I am talking numbers, form, interaction. Perhaps, it isn't life unless it us both DNA and RNA? Maybe if it isn't DNA and RNA that dance of life can't begin?

 

Nutron, you are an intelligent woman, we've been talking on line a long time. I've learned a lot from you, I'm thrilled at the opportunity to return the favor. I cannot bring myself to BS you about what is known and what is speculation. Life at it's most basic is just chemistry, once you get into complex life, especially sentient life, only then does the complexity begin to be inscrutable. Even then it can be broken down into small pieces that are better understandable. At it's start life had no DNA, or RNA, There is no doubt that life started at a much more basic level. Personally the idea that life began deep under ground at the boundary of extremely hot up wellings of hydrocarbons and rocks that have both high pressure water and catalysts available to spur chemical reactions that can occur no where else. (almost your idea of ingredients, temperature, and motion incarnate!) Of course this is just a theory or maybe even just a hypotheses. It's difficult to really push an agenda that is not part of the mainstream in a serious discussion of the basics. I think it confuses things, I will discuss these things in other forums. If you do a Google search of the DNA and RNA questions you will get a much more clear and concise explanation of these things than I could give in many pages of explanation. If you want I will Google them for you so you can see and read exactly what they do and how they do it.

 

Michael Hissom

aurea mediocritas

[Thunderbird]

Nutron, you are an intelligent woman, we've been talking on line a long time. I've learned a lot from you, I'm thrilled at the opportunity to return the favor. I cannot bring myself to BS you about what is known and what is speculation. Life at it's most basic is just chemistry, once you get into complex life, especially sentient life, only then does the complexity begin to be inscrutable.

life in its simplest form is inscrutable. If it were just chemical we would create life in the lab. We cannot. Life is very mysterious. It is more like a wave than chemical reactions. I would have to say it is as mysterious as a light wave.

 

Even then it can be broken down into small pieces that are better understandable. At it's start life had no DNA, or RNA, There is no doubt that life started at a much more basic level. Michael Hissom

aurea mediocritas

This is speculation and conjecture on your part since no one knows how life got started.

[Moontanman]

life in its simplest form is inscrutable. If it were just chemical we would create life in the lab. We cannot. Life is very mysterious. It is more like a wave than chemical reactions. I would have to say it is as mysterious as a light wave.

 

 

This is speculation and conjecture on your part since no one knows how life got started.

 

Yeah I know oolitic spheres was all there is to it. The only reason why we cannot creat life in the lab is because we can't create the right conditions for a long enough period of time. I don't know of any labs that have had any experiments going for a million years or even a thousand years. Light waves are mysterious? In what universe?

[Thunderbird]

Yeah I know oolitic spheres was all there is to it.

oolites had nothing to do with it abogenises, possibly morphogenises they are two different events.

Light waves are mysterious? In what universe?

This one, ..you know,... the one that contains all the physicist that say light is very mysterious.:doh:

 

 

 

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. Anais Nin

[Moontanman]

oolites had nothing to do with it abogenises, possibly morphogenises they are two different events.

This one, ..you know,... the one that contains all the physicist that say light is very mysterious.:)

 

 

 

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. Anais Nin

I genuinely hope you are as well informed as you say, personally I have my doubts. Where I live light is relatively well known. Nearly all things are called mysterious by someone. Sun rise, sun set, the phases of the moon, Next months blue moon. I must be in another universe from you. I prefer my universe where we don't try and make things any more mysterious than they need to be to make us sound like we have a hold on a truth no one else has. Isn't strange how the Internet can communicate between two totally different universes?

 

All those years using oolitic sand in my live coral propagation tanks and I didn't know I was creating new life forms:doh:

 

At least we both appreceate Anais Nin maybe our universes aren't as different as they seem.

 

Moontanman

Mistral Wind

[Thunderbird]

The book "A Beginner's Guide to the Constructing the Universe, The Mathematical Archtypes of Nature, Art and Science" by Michael S Schneider, turns me on. This piece of the nucleic acids explanation caused me to turn to that book

 

For the Greeks these are the numbers for the potential for life (3) and 5 is regeneration. When we come to 5, we get the Fibonacci sequence, and also the Golden Mean, a sequence of numbers that comes closer and closer to to the ideal of 1.61803398875.... In a graph these numbers look like a heart beat.

