LIFE:
a natural stage in the development of Matter
November
1992
by George F. Hart Ph.D.
From
the energy burst that heralded the dawn of time, and the searing
furnace where heaven and hell are synonymous; and, in a place where
the wizards, warlocks, gods and poets are replaced by mathematics to
describe the way
of our Universe, matter
was ultimately born [see
Davis
and Gribbin,
1992]. Neither religious commandment nor a persuasive god was needed
for this feat [see Paul
Davies,
1983]. With Genesis but a second ago our Universe was a 300,000 km
ball of energy with a temperature of 10 billion degrees. A chaotic
mass of light particles, a brew of protons and neutrons, electrons
and positrons, and entities born during the first fraction of a
second of time. As the electrons began to join with the atomic nuclei
to form the simple atoms of hydrogen and then helium, photons were
produced as a by-product, and our Universe was bathed in an intense
light that made spacetime transparent.
As
the cosmos cooled the Atomic Era gradually gave way to the Galaxy
Era: galaxy formation and the origin of the stars, planets, and
associated celestial bodies. Our Milky Way Galaxy and the Solar
System, with it’s associated planets eventually formed. But our
star system was not early – for it is a second generation star. An
earlier stellar system had formed and exploded as a super nova, and
within this explosion new matter, the heavier elements, were cooked.
With heavier elements available Earth-like planets could be formed.
These contained carbon, and phosphorous and sulfur and the many other
elements that are necessary constituents of living material.
It
is instructive to note that the main elements that make up living
matter are amongst the most abundant in our Universe, four of them
are indeed within the top five [C,
O,
N,
H],
and two others [P,
S]
are ninth and sixteenth respectively. How fortunate, but then again
how necessary. It is possible to conceive of a scientific explanation
of how this material formed in the living matter without much trouble
but there remains the nagging thought that the mixture was correct in
the first place, for the process of life to develop as a natural
stage in the evolution of matter within our Universe. Our scientific
explanation for creation,
cannot decide whether or not our Universe could have happened without
a super-natural input. However, in addressing the origin of space,
time, matter, life and mind science does reject
the need for an interfering
deity once
our Universe was formed, and at the same time it may offer a more
certain path to god than does any religion.
Geologists
and astrophysicists both agree that the Earth of 4 billion years ago
had an atmosphere with a high content of hydrogen gases: H2S
[hydrogen sulfide], CH4
[methane], H2O
[water] and H3N
[ammonia]. Natural
combinations of these materials, found today in deep space and in the
atmosphere of other planets, and in the sterile rocks brought back
from our Moon, are the very building blocks of living matter. In the
laboratory scientists can retrace the key steps inanimate material
had to follow to form organized cells [see Fox,
1988]. In the hot atmosphere of early Earth the amino-acids which
form the basis of all proteins were easily formed, as was adenosine
triphosphate [ATP]
the chemical responsible for short term energy storage in all living
cells, and the nucleotides that make-up the DNA
– RNA
molecules. The early Earth
was abundant in these components and the waters of the oceans have
been likened to a warm soup. Pre-living cells in the form of thermal
proteins have
been formed in the laboratory and converted to organized proteinoid
microspheres which
can perform many of the functions of living matter, including the
development of primitive cell membranes, but contains no DNA
or RNA.
The cell membrane is critical for it allows the retention of large
molecules and passage of small ones thus acting as a chemical sieve
protecting the chemical activity of the inside of the cell from the
harsh variable environment on the outside, yet the cell remains an
open system. Interestingly, fossilized proteinoid microspheres from
ancient Pre-Cambrian rocks are indistinguishable from those formed in
the laboratory.
The
early microbes lived by fermentation,
and by photosynthesis.
The earliest photosynthesizes used the hydrogen compounds to produce
their energy and did not expel oxygen. However, they rapidly changed
the atmosphere to one much more like that of Venus with 98% CO2
and small quantities of N,
O2,
and H2O.
