What is life?

[Essay]

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.

Is this thinking right?

 

That part certainly is right.:doh:

 

I was just musing on my favorite quote (thanks to Alexander & MaryT, New Meember Intro, btw):

 

"Life is just Nature's (best) Way of Turning Light into Heat"

:shrug:

[Thunderbird]

That part certainly is right.:doh:

 

I was just musing on my favorite quote (thanks to Alexander & MaryT, New Meember Intro, btw):

 

"Life is just Nature's (best) Way of Turning Light into Heat"

:shrug:

Or refining light into the awareness of light, then into memory.

[Essay]

re: "Life is just Nature's (best) Way of Turning Light into Heat"

Or refining light into the awareness of light, then into memory.

I was just speaking in basic physics terms; entropy....

 

...but it's an interesting metaphor -or more?

 

hehe, ...metaphor -or more.... :shrug:

[Thunderbird]

re: "Life is just Nature's (best) Way of Turning Light into Heat"

 

I was just speaking in basic physics terms; entropy....

 

...but it's an interesting metaphor -or more?

 

hehe, ...metaphor -or more.... ;)

 

There is nothing more,, than a metaphor.:hihi:

 

Light,.. Electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength.

Illuminate,.. To expose to or reveal by radiation.

Memory,.. is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information

Metaphor,.. meant in Greek "carry something across" or "transfer,"

 

BASKET FULL OF DREAMS

[nutronjon]

Here is something to please everyone. With Hydrogenbonds post, I goolged hydrogen transmuation and got the following. The explanation of water gives us a clue about how life began in extreme temperatures, and the evolution of elements, relates these elements to the basic octave of the musical scale. There is a graph placing the elements in a golden mean spiral but I can't get it to paste here. The graph is important to understanding this yin and yang explanation of what is.

 

Transmutation of the elements

 

The Mystery of Water

 

Let's use this understanding to solve some scientific mysteries.

Water (H2O) has a very strange property. If we take some water and apply heat, as the water heats up towards boiling, its volume expands. However, if we apply cold, at a certain point the volume also expands. The borderline is about 4° C. - below this, water expands and above this water expands. Why? These are simple facts which science knows, but nobody has any good explanation for why. So we must use our magic spectacles - yin and yang.

 

We know hydrogen is more yang and oxygen is more yin. A water molecule has two hydrogen and one oxygen atom,

 

 

---------O

--------HH

(water structure)

 

We can see that (H) hydrogen is more yang so it naturally goes down; yin (O) oxygen goes up. The two hydrogen atoms can't come too close, though, because they repel each other, so this structure results. Now if we apply heat (yang), what happens? Which atoms can attract this high temperature? Oxygen (yin). Hydrogen does not react so fast, as it is already more yang; but the oxygen atom quickly absorbs the heat and becomes more yang (compact. The attraction begins to deteriorate as the oxygen atom begins to repel the hydrogen atoms; the molecule becomes larger and the water's total volume expands. Now, if we apply cold, the yin oxygen does not react so quickly; but the hydrogen atoms becomes more yin (expanded) quickly. Again, the molecule's attraction deteriorated, and the water begins to expand.

 

EVOLUTION OF THE ELEMENTS

 

---H1/1 ------He 2/4 -Li 3/7- Be 4/9- B 5/11-----C 6/12- N 7/14 -O 8/16

Common ----------Less common---------------------More common

 

These first eight elements are nature's basic elements, something like the basic octave of the musical scale. As you can see, some are more yin and some are more yang. Among them, helium, lithium, beryllium, and boron are not found so much on the Earth's surface; but hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen are found in abundance. Within these four, hydrogen and carbon form a more yang group, nitrogen and oxygen for a more yin group. As you can imagine, these four can very easily combine chemically.

 

When hydrogen, carbon and oxygen combine chemically, what is the result? Carbohydrate. When these three combine chemically with nitrogen. What results? Protein. Vitamins and enzymes belong to which group? Also protein. Now, how did all these different elements arise? By our common sense, we can see that nature's more than one hundred different elements could not have suddenly appeared, one by one - one day oxygen, one day nitrogen, one day platinum, etc. No, they must be linked together by some continual process. This is like an evolutionary continuum

[nutronjon]

I want to repeat,

For matter, the force of life is external.