 

Now I really don't understand these matters, but my experience with cooking tells measure in ingrediants, temperature and motion, is important. If we don't have the right amount of ingredients and treat them correctly, not too little beating and not too much, not too hot or too cold, we don't get the desired results. We represent all these things with numbers, but these numbers are representations of truths. So if the carbons, to which the phosphate groups attach, are 4' and 5' end carbons would we get life? I suspect not.

 

Nature is full of patterns which we represent in numbers, and I suspect these patterns are essential to life.

 

My question begins as one of when energy and matter become life and as I stumble through this mental effort, I conclude, it is not just the mixing of chemicals that becomes life. We can't turn matter into life, without a rhythm that starts a pulse of life. :) I need pictures. My encyclopedia doesn't have pictures of nucleic acid. What does a nucleic acid look like? What does DNA and RNA look like? Virus is either DNA or RNA, what happens when they join? I am talking numbers, form, interaction. Perhaps, it isn't life unless it us both DNA and RNA? Maybe if it isn't DNA and RNA that dance of life can't begin?

 

 

 

We can't turn matter into life, without a rhythm that starts a pulse of life.

I have been saying this exact thing, life acts more like a wave than a chemical reaction. The form of geometry is important also.

 

The DNA spiral is a Golden Section

The DNA molecule, the program for all life, is based on the golden section. It measures 34 angstroms long by 21 angstroms wide for each full cycle of its double helix spiral.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

34 and 21, of course, are numbers in the Fibonacci series and their ratio, 1.6190476 closely approximates phi, 1.6180339.

The DNA cross-section is based on Phi

A cross-sectional view from the top of the DNA double helix forms a decagon

 

The DNA spiral is a Golden Section

The DNA molecule, the program for all life, is based on the golden section. It measures 34 angstroms long by 21 angstroms wide for each full cycle of its double helix spiral.

In biology, plants harness PHI-cycle geometry in photosynthesis to transform sunshine into sugar.

 

 

 

[Moontanman]

I have been saying this exact thing, life acts more like a wave than a chemical reaction. The form of geometry is important also.

 

 

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In biology, plants harness PHI-cycle geometry in photosynthesis to transform sunshine into sugar.

 

 

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I hope we both live long enough to see if what you are touting as the truth, even though it's based on only one data point, stays the truth when we discover life other than our own. Don't you even have a small amount of doubt about the claim that life every where is the same as life on the Earth? All the life we see has adapted to conditions here on the Earth, different conditions will almost certinly bring about differences in how that life makes it's living. Possibilities are endless, The Earth is finite. I see absolutely no reason to blindly accept that life is a wave function. I see no reason to think it is true at all.

[CraigD]

I can not accept a robot that can replicate itself as life, because it can not generate its own life force, but must have a battery. However a virus would be life, because like a seed in good soil, when it is in a host, it produces its own energy, its own live force which uses to reproduce itself. There is a connection between energy and life force.

I agree with Moontanman’s advice

Be careful how you use the word energy, there is no "life force energy" Thinking of it that way only confuses the issue. Life is based on chemical energy. No special type of energy is involved. It's the same energy that an car engine uses or a fire. Try to think of it as simple as possible before you start going deeper into it

In science, it’s critical to distinguish between well, formally defined concepts, and vague, though frequently useful, intuitive ones. Force and energy are well-defined concepts with precise definitions:

 

m, mass, a fundamental physical property

d, distance, or change in position, a fundamental physical property

t, time, also called change in time or duration, a fundamental physical property

v = d / t, velocity, the ratio of change in position to change in time

a = v / t, acceleration, the ratio of change in velocity to change in time

f = m • a, force, that which accelerates a mass

w = f • d, work, or energy, force resulting in change in position

 

Work and energy are the same derived physical property, differing in conventional usage: we usually use the term energy to describe the potential for or result of a force to change a body’s position, and work to describe the actual event.

 

With these few formal concepts, we can evaluate a part of the following statement

On the other hand, a magnet is not considered life and it radiates energy, but can not reproduce itself.

Though the rudimentary mechanics we’ve defined in the preceding few words doesn’t encompass the terms life and reproduction, it’s enough to explain magnets, or more generally, charged bodies, in terms of work and energy. To separate a body of magnetic material from a magnet, one applies a force over the distance, doing work. The moved body gains potential energy equal to the work done in moving it. If the body is allowed to approach the magnet to its original position, this potential energy can be used to perform work. No energy is radiated or otherwise lost from the magnet. Although a more detailed explanation involving more modern terms, such as particle physics, is complicated, the conclusions of our rudimentary mechanics are not contradicted by them.

