The Star Larvae Hypothesis:
Silicates and
Biogenesis
Biological life is cosmic, not
terrestrial, in origin and scope
by Star Larvae
The origin of life remains an unsolved puzzle. And theologians,
scientists, and school boards likely will continue to debate the issue.
Whatever the resolution of these debates, this much is certain: If the universe
spent its first moments as a ball of radiation, then life must have arrived
sometime after the beginning. The first biological cells arose at some time and
at some place, once the ball got rolling.
According
to the Big Bang cosmology, the primordial radiation cooled as it expanded, and
from it condensed the first subatomic particles. These particles, under the
influence of their own gravity, organized themselves into diffuse clouds here
and there in the expanding universe. As each cloud grew more massive, it became
denser owing to its own intensifying gravity. Eventually, pressure in the
centers of these clouds ignited nuclear reactions, and the first generation of
stars was born.
These
stars manufactured, as each generation continues to do, the species of atoms
that are needed to construct planets, moons, comets, and the other components
of solar systems. Nature uses an assortment of atoms in her manufacturing
processes: ordinary metals; radioactive metals; inert gases; and the elements
central to biology: carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, which, along with hydrogen,
make up the bulk of the organic world.
Certain
of nature's atomic widgets at some point got themselves assembled into simple
molecules, organic macromolecules, and ultimately into the first viruses and
bacteria. Where and how did this precise chemical
engineering occur? And is the process ongoing?
"In our first paper
referring obliquely to biology entitled "Primitive grain clumps and
organic compounds in carbonaceous chondrites" (Nature 264, 45-46,
1976) we wrote:
'The formation of simple amino acids (e.g., glycine) is expected to take
place in dense molecular clouds which may well be the cradle of life.'
Even such a tentative proposition was regarded as
outrageous heresy in 1976, although now in 2004 it is regarded as
obvious."
The
prevailing assumption among research scientists has been that atoms and simple
molecules first got arranged into macromolecules and cells somewhere on the
surface, or near the deep-sea vents, of the early Earth. Numerous researchers
have attempted to recreate the chemical, thermal, and other conditions that
characterized the Earth after it cooled in hopes of throwing light onto the
chemical path that led to the first living cell. These laboratory efforts have
left behind a legacy of inconclusive results, in which mixtures of simple
molecules, such as methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, and water, reacting
chemically under the influence of electric sparks or other energy sources, have
produced various consistencies of organic sludge. But no life.
Using genomic analysis to determine rates of
genetic change during evolution, researchers Alexei A. Sharov and Richard
Gordon retrodict the time at which the first cells arose and conclude that
that date far precedes the origin of the Earth. That is, Earth isn't old enough to have hosted the origin of
biological life. This finding, plus the observation that material moves
through the galaxy—pushed by stellar winds, carried by comets and the newly
discovered "nomad"
planets that wander the galaxy unattached to any star, and by the
circulatory effects of the galaxy’s own rotation—means that geocentric
assumptions can be set aside without reservation, and investigators can cast
their nets almost anywhere in search of conditions conducive to the manufacturing
of biological cells. There is no shortage of extremophile
micro-organisms that thrive in conditions once thought inhospitable to life. (Even the
species of stars include extremophiles.)
In
industry, the manufacturing of molecular-scale devices is called nanotechnology. The search
for the origins of biological life should focus on conditions that would favor
a natural
nanotechnology—that is, conditions conducive to manufacturing amino and nucleic
acids and assembling them into viruses and bacteria. In other words, research
into the origin of life should focus on real estate equipped with the
infrastructure needed to support cell factories.
Silicon and Carbon: Made for Each
Other
The
physical and chemical conditions inside stellar nebulae — the clouds of gas
and dust within which solar systems condense — would seem make these nebulae
more conducive to hosting cell factories than would conditions on the surface
of a freshly minted planet. The energetically dynamic environment inside an
embryonic solar system seems to be ideally
suited to the conjuring of life. And the element silicon seems ideally suited
to play the role of sorcerer's apprentice.
"But at [the end of the
fifteenth century] nature was still regarded as a living organism, and the
relation between nature and man was conceived in terms of astrology and magic;
for man’s mastery of nature was conceived not as the mastery of mind over
mechanism but as the mastery of one soul over another soul, which implied
magic; and the outermost or stellar sphere was still conceived in Aristotelian
fashion as the purest and most eminently living or active or influential part of
the cosmic organism, and therefore as the source of all events happening in the
other parts; hence astrology."
