Biology
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...209.3504p&link_type=abstract
2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #35.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, V
Biology
Scientific paper
Astrobiologists are seeking other life in the universe and we have found over 200 other stars with planets orbiting them. Yet the very definition of life evades us. Where does it begin or end? We cannot yet bind it to fixed parameters. We have also located over 150 organic molecules in space. As well the remarkable discovery has been made that a light spectrum taken through the interstellar dust toward the centre of our galaxy has characteristics similar or identical to the “light fingerprint”, the spectra of particular types of terrestrial bacteria.
Charles Birch, Emeritus professor of biology at Sydney University, has discerned that “matter appears to be life-like, rather than life being matter-like”. (Birch, 1999) In the work of the Russian biophysicist, Victor G. Gorshkov, he discusses the “role of the biota” in regulating through genetic programming the environment and eco-systems. (Gorschkov, 2000)
In his work on the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock, discusses the perception of the dynamic adaptive cybernetic processes that substantiate the functioning of the entire collective global “organism”, utilizing what we call the biota as well as all diverse ecosystems to achieve its organic creative synergism.
Yet with all the complexity of our current sciences we have yet to truly understand or find a conclusive definition for life. What role do magnetic fields such as those produced by spinning black holes or magnetars have in the generation of life in cosmos? What in fact is life? A complex geometry uttering the universe or an emergent property of organisms? What is alive? What is now being studying in complexity theory is how all forms seem to essentially arise “spontaneously”, to emerge from the void state as unique mathematical identities. What can this tell us about the nature of life itself?
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