 

Although biology is difficult to comprehensively describe in mechanical terms to the point of practical impossibility for current science, this will not, I believe, necessarily always be so.

 

Of course, language doesn’t belong exclusively to science, and words such as force and energy have uses in non-scientific contexts. But phrases such as “life force” aren’t used in mainstream science, and are well-defined only in a few theories, such as biologist Rupert Sheldrake’s Hypothesis of Formative Causation. None of these theories, to be the best of my knowledge, have been supported by experimental data, and are generally consider fringe or pseudoscientific.

 

“Life force” often appears to be used as a replacement for older terms such as pneuma, “spark of life”, spirit, ghost, soul, “life essence”, etc, which people now find less credible than in times before the invention of microscopes and our present day understanding of microbiology. Although people speaking and writing about this shift in both scientific and lay consensus tend to describe old theories involving these terms somewhat disparagingly, by terms such as “pre-scientific”, one can argue that they were not scientifically unreasonable, given the available data. If one lacks the means to measure biology processes on a scale small enough to be explained in chemical/mechanical terms, the idea that tissue is inanimate “clay” animated by a sort of thing different from measurable physical objects is not an unreasonable conjecture.

 

Finally, it’s important, I think, not to confuse descriptive algorithms, such as the attractors of chaos theory (also called complexity theory), with physical forces. Although many complex systems that cannot be effectively modeled with other approaches can be using the formalism of chaos theory, this should not be taken to imply that the underlying physics of these “chaotic” systems are fundamentally different than that of non-chaotic systems.

I think being "wet and squishy” is somehow essential to being life.

I think that this is true in practical experience, but not necessarily in ultimate principle.

 

To date, most wet, squishy, non-artificial things are either much smaller feature scaled, much more richly connected, or both, than hard, dry, artificial things – although the hard dry artificial in increasingly faster – able to change states more rapidly. In short, the wet and squishy is, at present, better at metabolism, another one of the traits commonly associated with life. However, as the artificial continues to trend according to Moore's Law and related predictors, this may not be the case much longer, leading many, such as Hans Moravec, to predict that “artificial life” in the form of computers may appear as early as the 2020s (see “When will computer hardware match the human brain?”)

[nutronjon]

Nutron, you are an intelligent woman, we've been talking on line a long time. I've learned a lot from you, I'm thrilled at the opportunity to return the favor. I cannot bring myself to BS you about what is known and what is speculation. Life at it's most basic is just chemistry, once you get into complex life, especially sentient life, only then does the complexity begin to be inscrutable. Even then it can be broken down into small pieces that are better understandable. At it's start life had no DNA, or RNA, There is no doubt that life started at a much more basic level. Personally the idea that life began deep under ground at the boundary of extremely hot up wellings of hydrocarbons and rocks that have both high pressure water and catalysts available to spur chemical reactions that can occur no where else. (almost your idea of ingredients, temperature, and motion incarnate!) Of course this is just a theory or maybe even just a hypotheses. It's difficult to really push an agenda that is not part of the mainstream in a serious discussion of the basics. I think it confuses things, I will discuss these things in other forums. If you do a Google search of the DNA and RNA questions you will get a much more clear and concise explanation of these things than I could give in many pages of explanation. If you want I will Google them for you so you can see and read exactly what they do and how they do it.

 

Michael Hissom

aurea mediocritas

 

 

Yes, I am thinking temerature plays into the creation of life. Not just one temperature, but the change of temperature. I think there is a connection with rhythm as well.

 

My time is short, can you say more about life before DNA? :eek: Like can you give my a 3 volumn explanation of this science in 3 lines? Kidding. Jeeze, I want to know everything, but don't have the time and energy for the effort. I wouldn't think that life without DNA and RNA would be possible, because there would be no reproduction without DNA and RNA.

 

Whoo, it just occurred to me, that a cell grows and divides, and other things that grow but are not considered life, do not divide. That is a crystal gets bigger, but it does not divide into two identical crystals. Is this thinking right?

[nutronjon]

I have been saying this exact thing, life acts more like a wave than a chemical reaction. The form of geometry is important also.

 

 

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In biology, plants harness PHI-cycle geometry in photosynthesis to transform sunshine into sugar.