Silicon,
like carbon, has a habit of bonding chemically with its own kind. This habit
produces parallel macroscopic forms of the two elements. Both form
three-dimensional crystals: carbon as diamond and the so-called buckeyballs or
fullerenes and silicon as varieties of mineral crystals, or silicates,
including precious stones and clays, not to mention the circuitry of the semiconductor
industry. Packed less tightly, the atoms compose flexible chains, such as those
that form the "backbones" of plastic polymers (carbon) and of
synthetic rubbers, or silicones (silicon). These shared habits might predispose
the chemical cousins to cooperate, given the right conditions.
A
cell factory needs an energy source and a way to direct energies precisely. It
needs to shepherd chemical reactions up against the thermodynamic gradient
through levels of increasing chemical complexity, away from equilibrium. It has
to be able to catalyze organic reactions to build macromolecules and provide a
physical structure to hold those molecules in place during their assembly into
cellular substructures.
Given
these criteria, silicon tops the list of potential midwives to assist during
the birthing of biology. Silicon naturally bonds with various metals to form a
variety of periodic and aperiodic crystalline forms. Silicate crystals
potentially could serve as templates during organic synthesis. Nucleic acids
and proteins could interlock handily with silicate crystals in secure
arrangements during assembly into larger structures. (Proteins have crystal
forms, and crystallography remains a primary laboratory technique for
determining the structures of proteins. It is the methodology that was used to
determine the double helix structure of DNA.)
Because
some silicate minerals have photoelectric properties—they can convert sunlight
into electricity—silicon could serve as an energy source to drive organic
synthesis. Some silicon crystals also possess piezoelectric properties. Under
pressure, they generate an electric current. Phonograph needles exploit this
effect. Piezoelectric effects provide another potential source of energy to
drive synthesis.
Biogenesis Through Silicate-Based Nanotech
It turns out that some silicates also have a
capacity to catalyze organic chemical reactions. Certain reactions that build
complex organic molecules from simpler ones occur more readily in the presence
of certain silicate minerals. Clay-catalyzed RNA synthesis, for example, has
been demonstrated in the research of James Ferris at New York’s Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute. NASA researchers Hugh Hill and Joseph Nuth similarly
have demonstrated the ability of amorphous iron and magnesium silicates to
catalyze a variety of organic molecules from a gas mixture containing only
carbon monoxide, nitrogen and hydrogen. The properties of silicates align to
make the materials plausible components of cell factories. Tim Tyler has posted
a bibliography of references to silicate-mediated organic synthesis at http://originoflife.net/links/index.html).
As
to where silicate-managed nanotech cell factories might operate in nature, it
turns out that all of the necessary ingredients are at hand, in nearby space,
in what astronomers call "the local interstellar cloud." Our solar
system is embedded in this cloud. The most abundant element in the cloud, as
throughout the universe, is hydrogen, the starting material from which stars
manufacture the other elements. Next in abundance in the local cloud are the
elements carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen—the building blocks of organic
chemistry—and silicon, magnesium, and iron, materials from which nature could
construct nanotech assembly lines for the mass production of biological cells.
"What is Life but the
continual resolution of the antimony of the diverse by the spasm of Love under
Will, that is, by the constantly explosive, the orgiastic, perception of Truth,
the dissolution of dividuality in one radiant star of Truth that ever
revolveth, and goeth, and filleth the Heavens with Light?"
More
specifically, researchers know that observations of young stars of intermediate
size, so-called Herbig Ae stars, which resemble the sun in its infancy, and
observations of the known contents of comets, suggest that, when solar systems
form inside cooling stellar nebulae, silicate grains catalyze simple organic
reactions to produce a variety of prebiotic organic molecules.
The
prevailing scientific model of interstellar grains, based on spectrographic
analysis, is of carbonate
shells covering silicate nuclei, and see here.
So the commingling of silicates and organics is just a predisposition of star
formation. The reactions involved require the heat and pressures found near a
protostar. The grains, once coated with simple organics, then are transported
by a "circulatory system" of material flowing from the center of the
nebula out to the distance at which comets are thought to form. (The research
by Nuth, Hill, and colleagues appears in Lunar and Planetary Science XXXIIII
[2002], and see the paper "Protostars
are Nature's Chemical Factories," by Nuth and Johnson in Lunar and
Planetary Science XXXVI [2005]. A summary of this research is provided in "Constraints
on Nebular Dynamics and Chemistry Based on Observations of Annealed Magnesium
Silicate Grains in Comets and in Disks Surrounding Herbig Ae/Be Stars",
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 98, No. 5, Feb. 27, 2001,
2182-2187.)