The primitive proto-cells did not function as individual units –
agglomerations of interacting chemical sites in which one reaction
provided material for an adjacent reactive site was the way in which
they worked. This is how the primitive bacteria [prokaryotes] behave
even today. Nitrogen fixation is a function seen only in the
prokaryotes and developed in the cyanobacteria.
Our Sun produces the compounds that were
used in fermentation [some of these early prokaryotes could use
carbon dioxide] and eventually a form arose that used sulphate to
generate ATP and
produce sulfur gases [as does modern Desulfovibrios].
This led to the synthesis of the porphyrin ring which passed
electrons and generated ATP along the way. With this development true
photosynthesis began, in which the light energy is stored and then
used to break carbon dioxide derived from the atmosphere. At the same
time Clostrida, Azobacter, and
Rhizobia – like
cells extracted the N
from the atmosphere and converted it to ammonia-like
compounds for use by other organisms.
Autotrophs,
in the classical forms, adsorb energy directly from sunlight, using
chloroplasts within which the chlorophyll molecule can absorb the
light energy, and store it as chemical energy [as chemical bonds],
which is then used to make glucose from water and carbon dioxide. The
chlorophyll is simply a catalyst for the energy transfer. From the
glucose, the starch, cellulose and other polysaccarides can be
derived.
Heterotrophs
cannot synthesize the necessary material from inorganic matter but
must use pre-formed organic molecules such as glucose or starch. This
process involves respiration which is taken care of by the
mitochondria in the cells. Mitochondria are self reproducing systems
that originated as primitive proto-organisms i.e. they are capable of
division. They have their own nucleic acids and enzyme synthesizing
system, and respiration takes place within the mitochondria,
Finally
a chemical system evolved [mutated] that solved the hydrogen problem
by generating a second photosynthetic reaction center which took the
light energy absorbed by the first reaction and split H2O,
thus providing abundant hydrogen to combine with carbon dioxide to
produce nutrients [see Margulis
and Sagan,
1986]. This single change was apocalyptic: Earth would never again be
the same for the efficiency of the method meant it’s success and
general dominance. As this life form evolved so the oxygen content of
the atmosphere began to build-up, and oxygen
is toxic to organic matter!
The evolution of this system led to processes which had the ability
to use oxygen in respiration: a method that generates much more ATP
per unit of expended energy than does fermentation. In time the
adaptation of this process led to cells that required
oxygen: these were the
obligate
aerobic organisms.
Aerobic
respiration is
controlled combustion in which the organic molecules are broken down
to yield CO2
and H2O
plus energy
in amounts eighteen [18] times that of fermentation.
Ribosomes,
which were once possibly primitive organisms themselves, are small
granules of RNA
protein that participate in
the formation of protein and are capable of division. In the
archaebacteria
of thermal springs, such as
Thermoplasma
and Sulfolobus,
the organisms have distinctive ribosomes and ribosomal RNA,
and can withstand high temperatures and acidity, such as would have
existed in the Proterozoic Era. The DNA
in primitive prokaryotic
cells is a simple strand that replicates itself: referred to as a
large
replicon.
Small
replicons are
small fragments of DNA derived principally from other bacteria: they
are plasmids,
episomes,
prophages,
phages,
and when they replicate and encase themselves in protein they become
viruses.
Fragments of DNA can enter the cell and insert themselves into both
the large and small replicons – thus altering the genetic makeup.
The small amount of genetic material in a prokaryotic cell restricts
their metabolic activity thus the exchange of fragments of DNA
provide the genetic
diversity necessary for survival and adaptation – it is far more
versatile than that seen in advanced mitosis
and meiosis.
The
primitive bacteria have a method of motion called the proton
motor, made
out of protein which is propelled by electric charge on the molecule.
From this developed the Spirochete
organism which is possibly
the precursor of every motile cell that has developed since [e.g.