For that that lives, the force of life is internal.

 

I did I a lot of thinking about this while walking my dog, and decided I will no longer consider a virus life, but only the potential for life, because unless it bonds with DNA, it has not yet internalized the force of life, and remains dependent on what is external.

[HydrogenBond]

If you look at an enzyme, it is a hydrogen bonded structure, that is able to break or form covalent bonds, to get a very wide variety of chemicals or even chemical transitions states. In terms of evolution, one needs to take into consideration hydrogen bonding playing a role in helping to form the basic chemical structures needed to get the process going. The hydrogen bonding acts as a catalyst to make it easier to form these chemical structures. The evolutionary push has continued to use this as a template, where today it is very specific.

 

Nature was not forming the original molecules of life in a vacuum, but in water where aqueous hydrogen bonding is helping the process. We often conceptually express it like the DNA is learning to replicate apart from water. But in reality what we had was hydrated DNA with an extended shroud of water structure. This process would not be as likely if we used say hexane as the solvent. The affects of the solvent is adding a potential to make the replication favorable.

 

For example, the phosphate groups on the DNA double are expressed as minus 1. But in water, the hydrogen of water are forming hydrogen bonds with these phosphate making them less than minus 1. The affect is more electron withdrawal stemming from the phosphate than if water was not present. If we add organic material to the water, such as lipids, the result is a surface tension affect within the global water that makes the impact of the water even stronger. It is not coincidence cells have a lipid shell. The impact is to change the potential of the water contained within. The cell takes it one step further with cation pumping, altering the aqueous potential.

[nutronjon]

There is nothing more,, than a metaphor.;)

 

Light,.. Electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength.

Illuminate,.. To expose to or reveal by radiation.

Memory,.. is an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information

Metaphor,.. meant in Greek "carry something across" or "transfer,"

 

BASKET FULL OF DREAMS

 

How about when we look into the universe? Light carries information. Sometimes I think we get too hung up on words and loose the meaning.

 

In ancient Greece the advanced students of the philosopher Pythagoras who were engaged in deep studies of the natural science and self-understanding were called mathematekio, "those who studied all". The word mathema signifed "learning in general" and was the root of the Old English mathein, "to be aware", and the Old German munthen, "to awaken". Today, the word math has for most people, consticted its scope to empasize mundane measurement and mere manipulation of quantities. We've unwittingly traded wide-ranging vision for narrow expertise.

From A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe

 

When we believe the memory is in our brains, not the light, we separate ourselves from the memory and become objective observers. I think quantum physics suggest we are not so separate from the light?

[nutronjon]

If you look at an enzyme, it is a hydrogen bonded structure, that is able to break or form covalent bonds, to get a very wide variety of chemicals or even chemical transitions states. In terms of evolution, one needs to take into consideration hydrogen bonding playing a role in helping to form the basic chemical structures needed to get the process going. The hydrogen bonding acts as a catalyst to make it easier to form these chemical structures. The evolutionary push has continued to use this as a template, where today it is very specific.

 

Nature was not forming the original molecules of life in a vacuum, but in water where aqueous hydrogen bonding is helping the process. We often conceptually express it like the DNA is learning to replicate apart from water. But in reality what we had was hydrated DNA with an extended shroud of water structure. This process would not be as likely if we used say hexane as the solvent. The affects of the solvent is adding a potential to make the replication favorable.

 

For example, the phosphate groups on the DNA double are expressed as minus 1. But in water, the hydrogen of water are forming hydrogen bonds with these phosphate making them less than minus 1. The affect is more electron withdrawal stemming from the phosphate than if water was not present. If we add organic material to the water, such as lipids, the result is a surface tension affect within the global water that makes the impact of the water even stronger. It is not coincidence cells have a lipid shell. The impact is to change the potential of the water contained within. The cell takes it one step further with cation pumping, altering the aqueous potential.

 

Okay, RNA does or does not have this same potential for cation pumping? If RNA can not do this, it can not be life.