In
a 2008
paper, Nuth and coauthors describe a self-perpetuating catalyst that could
produce large quantities of organic material in protostellar nebulae. Here is
the abstract from that paper, titled, A Self-Perpetuating Catalyst for the
Production of Complex Organic Molecules in Protostellar Nebulae (The
Astrophysical Journal, 673: L225-L228, February 1, 2008):
"When
hydrogen, nitrogen, and CO are exposed to amorphous iron silicate surfaces at
temperatures between 500 and 900 K a carbonaceous coating forms via
Fischer-Tropsch-type reaction. Under normal circumstances such a coating would
impede or stop further reaction. However, we find that this coating is a better
catalyst than the amorphous iron silicates that initiate these reactions.
Formation of a self-perpetuating catalytic coating on grain surfaces could
explain the rich deposits of macromolecular carbon found in primitive
meteorites and would imply that protostellar nebulae should be rich in organic
material."
More
recent studies of protostellar nebulae show that, far from being collapsing gas
and dust clouds of roughly homogeneous structure, protostars are complex
chemical systems with stable internal processes that circulate material in
distinct patterns and that this circulation of materials across thermal
gradients produces a distinctive, complex chemistry. In an article in Science
Express (March 29, 2012) Complex
Protostellar Chemistry, Nuth elaborates on the new, more complex model of
protostellar interiors:
"Large-scale
motion driven by conservation of angular momentum, together with more local
convective cells above and below the hotter nebular midplane dynamically mix
products of chemical reactions from many different environments throughout the
nebula."
The
result?
".
. . [B]ecause the midplane is hotter than the outer boundary of the disk,
convection will also mix materials vertically in the nebula. Ciesla and
Sandford show that ice-coated dust grains, moving outward and subject to
convection will be exposed to cosmic radiation that is sufficient to cause the
same chemical effects seen in dark cloud cores—that
is, the conversion of simple carbon-and nitrogen-containing molecules into more
complex organic species—and so will have consequences
for nebular chemistry."
The
study by Ciesla and Sandford is summarized in this March 30, 2012, University of Chicago news release:
"Complex
organic compounds, including many important to life on Earth, were readily
produced under conditions that likely prevailed in the primordial solar system.
Scientists at the University
of Chicago and NASA Ames
Research Center came to this conclusion after linking computer simulations
to laboratory experiments. Fred
Ciesla, assistant professor in geophysical sciences at UChicago, simulated
the dynamics of the solar nebula, the cloud of gas and dust from which the sun
and the planets formed. Although every dust particle within the nebula behaved
differently, they all experienced the conditions needed for organics to form
over a simulated million-year period.
“Whenever
you make a new planetary system, these kinds of things should go on,” said Scott Sandford,
a space science researcher at NASA Ames. “This potential to make organics and
then dump them on the surfaces of any planet you make is probably a universal
process.” Although organic compounds are commonly found in meteorites and
cometary samples, their origins presented a mystery. Now Ciesla and Sandford
describe how the compounds possibly evolved in the March 29 edition of Science
Express. How important a role these compounds may have played in giving rise to
the origin of life remains poorly understood, however. Sandford has devoted
many years of laboratory research to the chemical processes that occur when
high-energy ultraviolet radiation bombards simple ices like those seen in
space. “We’ve found that a surprisingly rich mixture of organics is made,”
Sandford said. These include molecules of biological interest, such as amino
acids, nucleobases and amphiphiles, which make up the building blocks of proteins,
RNA and DNA, and cellular membranes, respectively. Irradiated ices should have
produced these same sorts of molecules during the formation of the solar
system, he said. But a question remained: Could icy grains traveling through
the outer edges of the solar nebula, in temperatures as low as minus-405
degrees Fahrenheit (less than 30 Kelvin), become exposed to UV radiation from
surrounding stars? Ciesla’s computer simulations reproduced the turbulent
environment expected in the protoplanetary disk.