Trichonympha],
and seems to be the basis of mitosis and meiosis reproductive
strategies.
The
DNA of
the Eukaryotes is 100 times greater than that in the prokaryotes. The
nucleus is 40% DNA and 60% protein. An important theory is that the
Eukaryotes arose by symbiosis from prokaryotic ancestors. Kwang Jeon,
at the University of Tennessee, actually showed this could happen
when he incorporate a bacterium into an Amoeba and successfully bred
this as a new species. In one sense he actually domesticated
bacteria!
In
the evolution of the Kingdom Plantae
primitive
organisms in the form of plastids
were ingested but not
eaten, and became part of the organism, living in symbiosis.
The bacteria Prochloron,
which lives on a sea squirt, is in fact very much like a chloroplast.
Rhodoplasts,
which are photosynthesizing structures using red-light, probably had
as their ancestors the cyanobacteria. Chlamydomonas,
for example, has
a DNA
structure
in the chloroplasts that is similar to that found in the
cyanobacteria. The evolution of cellular life on Earth is a legacy
system not an innovative system i.e. later life-forms build upon
chemical systems that came before.
Human
beings have 1016
bacterial
cells but only 1015
animal
cells in their bodies.
Margulis
and Sagan, 1986
READINGS
Paul
Davies and John Gribbin, The
Matter Myth,
Simon & Schuster Inc, 1992.
Paul
Davies, God
and the New Physics,
Simon & Schuster Inc, 1983.
Sidney
Fox, The
Emergence of Life – Darwinian Evolution from the Inside,
Basic Books, Inc., NY, 1988.
Lynn
Margulis & Dorian Sagan, MICROCOSMOS
– four billion years of Evolution from our Microbial Ancestors,
Summit Books, NY, 1986.
Lynn
Margulis and Michael Dolan, Early
Life.
Science Books International, Boston. 1982.
GLOSSARY
Adenosine
triphosphate [ATP] This
is the immediate energy source for most cell functions. It consists
of a N-base [nucleotide adenine], a sugar [ribose] and a phosphate
group. Splitting of the outer two phosphate groups generates energy
and leaves ADP or AMP. There are three major pathways that generate
ATP in a cell” fermentation, photosynthesis, and respiration.
Margulis,
1982, p:15, notes “Once
an ATP pathway evolved it never died out”.
The enzymes that catalyze these reactions are also stable.
Aerobic
respiration This
is a key way in which cells gain energy by oxidative metabolism,
using oxygen to convert nutrients into carbon dioxide and water..
Atomic
Era
Fermentation
The
process of deriving energy from the oxidation of other organic
compounds.
Galaxy
Era The
Era of our Universes history that began some 12.7 billion years
ago and when localized regions of Hydrogen and Helium were
gravitationally attracted to begin the formation of the galaxies. At
a certain stage density has increased and the core temperature rises
above 106
kelvin
where nuclear fusion begins, essentially H
produces
He
and
energy, forming a stars.
Interfering
deity A
mythical super-natural being or magician, call God, that can alter
the entropy of a system, in ways not possible by science, and thereby
alter the course of the history of our Universe.
Meiosis
The kind
of chromosomal replication that occurs in sexually reproducing
organism resulting in the formation of germ cells
Mitochondria
Mitochondria
are circular molecules of DNA that occur outside of the nucleus of
the cell. They probably originated as isolated sites of chemical
reactions during the proto-biologic phase of evolution of organic
matter, but today they are localized within a cellular system.
Mitochondrial DNA [mtDNA] is inherited only though the maternal line,
derived from the maternal germ cell. The mitochondrial DNA does not
recombine with any nuclear DNA, although its function is partially
controlled by the nucleus i.e. it is passed on unchanged except for
mutations.
Mitosis
A process
that makes a copy of each chromosome during the division of the cell
such that the two new daughter cells that result from cell division
contain replicas of the DNA in the original cell.