 

 

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Oh yes, thank you for those pictures. I need to copy these pictures and put them on my wall. I read your post after Moontanmans, which lead me to realize what we call life divides, that is the Golden Mean. Your explanation put my vague question into an, ah yes, something geometerical is happening here.

(side note: I just filled out a questionary about my well being, and answered every question about my state of mind in the positive- thanks to you all and this discussion. Knowing I can wake up in the morning a learn from you all, is making my life have very happy. Thank you)

[nutronjon]

CraigD, I love you. I will be putting this information on my wall, along with Thunderbirds, and I have to stop here and will come back to the rest of your explanation later. I am getting overwhelmed and need to absorb what has been said so far.

 

In science, it’s critical to distinguish between well, formally defined concepts, and vague, though frequently useful, intuitive ones. Force and energy are well-defined concepts with precise definitions:

 

m, mass, a fundamental physical property

d, distance, or change in position, a fundamental physical property

t, time, also called change in time or duration, a fundamental physical property

v = d / t, velocity, the ratio of change in position to change in time

a = v / t, acceleration, the ratio of change in velocity to change in time

f = m • a, force, that which accelerates a mass

w = f • d, work, or energy, force resulting in change in position

 

Work and energy are the same derived physical property, differing in conventional usage: we usually use the term energy to describe the potential for or result of a force to change a body’s position, and work to describe the actual event.

 

Maybe you already answered my question, but as I said, I am getting overwhelmed and need to stop at what you said here. Anything of mass is made up of atoms which are atomic particles in motion, right? When we

acceleration, the ratio of change in velocity to change in time

We can shatter the atom and release energy, right? It appears solid things are solid and unmoving, but that is only appearence. The truth is all matter is energy forms. Also, it is all held together with geometric rules, isn't it?

 

At some time the rules for matter change and we get the Golden Mean and life. That is

gm / r, division and replication

. Oh man, my head is shutting down. I have to put the information you all gave me on the wall, and contemplate it for it awhile. For matter, the force of life is external. For life, the force of life is internal, so my question is, how did the force of life become internalized?

[Moontanman]

Yes, I am thinking temerature plays into the creation of life. Not just one temperature, but the change of temperature. I think there is a connection with rhythm as well.

 

My time is short, can you say more about life before DNA? :eek: Like can you give my a 3 volumn explanation of this science in 3 lines? Kidding. Jeeze, I want to know everything, but don't have the time and energy for the effort. I wouldn't think that life without DNA and RNA would be possible, because there would be no reproduction without DNA and RNA.

 

Whoo, it just occurred to me, that a cell grows and divides, and other things that grow but are not considered life, do not divide. That is a crystal gets bigger, but it does not divide into two identical crystals. Is this thinking right?

 

 

Very intuitive of you, yes temperature extremes do play a role, any time you have a sharp energy change life seems to be there. It doesn't have to be temps but that is the most common type of energy gradient. The edge between widely divergent pH values can also be utilized by life. The reason I think that deep with in the crust is the place life started is that the high temps and pressures allow molecules to take on shapes that they cannot otherwise form and the deep earth contains huge energy gradients with catalysts and energy sources as well as food sources. The first steps towards life was probably taken by catalysts that would help a reaction along and after the reaction the catalyst was left to do the whole thing over again. The very first step towards what we would call life was when a catalyst reaction formed that left behind two copies of the catalyst after the reaction was over then these two would join in the reaction and leave behind four, then eight then 16 and so on. Eventually these reactions become more and more complex leaving behind more and more of the catalysts. Of course this isn't life but it is self replicating chemicals. These chemicals were contained in the microscopic pore spaces in the rocks and as hydrocarbons up welling from deeper in the crust passed by these chemicals would make more and more copies. As the reactions become more complex the chemicals that could make the most copies began to dominate. This increasing complexity of chemical reaction would be the basis of metabolism. A great many different reactions would have to take place and the reactions would eventually begin to react with each other. Some consuming the catalysts to make more copies of their own. Most of the reactions were dead ends, the resulting reactions made something that couldn't be used to further the reactions. At what point would these reactions be called life? For me it would be the point where the reactions began to govern what they made by using the feed back from the by products of their own reactions. RNA and DNA weren't in the mix at this point but come about later. This is not a done deal, there are other theorys and I think that we will find that more than one of these types of reactions came together in the region of the deep sea vents. Possibly the reactions that were taking place in the seas and the reactions that were taking place in the earth combined to make the first real organisms. Probably just bare catalysts that took chemicals from the water around them and after being re cycled through the vents used that energy to become ever more complex. Eventually these reactions took on the traits we would recognize as life. RNA and DNA were just a more complex catalyst and information storage. DNA became more of a information storage but RNA is still a catalyst that causes or regulates the replication of the DNA. I hope this clarifies, at least a little, what is a very murky and open field of research.