This
washing machine action mixed the particles throughout the nebula, and sometimes
lofted them to high altitudes within the cloud, where they could become
irradiated. “Taking what we think we know about the dynamics of the outer solar
nebula, it’s really hard for these ice particles not to spend at least part of
their time where they’re going to be exposed to UV radiation,” Ciesla said. The
grains also moved in and out of warmer regions in the nebula. This completes
the recipe for making organic compounds: ice, irradiation and warming. “It was
surprising how all these things just naturally fell out of the model,” Ciesla
said. “It really did seem like this was a natural consequence of particle
dynamics in the initial stage of planet formation."
NASA's
Stardust mission, which in 2004 captured and returned to Earth dust from the
comet Wild 2, provided additional corroborating evidence of silicate
transport processes. And isotope analysis provides additional evidence. The cometary
dust included silicate crystals that could form only in the innermost regions
of the solar system and that then must have been transported to more
peripheral, colder regions, where they were incorporated into comets. At later
stages in a developing solar system, when planets are forming, the
characteristic silicate material identifiable in the circumstellar dust includes
a greater proportion of crystalline (as opposed to amorphous) silicates, and
the organic content of the dust comprises increasingly complex molecules. This suggests a two-step process, in which simple organics are catalyzed
near the protostar, then transported to cooler regions of the stellar nebula
for further, more precise chemical processing. The second step relies on
crystalline silicates. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has
revealed similar processes operating in other galaxies. It might be
a routine part of solar system formation that the relevant elements are brought
together in the right kind of reactive environment to synthesize complex
organic chemistry. Ground-based studies have revealed
significant organic chemistry in protoplanetary disks around T Tauri and Herbig
Ae stars.
Chondrites
are a class of primitive meteor that includes the famous Murchison meteorite,
which fell in (on?) the town of Murchison, Victoria, Australia in 1969. The Murchison is rich in organic material, including common
amino acids. Chondrites generally are rich in organic material, but they are
comprised primarily of chondrules, which are roughly millimeter-sized
silicate-rich spherules. Chondrules are dominated by olivine [(Mg,Fe)2SiO4],
pyroxene [(Mg,Fe,Ca)SiO3], and silicon glass.
In June 2011, near
the village of Tissint, Morocco, a Martian meteorite struck the Earth.
Shattered pieces of the meteorite were recovered less than five months later.
Its mineralogic content was determined to be primarily olivine-phyric
shergottite. A team of U.K. researchers examining samples with electron
microscopy discovered in the meteorite a number of spherical and spheroid
bodies rich in carbon and oxygen, suggesting remnants of biological origin.
One such structure is shown at left.
The formation of these spheres, the researchers observe, "within the
mineral matrix is not easy to explain by any non-biological processes. Biology,
on the other hand, can provide an elegant explanation of these
structures."
Because
sedimentation and the turbulence of convection currents
disrupt silicate crystallization on Earth, the semiconductor industry continues
to work with NASA to investigate silicon crystallization in space. In
weightlessness, silicon crystals can be grown larger and with greater
purity—geometric regularity—than they can on Earth. This effect suggests that
the manufacturing of viruses and bacteria in space could occur on a massive,
cosmic scale. Radiation conditions in space might even be responsible for
biochemistry's homochirality. Darwin's hypothetical "small warm
pond" in which he imagined life to have arisen, might be an image less
fitting than that of a "big cold cloud."
Jim Tyler - Genetic Takeover
(8:49)
The Star
Larvae Hypothesis:
Stars constitute a genus of organism. The stellar life
cycle includes a larval phase. Biological life constitutes the larval phase of
the stellar life cycle.
Elaboration: The hypothesis presents a teleological model of nature,
in which
- Stellar nebulae manufacture bacteria and viruses in their interiors as they cool.
- Biology evolves within an ontogenetic program that in its entirety, on- and off-planet, constitutes a generational life cycle of the stellar organism.
- Technology plays a necessary role in evolution. It enables biological life to emigrate from planets to weightless space.
- Postplanetary life manufactures the protons needed to create, then metamorphoses into, new stars.
- A prescient complex of celestial religious motifs expresses humankind’s stellar calling. The star is the human imago.
- Nature's metabolism encompasses the organic and the inorganic in a continuum of anabolic and catabolic exchanges.
From Star Larvae @ http://www.starlarvae.org/Star_Larvae_Silicon_and_Biogenesis.html
For more information about panspermia see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/panspermia
For more information about space migration see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/smi2le
- Scroll down through ‘Older Posts’ at the end of each section
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