Obligate
aerobic organism An
organism that requires oxygen to oxidize material in order to obtain
energy.
Photosynthesis
The
process whereby a cell uses the energy from sunlight to produce
chemical energy.
Plastids
These
are major organelles found in plants and algae responsible for
photosynthesis.
Porphyrin
ring These
are pigments found in protoplasm giving the cell color, such as green
chlorophyll and red hemoglobin.
Thermal
proteins Amino
acid chains formed by heating [see Fox] to 160-210oC,
thereby producing polymers of a molecular weight of 300,000. When
washed with water protenoid microspheres of a diameter of 20,000 Ao
are
formed essentially forming proto-cells.
Is Zero a
better name than God: for the phenomenon that created the Universe?
November
1992
Reprinted from the 1993
distributed pre-print.
By George F. Hart,
Ph.D.
It
started with the birth of Natural Science and blossomed in the work
of Darwin; attacked religious foundation in a way more persuasive
than the Copernican earth model; and, it manifests itself in
evolutionary biology – the
death of God!
The
final blow was delivered by paleontologists but the death knell is
being tolled by physicists who are pushing towards the point where
reason has no logic and chaos reigns supreme – beyond point Zero.
If
humanity is to mature into the New World Order a uniform logic for
existence must prevail. History has shown that successful religions
come to accept the facts of prevailing logic. Modern logic, in the
form of science, explains how time and our Universe began; how Earth
originated, and how life grew from the inanimate; and conclusively,
the inevitable end of everything. History thus predicts the ultimate
fall of the tribal religions that dominate much of humanities present
thinking. Religious interpretations and the variety of Holy books
hide these truths by a cloak of irrationality and a semantic web,
and if we are truly to attain an understanding of nature, the Gods of
old must die and be replaced by a concept acceptable to all people.
Allah, Jehovah, Christ, Krishna, Buddha and even Satan must all be
one and the same; and, modern science tells us that this concept –
a basis for a unified religion – is ZERO.
No
heroic creature is necessary to bring our Universe into being. No
wizard or warlock, no mythical god, no poet, philosopher or magician.
Our Universe began out of nothing. Modern science accepts this as a
known fact. Our Universe will end as nothing. Modern science predicts
this in heat death of our Universe, when entropy is zero and perfect
order rules. In the meantime reality is real and we exist; and life,
and death and all things form a holistic whole. Our existence, our
reality, is merely the space-time occurring between these nothings. Is
our existence then simply a dream by God?
In
the beginning there was nothing, not a point, not a void, not a time,
not a space. This was before creation, outside of time. But something
was astir at the boundary of this nothingness, some hazy, frothy,
unfocused darkness was popping in and out of existence from beyond
the 5th
dimension. Virtual
space-time bubbles less than 10-33
cm in diameter and existing
for less than 10-43
seconds, before they are
pulled back into multidimensional chaos by super-gravity – or is it
super-time. Then – for time begins – a stir, a ripple, something
minimally small, an inconceivably little;thing
has popped into existence.
But within this thing is the whole of space-time, of energy, of
matter; and ultimately, of all dreams and desires and yearnings.
Super-gravity has had a quantum transition and within the quantum
world you can really get something from nothing.
Our
Universe is at Planck
Time and
has a size of Planck
Length: it
has started. A super-gravitational warp into the 5th
dimension and space-time
exists, The temperature was over a trillion, trillion, trillion
degrees and the grand unified particles condense as bosons
[photons, X-particles and
their kin] and fermions
[lepton-quarks]. At this
temperature only gravity and the grand unified law controlled the
interactions within our Universe. All this in a universe the size of
a raindrop. This universe contained no matter at all – not even
dimensionless matter. It was pure energy.
The
energy accompanying this Big Bang was so colossal that it contained
within it all the radiation and matter of our entire future Universe.
