-
2148 - The Origins of Life in the Universe. Life is
highly ordered and has low entropy. Life
must operate far above thermodynamic equilibrium in order to stay alive. When we die entropy wins and we reach
thermodynamic equilibrium in the grave.
Life must continuously expend energy, metabolism, in order to avoid
thermal equilibrium with the ground.
-
-
-
----------------------------------
2148 -
The Origins of Life in the Universe
-
We have been writing as a civilization for about 5,000
years.
-
Zoey is laying next to me as I write this. We have domesticated dogs for about 10,000
years.
-
------------------------ 35,000
years ago - On our vacation in Mexico we visited the
Huicholes Indians about 3 hours by bus into the mountains from Puerto Vallarta
into the state Nayarit. There were 130
Indians in this tribe and there are about 35,000 Indians in these mountains
living as they did 100’s of years ago.
It is believed their ancestors came down the Pacific Coast over the
Aleutian Islands about 35,000 years ago.
-
------------------------ 100,000 years ago .- Humans
left Africa
-
------------------------ 500,000 years ago. - Homo sapiens first emerged
-
------------------------ 2,500,000 years ago. - Stone
tools were used by huminoids
-
------------------------ 3,500,000 years ago. - The
first huminoids emerged
-
------------------------ 65,000,000 years ago
- Dinosaurs died out .
-
------------------------ 250,000,000 years ago - The first dinosaurs emerged.
-
------------------------ 400,000,000 years ago. - The
first vascular plants, those with veins, emerged
-
------------------------ 500,000,000 years ago - The first fish emerged.
-
------------------------ 800,000,000 years ago - The first multicultural life appeared .
-
------------------------ 1,900,000,000 years ago
- The oxygen atmosphere appeared.
-
------------------------ 3,500,000,000 years ago - The
oldest fossils ever found existed .
-
------------------------ 4,000,000,000 years ago. - First
life appeared on Earth
-
------------------------ 4,200,000,000 years ago. - The
oldest rocks found on Earth existed
-
------------------------ 4,600,000,000 years ago - The age of Earth.
-
------------------------ 13,800,000,000 years ago - The age of the Universe.
-
- When
supernovae explode they seed heavy metals into interstellar gas (Astronomers
call all the elements above beryllium, heavy metals, because hydrogen, helium,
lithium, beryllium were formed during the Big Bang. Any element heavier were formed afterwards in
the explosions of supernovae.)
-
- These
elements from the stars became the building blocks of life. All forms of life on Earth came from the same
underlying chemistry, the chemistry that created amino acids.
-
- The genetic
information for all life on Earth is encrypted in RNA and DNA molecules. Slim mold and lawyers share the same genetic
code. This code always uses amino acids
that are left-handed. Sugars, on the other
hand, are all right handed. Nature
produces amino acids in both left-handed and right handed varieties. All life forms on Earth use only left-handed
amino acids.
-
- Life’s
left-handed amino acids are made of the elements of the stars: hydrogen, carbon,
nitrogen, and oxygen. Right-handed
sugars are made of hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Other elements found in life forms include
phosphorus, calcium, sulfur, sodium, magnesium, potassium, calcium, chlorine,
all formed in the heat of exploding supernovae.
-
- RNA molecules
represent a code that tells life’s organisms how to grow. Life’s first formations branched into three
directions: bacteria, eukarya, and archaea.
When RNA molecules have accumulated mutations to a certain extent a new
species, a new bud on the tree of life, branches out. Eukarya is the branch that includes all
plants and animals, in fact, all forms of life that are made of more than one
cell.
-
- Bacteria on
the other hand are all single celled.
Bacteria are often associated with disease, however, many bacteria live
symbiotically with plants and animals.
For example, E. coli bacteria in our intestines digest our food.
-
- Archaea is a
third branch of single celled organisms.
These creatures populate the most extreme environments on Earth. They survive in temperature up to 340 F, in
the deepest parts of the ocean, deep underground, and in the sulfur hot springs
of Yellowstone Park, Wyoming.
-
- How did life first transform from chemistry to
biology? We have yet to answer to that
question.
-
- Once we have
biology though, we can explain the variations in life forms through genetic
mutations.
-
- To explain
the first transformation from chemistry we first need to define what is life.
-
- All life has
replication and metabolism. Replication
is something that can make a copy of itself.
Metabolism is the process life uses to circumvent entropy. Entropy is the law of physics,
thermodynamics, that states disorder always increases, never decreases, in a
system.
-
- Life, on the
other hand, is highly ordered and has low entropy. Life must operate far above thermodynamic
equilibrium in order to stay alive. When
we die entropy wins and we reach thermodynamic equilibrium in the grave. Life must continuously expend energy,
metabolism, in order to avoid thermal equilibrium with the ground.
-
- There are 20
different varieties of amino acids. The
number of possibilities for amino acids to combine is 10^100. (1 followed by
100 zeros possibilities). Primitive life
has existed on Earth for a very long time, over 4,000,000,000 years ago. The oldest known rocks are only 200,000,000
years older than that.
-
- So, life started early in Earth’s
history. If this rate of life formation
is typical then 99% of the stars in existence will live long enough for their
planets to develop primitive life. Most
of Earth’s terrestrial history remained stuck with primitive life, one-celled
organisms. Multicellular life required
another 3,000,000,000 year gestation period.
-
- Complex
animals only arrived 540,000,000 years ago (the Cambrian Era).
Random mutations gave rise to new species. The development of life’s complex structures
continued to overcome the law of increasing entropy.
-
- The decrease in entropy within the life forms
is possible because other parts of the system experience even greater entropy
increase to pay for it. Most of this
increased entropy is in the form of radiation.
-
- For life
forms on Earth to decrease entropy, the biosphere, Sun - Earth system expel
heat and radiation, increasing entropy enough to compensate. Entropy of the whole system is still
increasing as the laws of physics require.
-
- Entropy has
another interesting property. It may be
considered information. Increasing
entropy is increasing randomness, or decreasing information. For life to assemble a molecular structure
out of 20 amino acids, and to do it 51 times in a row in order to randomly
create the simplest form of live, the probability is 10^66, one chance in 1
followed by 66 zero chances.
-
- Therefore we
must conclude that life occurred by some non-random process. Some information, or higher intelligence, was
involved. Somehow 10^360 possible
combinations of DNA strands actually arranged themselves to create life. The number of known versions of life in the
Universe is 1. And, all life known is based on this same DNA. The odds of you being here are overwhelmingly
slim. Miracles do happen. You are one.
-
- October 25, 2018. 609
Origins of
Existence by Fred Adams
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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------ “Jim Detrick” -----------
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--------------------- Wednesday, October 31, 2018 -------------------------
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