The Big Biology

 

"That was awesome," said my kid in a happy voice, as she pulled up her blanket and snuggled back into bed after coming down from watching for Perseid meteorites on the roof.

4.5 billion years ago a specific collection of stardust coalesced into this planet, Earth. That's when Geology begins. Physics and Chemistry came before, as the heavier elements necessary to form into a rocky planet were created by massive supernove. There wasn't a Geo- before, but now there is.

This particular collection of stardust included plenty of iron to create a molten core and a magnetic field as it spun, water to dissolve and evaporate, and gases to form an atmosphere. This particular collection of stardust is in a particular orbit in the Solar System, where it is energized to a particular temperature range by the Sun. The temperature and the tides on this particular collection of stardust &emdash;Earth&emdash; are shaped by its spin (day/night cycles), the tilt of its axis (seasons / years) and the pull of the moon (tides).

That same star stuff from 4.5 billion years ago has been circulating and recirculating, laid down in one pattern, then broken up and reconfigured into another pattern. The sprinklings of meteors since then are only a minor contribution to the stuff that makes up this planet, makes up us.

For the first few billion years the circulating and recirculating emerged soley from the properties of Physics and Chemistry. Rocks cycled through the Earth's core, laid down by volcanos and sediment, eroded, compressed, melted and deposited again. Water cycled through the oceans and the atmosphere. Molecules and atoms were sorted, sifted, heated, cooled, jostled together in different patterns. Minerals and complex organic molecules formed because the conditions happened to exist here and there. We've studied and named these how these processes of physics and chemistry unfolded in particular ways because of the particularities of Earth, and we call these processes Geology and Weather. Geology and Weather are special subsets of Physics and Chemistry given how they play out on Earth.

Oddly enough, at some point some of those patterns became capable of configuring the star stuff into another of the same pattern! That inflection point is what we point to as the emergence of Biology from the physics, chemistry and geology that came first.

From here I want to go in two directions. I want to explore how physics and chemistry and this particular place in space have created the protections within which Life could emerge. I also want to go backwards. Where did this collection of Stardust come from? What physics and chemistry led to this point?

This is where we explore the origins of the heavier elements from massive supernovae as I learned about in July...

 

13 Aug 2024 © Rebecca L. Shapley

 

Our bodies are so amazing... this incredibly intricate and precise pattern of Stardust with cosmic energy flowing through, all accomplished by various other patterns, such as the pattern of our mother and father who triggered and assembled our own, but also the marvelous little Stardust mechanisms in plants that harvest the Sun's energy and store it into packets that other animals and people can then use...

 

12 Aug 2024 © Rebecca L. Shapley

 

Katie reminded me that the Earth's molten core creates the magnetic field that protects Earth's surface from solar winds that would wipe it clear of life, killing DNA.

The core is left over from the creation of the planet. Once it fully cools, the magnetic field will go away and our protection will go away... Other planets are dead like this already.

Another way in which the Earth is exceptional and Life is improbable...yet here we are. The magnetic field from Earth's molten core is another form of protection provided by physics and the sheer chance out of a mind boggling number of experiments in our Universe that then also enables Life. For a long while anyway.

Feedback loops in Life can maintain an astonishing number of attributes about Earth that also perpetuate life. I don't see how the Life on the surface of the Earth can perpetuate the molten core and magnetic field... I guess any more than we could adjust the Earth's orbit if it were suboptimal. But I wonder what Life's consciousness will be like in a few billion years when that problem becomes relevant?

 

2 Aug 2024 © Rebecca L. Shapley