From this moment of inception the Universe cooled, and as it did so
it underwent a phase change, as a heated iron bar does when it cools
and develops electromagnetism; or as a body of water cools and
suddenly freezes. By 10-35
seconds at a temperature of
1026
degrees the photons
froze-out and the physical laws of the strong
force and
the electro-weak
force,
along with gravity,
held the energetic universe together as it continued its cooling and
expansion. But other things
were formed at the instant
time began and during the first moments of existence: neutrinos,
and possibly undetectable things such as dark
matter,
cosmic
strings,
and texture
that give the present
universe the bulk of its mass and its detailed structure. And for
every thing there was an anti-thing. Anti-neutrinos, anti-photons,
maybe anti-grande unified particles. This universe must have been
asymmetrical
from the beginning, with
more things than anti-things. We know this because we
exist!
As
the blob of space-time begins to expand and inflate like the surface
of a balloon, nature had a wonderful simplicity about it that science
can unfold. From 10-33
cm to 100,000 kms across in
a fraction of a second and the great bang that heralded creation
still reverberates throughout our Universe and is heard by our modern
instruments as the back-ground radiation. These facts prompted Pope
Pius XII to remark that everything
seems to indicate that the universe has in finite times a mighty
beginning [address
to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Rome, 1951].
Cooling
still more the leptons and quarks became separate entities when at
10-10
seconds expansion had
lowered the temperature to about ten thousand, trillion degrees. At
these temperatures the electroweak force is no longer applicable. It
is replaced by the electromagnetic force and the weak force and the
four laws of physics that govern particle interaction today are now
all manifest – gravity, strong, weak and electromagnetic,
controlling the behavior of the leptons, quarks and photons.
Curiosity these particles are dimensionless and our universe had size
only in terms of the space-time occupied by its energy – a size
about that of our Sun.
As
our Universe grew in size so it’s energy occupied a greater volume
and it’s temperature dropped. By space-time 10-6
seconds the temperature had
dropped to below a thousand trillion degrees – a level that the
quarks combined into nucleons [neutrons and protons] and
anti-nucleons – the building blocks of our modern common-place
matter. Quarks could no longer exist alone and the four forces of
nature then played out a dance with the particles and anti-particles
of our Universe such that by 10-4
seconds they had magnified
the original asymmetry resulting in the destruction of most of the
anti-particles and the survival of one nucleon to 109
photons. Now as the
temperature dropped to 100 billion degrees and our Universe is one
hundredth of a second old [10-2]
the nucleons split into neutrons and protons.
By
time one second [100]
our Universe was a 300,000 km ball of energy with a temperature of 10
billion degrees. A chaotic mass of light particles – the fertile
brew of creation. And in this brew moved protons and neutrons,
electrons and positrons, and entities born during the first fraction
of a second of time, in that searing furnace at the dawn of time.
Conflict
and clashes between light particles spawned electrons and positrons
which were stable at the temperature of the one second universe. Now
we see why Einsteins insight was a key to creation. The brilliance of
the idea that: E=mc2.
That energy
and mass are the different sides of the same coin and can be
transformed one from another … and so mass was born our of light
energy. Genesis was already a second ago – Creation
ex nihilo!
The supreme
scientific myth [3].
But
what of God? Pre-christian religion recognized an entity prior to our
Universe. The High God Zervan, who existed beyond light and darkness,
was worshiped by the Zervanites. Our Universe was formed by the
interaction between light and darkness, good and evil. This idea
pre-dates the Babylonian concept of a divine space-time and has more
in common with the cosmic dimension of oriental philosophy. Judaism
and eventually Christianity made the dualism of the origin of our
Universe and anthropocentric concept, shifting the cosmic struggle of
good [light] and evil [darkness] to a spiritual struggle with the
soul of person. St. Augustine saw our Universe as created with
time not
in time.
A God existing outside of spacetime cannot alter phenomena within
spacetime.