 

I am watching mold grow on a container of old coffee, and really appreciate your explanation of water tension and lipid shells. What I see in the coffee is like looking into space and seeing galaxes with planets forming. There is this film broken by clear coffee rivers (galaxes), and white spots that appear to be growing into islands (planets) of mold. If I change the ph level of the coffee what will happen?

[HydrogenBond]

The light is the expression of life, but it takes hardware to make sure the expression has structure. For example, the movie projector generates a light or energy signal that comes to life on the screen. But this is made possible because of the structure within either the film or the digital media. But there is also a reciprocity. The original movie was made when light from the actors was impinging upon the raw media that collects it. This becomes fixed in the media, so we can replay the light again.

 

The light entering the eyes is absorbed onto the brain media to create memory. We can then play this memory in our imagination. The imagination can go one step further. It can use the original light induced memory to go other places with it. For example, one can see a pretty gal, absorbing her image onto fixed memory. The inner projector can combine this with other media to create fantasy. The fantasy is now an energy projection that can impart on more brain media. The original memory from the light is sort of modified within, until the final media is quite different.

 

The power of reason is sort of like an editor. The light enters the eyes based on what we observe to create an image in the media. The rational editor takes this raw data to create rational structure, which modifies the internal media. The final affect is sort of the editor's final cut. We can then project with writing. The words on the page, will then project their energy into the eyes other people, so they gets the final editor's cut without having to go through all the same editing process.

[Moontanman]

Here is something to please everyone. With Hydrogenbonds post, I goolged hydrogen transmuation and got the following. The explanation of water gives us a clue about how life began in extreme temperatures, and the evolution of elements, relates these elements to the basic octave of the musical scale. There is a graph placing the elements in a golden mean spiral but I can't get it to paste here. The graph is important to understanding this yin and yang explanation of what is.

 

Some say that water only appears to so perfect for life because life has adapted to it. Ammonia has properties that might actually make it better for life but here on the Earth ammonia cannot exist in the liquid state.

[Thunderbird]

How about when we look into the universe? Light carries information. Sometimes I think we get too hung up on words and loose the meaning.

 

 

 

When we believe the memory is in our brains, not the light, we separate ourselves from the memory and become objective observers. I think quantum physics suggest we are not so separate from the light?

 

 

 

Meditation, if practiced long enough, allows for ability to turn off internal memory referencing cycle. and heighten states of awareness can be achieved.

Have you seen "What the bleep do we know"? it addresses Quantum consciousness Fascinating to say the least.

 

 

 

 

Quantum physics has revolutionized our understanding of the deep structure of reality. Material objects have dissolved into "wave functions" that lack well-defined properties, interact "non-locally," and "collapse" into particles in non-deterministic ways that are inseparable from the subjects who measure them. Nevertheless, it has been thought that quantum processes are only significant at the most microscopic level of reality; above that level they wash out (or "decohere"), and classical physics takes over. Since the brain is a very large object, scientists and philosophers have assumed that quantum mechanics was irrelevant to explaining consciousness, and by extension, human social life.

However, recent work by Stuart Hameroff, Roger Penrose, and others has led a growing number of physicists, neuroscientists, and philosophers to argue that consciousness may be a quantum mechanical phenomenon after all. Their claim is not that quantum events in the brain affect behavior, which would be almost trivially true, but that consciousness itself is a macroscopic quantum process. The quantum consciousness hypothesis (QCH) remains only that, a hypothesis, and faces serious challenges. The most difficult is decoherence: how can the brain sustain and aggregate trillions of quantum events into one experience of quantum subjectivity? Recent critiques of QCH have highlighted this problem, which defenders are working hard to solve. Until they succeed QCH is likely to remain a minority view in consciousness studies; but given the continuing resistance of consciousness to classical explanation, it is one that is being taken increasingly seriously.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://http://www.hameroff.com/archives.html

[CraigD]

I did I a lot of thinking about this while walking my dog, and decided I will no longer consider a virus life, but only the potential for life, because unless it bonds with DNA, it has not yet internalized the force of life, and remains dependent on what is external.

This isn’t completely true (the part about viruses bonding with DNA, not the part about your dog :shrug:).