[HydrogenBond]

The aspect of life, that separates life from inanimate matter is hydrogen bonding. That is why water is critical to life. The transfer-sharing of electrons, chemical reactions and molecules is done by life and inanimate matter. It comes down to the secondary and tertiary structures of bio-molecules based on hydrogen bonding. To prove this we can take an enzyme, heat it until we break the hydrogen bonds, but not enough heat to harm the electron based polymers. What we do next, is analyze the enzyme, atom by atom, to make sure it is exactly the same composition. Check. Then we see if it works. Nope. Using a little logic, life needs enzymes, and enzymes need h-bonds to be right, so life needs H-bonds.

 

Maybe this was a fluke, according to existing wisdom. So we will do that to the entire cell, including the DNA and its all support staff. We will not harm the big molecules, only that second string weaker bond called h-bond. We will then analyze all the material including the two separate DNA single helixes. I am sorry the two DNA random molecules, since we disrupted H-bonds. Everything is there, based on chemical composition, and even atom count. We only took away one variable that is everywhere. The current definition of life is too shallow. It stops short of plunging into life.

 

The problem is empiricism. This is a rational-lite thinking substitute where we suspend full reason, often due to complexity, where data gets massaged with statistics, inside a black box. Whatever is spit out, we accept, since the black box has spoken. All hail the black box! To get into the deeper waters of hydrogen bonds, away from the shallows of empiricism, we need to open up the black box and look inside. It was colored black, on purpose, to give it a sinister color, so we remain afraid to open it. There is nothing to fear, the black box of empiricism has a rational mechanism inside. Looking inside the forbidden black box is where I found this mechanism. It is a little deeper than rational-lite normally goes, before seeking black box advice.

 

The requirement of rational-lite science is if I take what is inside the black box out, I must now close the black box again, and then feed it back to a closed black box, so black box can speak. All hail the black box.

[Moontanman]

The aspect of life, that separates life from inanimate matter is hydrogen bonding. That is why water is critical to life. The transfer-sharing of electrons, chemical reactions and molecules is done by life and inanimate matter. It comes down to the secondary and tertiary structures of bio-molecules based on hydrogen bonding. To prove this we can take an enzyme, heat it until we break the hydrogen bonds, but not enough heat to harm the electron based polymers. What we do next, is analyze the enzyme, atom by atom, to make sure it is exactly the same composition. Check. Then we see if it works. Nope. Using a little logic, life needs enzymes, and enzymes need h-bonds to be right, so life needs H-bonds.

 

Maybe this was a fluke, according to existing wisdom. So we will do that to the entire cell, including the DNA and its all support staff. We will not harm the big molecules, only that second string weaker bond called h-bond. We will then analyze all the material including the two separate DNA single helixes. I am sorry the two DNA random molecules, since we disrupted H-bonds. Everything is there, based on chemical composition, and even atom count. We only took away one variable that is everywhere. The current definition of life is too shallow. It stops short of plunging into life.

 

The problem is empiricism. This is a rational-lite thinking substitute where we suspend full reason, often due to complexity, where data gets massaged with statistics, inside a black box. Whatever is spit out, we accept, since the black box has spoken. All hail the black box! To get into the deeper waters of hydrogen bonds, away from the shallows of empiricism, we need to open up the black box and look inside. It was colored black, on purpose, to give it a sinister color, so we remain afraid to open it. There is nothing to fear, the black box of empiricism has a rational mechanism inside. Looking inside the forbidden black box is where I found this mechanism. It is a little deeper than rational-lite normally goes, before seeking black box advice.

 

The requirement of rational-lite science is if I take what is inside the black box out, I must now close the black box again, and then feed it back to a closed black box, so black box can speak. All hail the black box.

 

I have to agree, no matter how strange life becomes or is discovered I would be amazed if hydrogen isn't the key ingredient.