Imagine
multidimensional spacetime, pure consciousness, a holistic mind. From
this spawned the ripple within the nothingness before our Universe
began. From this was ejected the black cosmic blob of Grande Unified
particles into the fifth dimension. From this was given the Grande
Unified Law that defined the behavior of our Universe: the laws of
physics. Gravity permeated the system. Is God then the supreme
holistic concept, perhaps many levels of description above that of
the human mind? [3].
And
God said, Let there be light; and there was light.
The
book of Genesis, Christian Bible.
READINGS
John
Barrow, Theories of Everything, Clarendon Press, 1991
David
Darling, Deep Time, Dell Publishing, 1989
Paul
Davies, God and the New Physics, Simon & Schuster Inc., 1983
Paul
Davies and John Gribbin, The Matter Myth, Simon & Schuster Inc.,
1992
James
Trefil, The moment of Creation, Collier Books, 1991
Andrew
Welburn. The Beginning of Christianity, Floris Books, 1991
Malcolm S.
Longair, The Origins of our University, Cambridge University Press,
1990
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I thank my long time
friend Dr. Faith Lagay for kindly criticizing and editing this
manuscript.
GLOSSARY
Planck length
10-33
cm.
At this very short distance gravity manifests its quantum effects.
Below this size the Universe does not exist as we know it i.e. the
universe popped into existence with this initial size!
Planck time
10-43
seconds.
This is the time it takes light to travel a distance of Planck
length. Below this is the quantum level at which time does not exist.
The universe did not truly exist until this time i.e. there never was
a time zero!
Gravity and
Super-gravity
Gravity is
a kind of geometry that describers how space-time is shaped or warped.
It is not a field
existing
within space-time but it is
space-time.
Super-gravity is the gravitational effect at the quantum level and
exerts itself over distance of <10-33
cm [Planck
length].
Virtual space-time
Volumes of
space-time <10-33
cm in
diameter which pop in and out of existence of less than 10-43
seconds
within the Void that is the pre-universe. It can be considered a
projection of the 5th
dimension
into the 4th
dimension
of space-time. The universe started to exist when one of these virtual
space-time volumes continued to exist for longer than Planck time and
expanded as our Universe.
Chaos, entropy and heat
death of our Universe
Anything
that arises from virtual space-time is in a maximum state of chaos or
disorder. Entropy is a measure of this disorder. High entropy is
maximum disorder and as our Universe evolves it's total entropy
decreases i.e. it becomes more ordered. When it decreases to it's
minimum all motion will have stopped and, from the concept of the
heat death of our Universe, every particle will be at an infinite
distance from it's neighbor.
Matter and anti-matter
E2=M2C4
is a
formula that has two roots [+ and -] and leads to the idea of
anti-matter. It predicts that every sort of particle has an
anti-particle. Moreover, the energy locked up in a space-warp can be
created into both matter and anti-matter. This is why matter appears
spontaneously our of the Void of virtual space-time.
Background radiation
The cosmic
microwave radiation pervades the whole universe and is thought to be
the relic of the electromagnetic energy generated by the explosive
origin of our Universe.
Cosmic strings and dark
matter Material
that is theorized to have formed at the time our Universe began. Dark
matter is invisible material that must exist if our Universe is
closed. Cosmic strings are extremely small tubes of energy left over
from the big bang, comparable with the cracks formed in ice as water
freezes. Inside the tubes are bits of the universe frozen in the
quantum state they possessed at the time of their origin at 10-35
seconds.
Fundamental forces of
nature The
strong, the weak, the electromagnetic, and the gravitational force
are the basic forces of nature. In the early phase of our Universe
the strong, weak and electromagnetic forces were combined into a
single force which controlled the actions of the material universe.
Fundamental particles
Bosons
[photons, neutrons and X-particles], fermions [leptons, quarks,
electrons and neutrinos] are the particles that formed in the early
universe and later gave rise, under control of the laws of physics,
to the everyday materials we know today.