 

Viruses reproduce – make copies of themselves – in many ways. Some kinds insert themselves into the DNA in other organisms’ cell nuclei, causing the cell to manufacture them as if they were its own proteins. Others just “borrow” their hosts’ transcription “factories”, such as polymerases. Still others don’t penetrate the host cell’s nucleus, using the cell mostly just as a source of material, energy, and protection. Many viruses do a lot of their own “translation” of their genomes before using their host cells’ reproductive machinery.

 

Also, viruses may encode their genomes only as RNA, or in DNA, like a plant or animal genome.

 

In short, even though they’re dependent on host cells, viruses can have surprisingly complicated reproductive systems.

 

Another wrinkle on the “are viruses alive” question comes from the opinion of many biologists that a lot, possibly even all, of the DNA in a plant or animal genome may be of viral origin. If this is so, we animals are, in a sense, collaborations of viruses.

 

:) Again, I repeat the caution I and others raised earlier in this thread about phrases like “internalized the force of life”. Living organisms involve the same forces as non-living mechanism – there’s no difference between an energy-producing chemical reaction, such as the citric acid cycle, when it occurs inside mitochondria within a cell in our bodies, and when its reproduced in vitro using non-living chemicals. The idea that living organisms involve physical phenomena fundamentally different than found in the inanimate universe isn’t scientific, and is, I think, a throwback to an earlier belief systems based on much more limited scientific information. It’s more accurate and helpful, I think, to visualize simple machines, complex ones, “biological machines” like viruses, and simple to advanced plant and animal life, as points on a continuum of increasing complexity, all realizations of the same fundamental laws of nature.

 

PS: On the subject of the central role of hydrogen bonds in DNA, I composited together this picture of the G-C and A-T hydrogen bonds central to DNA. See – nothing but hydrogen in those bonds

I’m overwhelmed by and undereducated in the subject, but rather like the diagram, so wanted to share it.

[Galapagos]

Have you seen "What the bleep do we know"? it addresses Quantum consciousness Fascinating to say the least.

Cookies Required

Teaching physics mysteries versus pseudoscience

November 2006, page 14

 

Physicists properly join today's arguments involving the teaching of Darwinian evolution. There is, however, a social issue closer to the responsibility of physicists: Quantum physics is increasingly invoked to promote pseudoscience.

 

Such promotions may start with correct statements of the intriguing implications of quantum mechanics, move to legitimate hyperbole, and then go off into complete hype. Take a recent "international hit" movie as our case in point. It's strangely titled What tHe #$*! Do wΣ (k)πow!? (What the Bleep Do We Know!?) An article in Time magazine described it as "an odd hybrid of science documentary and spiritual revelation featuring a Greek chorus of PhDs and mystics talking about quantum physics."1

 

Early on, the movie illustrates the uncertainty principle with a bouncing basketball being in several places at once. There's nothing wrong with that. It's recognized as pedagogical exaggeration. But the movie gradually moves to quantum "insights" that lead a woman to toss away her antidepressant medication, to the quantum channeling of Ramtha, the 35 000-year-old Atlantis god, and on to even greater nonsense.

 

Most laypeople cannot tell where the quantum physics ends and the quantum nonsense begins, and many are susceptible to being misguided. According to polls, well over half of the people in the US and England have significant belief in the reality of supernatural phenomena. Robert Park states the problem well. "Many people . . . seek a certainty that science cannot offer. For these people the unchanging dictates of ancient religious beliefs, or the absolute assurances of zealots, have a more powerful appeal. Paradoxically, however, their yearning for certainty is often mixed with a respect for science. They long to be told that modern science validates the teachings of some ancient scripture or New Age guru. The purveyors of pseudoscience have been quick to exploit their ambivalence."2 We should not underestimate how persuasively physics can be invoked to buttress mystical notions. We physicists bear some responsibility for the way our discipline is exploited.

 

The human implications of quantum mechanics that fuel popular discussion arise in the measurement problem and in entanglement. Those terms are at least how we refer to the topics in a physics class, where we rarely go much beyond their mathematical formulation. Elsewhere, the same issues are legitimately discussed more broadly in terms of the nature of reality, universal connectedness, and consciousness. But we don't distract physics students with excursions into issues that extend embarrassingly beyond the boundaries we define for our discipline. Science historian Jed Buchwald notes that physicists "have long had a special loathing for admitting questions with the slightest emotional content into their professional work."3 Accordingly, unlike the biology student able to defend evolution against intelligent design, a physics student may be unable to convincingly confront unjustified extrapolations of quantum mechanics.

 

It's not the student's fault. For the most part, in our teaching of quantum mechanics we tacitly deny the mysteries physics has encountered. We hardly mention Niels Bohr's grappling with the encounter between physics and the observer and John von Neumann's demonstration that the encounter is, in principle, inevitable. We largely avoid the still-unresolved issues raised by Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, David Bohm, and John Bell. Outside the classroom, physicists increasingly address these issues and often go beyond the purely physical. Consciousness, for example, comes up explicitly in almost all of today's proliferating interpretations of quantum mechanics, if only to show why physics need not deal with it. The many-worlds interpretation, for example, is also referred to as the many-minds interpretation, and a major treatment of decoherence concludes that an ultimate understanding of the implications of quantum mechanics would involve a model of consciousness.

 

The Copenhagen interpretation is, of course, all we need to describe the world for all practical purposes. And for a physics class, practical purposes are all that generally matter. But a physics student confronting someone inclined to take the implications of quantum mechanics to unjustified places will find Copenhagen's for-all-practical-purposes treatment an ineffective argument.

 

We are unable to present students with a "reasonable" picture for what's going on in the physical world, one that goes beyond merely practical purposes. But a lecture or two can succinctly expose the mysteries physics has encountered, reveal the limits of our understanding, and identify as speculation whatever goes beyond those limits. Such a presentation is possible even in a physics class for non-science majors and would enable students to effectively confront the quantum nonsense. Physics's encounter with the observer and consciousness can be embarrassing, but that's no reason for avoidance. The analogy with sex education comes to mind.

A skeptical and critical approach combined with a quick google search can go a long way.

Chemical & Engineering News | Reel Science -- Review (What the Bleep Do We Know?!)

What the Bleep Do We Know!? - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

That film is pseudoscientific nonsense, and is cut from the same cloth as Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, and should not be taken seriously.

[Boerseun]

Life is the Second Law of Thermodynamics' *****.

 

And Intelligent Life, that mysterious entity which can use energy extrasomatically, will be selected for, purely because of that.

 

...but evolution obviously doesn't know which one of its multitude of experiments will turn out intelligent, so the appearance of intelligence is totally random. But once it appeared on stage, it will consume more and more energy in serving the Second Law, solely for its own protection... or simply because it's the Second Law's *****?

 

[/baseless speculation...or not?]

[Moontanman]

[/baseless speculation...or not?][

 

Yes, it's speculation, almost certinly baseless but it makes sense in a strange way too.....

[nutronjon]

thanks everyone. I am overwhelmed with information and once again very excited. Wow this discussion is occurring on so many different levels, from quantum phyics to physics. From the realm of chaos to the realm of order and back again. I want to contemplate this, and will while walk my dog to the community garden and work in my garden. Light images and imagination along with Hinduism and quantum physics, is tantilizing, and although such may be only be speculation until proven empirically, so were all the mathical concepts flowing through Einstein's head the work of a creative imagination.

 

I need pictures- how many of these ideas are expressed in pictures? What is that cross over from chaos to order?

 

I never knew virus were so interesting! Wow! Is there a possible parallel between all the ways a virus can reproduce, and all the ways quautum chaos becomes manifested, organized matter. I am trying to create a video in my head, of quantum particals becoming organized matter, and need a deeper understanding of all the different ways a virus can reproduce.

 

CraigD, the slugs I put a a jar, keep moving to the top of jar and try to get out. The rocks do not do that. I can not comprehend the idea that there is not a distinct difference between that which has internalize the life force and that which has not. Chemicals move from one place to the next to increase survival needs. A jar of chemicals will not bend to get the fullest sun light, nor move in the opposite direction to avoid sun light. Or are there chemcials that do this? Chemcials are not self willed. Living things are, because they react in ways to increase their own lives and the reproduction of self.

 

Ah, is the word "*****" a scientific term? I do not understand the meaning of the word as Boerseun is using it.