Vad är skillnaden mellan ett frö (som kan börja gro) och ett sandkorn?
Jag har länge klurat och kommer fortsätta klura på hemligheten om livets innersta essens - alltså vad det är som ger saker liv, vad som gör att vissa sammansatta system utvecklar förmågan till liv och andra inte.
Lite ålderdomliga argument för liv är punkter som bestå av celler, uppta och avge ämnen, föröka sig, växa/utvecklas, reagera på omgivningen, ha ämnesomsättning och så vidare, men många av dessa stämmer på många nutida fenomen såsom exempelvis bilar och de ger heller ingen förklaring till varför en del former utvecklar de här processerna och andra inte.
Jag har funderat över om det har med bindningarna i organiskt material att göra. Levande varelser består till allra största del av kolföreningar av olika slag, och kolatomer (C) kan binda till fyra andra atomer, vilket gör kolkedjor väldigt flexibla. Detta i sin tur ger väldigt stora (i princip oändliga) variations- och förändringsmöjligheter, vilket ger möjlighet till många olika strukturer vilka har många olika funktioner som kan interagera med varandra i ex en levande kropp. Detta eftersom alla vävnader och strukturer i grund och botten består av kol och alltså har de mer eller mindre likadana förutsättningar när de reagerar.
Men vad exakt är det som gör att kolföreningarna börjar reagera? Som säger till fröet att börja gro?
Är det den värme som tillförs i och med våren som fungerar som aktiveringsentalpi (energin som krävs för att vissa reaktioner ska kunna starta), som får dessa "gro-reaktioner" att starta? Men hur fungerar det i mer komplicerade varelser?
Min lillebror frågade vad som då händer om man rostar ett frö. Detta innebär ju att reaktioner sker som inte vanligtvis sker, sker, ämnen som är viktiga komponenter avdunstar osv. Men då är vi tillbaks till frågan varför dessa nya föreningar inte kan leva? De innehåller ju kolkedjor, som när det levde...
Det finns någonting, en "livs-essens" som jag skulle vilja kalla det, eller som andra kanske skulle välja "Gud", och som ger liv åt saker med rätt förutsättningar.
Denna livsessens kommer jag nog aldrig sluta spekulera i... hade vart roligt att forska i.
Kom gärna med egna idéer, kära läsare, det är bara att kommentera på!
/Ika
27 februari, 2010
26 februari, 2010
För er som läser matte C eller bara är allmänt intresserade av vetenskaplig derivatafilosofi
Jag undrar man har kommit fram någon formel för universums expandering.
jag spekulerade lite i var som skulle hända om man deriverar den i ett tidigare inlägg, alltså vilken förändringshastighet utvidgningen har i en specifik punkt och hur den punktens förändringshastighet förändras. Det vill säga om accelerationen accelererar.
Om man deriverar så många gånger det går, tills alla termer "försvunnit", och tolkar det värde som finns kvar, får man alltså den slutliga accelerationen. Om man sätter denna lika med noll, kan man få ut ett värde på x som motsvarar tiden då universum kommer sluta expandera och istället vända mot att implodera.. om det nu funkar så.
Ett problem är bara om denna slutliga acceleration/retardation innehåller e^x, vilket vid derivering blir precis samma sak, dvs e^x. Då kan man hålla på och derivera hur länge som helst...
Gud vad flummiga mina senaste inlägg är. Hope you like 'em anyway=)
/Ika
jag spekulerade lite i var som skulle hända om man deriverar den i ett tidigare inlägg, alltså vilken förändringshastighet utvidgningen har i en specifik punkt och hur den punktens förändringshastighet förändras. Det vill säga om accelerationen accelererar.
Om man deriverar så många gånger det går, tills alla termer "försvunnit", och tolkar det värde som finns kvar, får man alltså den slutliga accelerationen. Om man sätter denna lika med noll, kan man få ut ett värde på x som motsvarar tiden då universum kommer sluta expandera och istället vända mot att implodera.. om det nu funkar så.
Ett problem är bara om denna slutliga acceleration/retardation innehåller e^x, vilket vid derivering blir precis samma sak, dvs e^x. Då kan man hålla på och derivera hur länge som helst...
Gud vad flummiga mina senaste inlägg är. Hope you like 'em anyway=)
/Ika
Us in the universe... eller något
[Med reservation för diverse förbisebara språkliga inkorrektheter]
What hits me right now, finally having time to read one of Carl Sagan’s articles, is how small we actually are. Even though we at this time are very aware of that Earth is not the center of the Universe around which everything else is rotating, many of us still think the humankind some sort of reason of all life, probably because we are the dominating species on this Earth.
But what we often do forget is that it is just the Earth. We do not know what other types of organisms populate the universe. We think of ourselves as some kind of perfect creatures, or highly developed computers that scan all around us with a faultless capacity of evaluation.But if we look to our situation, what are we, actually?
Is life rare? Do living creatures only exist on this one planet? Our answer to these questions has varied through time. For a long time, we did not know of any other planets at all. Stars were in the sky at night and the sun and the moon rotated around the Earth inside a shell of Gods and their homes.Then we examined the world a little more thoroughly and found out this was not the case. After a while the idea of an infinite Universe was accepted, and we started thinking of how many populations the Universe actually contains. One scientist called Drake even came up with a formula for calculating the amount of the number of possible populations in the Milky Way (excuse for the Swedish explanations; it’s from Wikipedia):
R* = hur många nya stjärnor som årligen föds i Vintergatan
fp = hur stor andel av dem som har planetsystem
ne = hur många planeter av samma typ som jorden det finns i genomsnitt i ett planetsystem
fl = den andel planeter av samma typ som jorden där det föds liv
fi = den andel planeter där livet utvecklar sig och blir intelligent
fc = den andel planeter där det intelligenta livet uppnår en hög teknologisk nivå
L = den teknologiska civilisationens genomsnittliga livslängd i år
N = antalet utvecklade civilisationer i Vintergatan i varje ögonblick
There are quite a lot of factors, which with the right values make the possible amount of populations in the Universe huge. This, assuming that we can figure out the value of every factor, which as you can see is not that easy in every case.
But recently, we started to examine this saying a little more thoroughly. Is the probability of other civilizations in the Universe really that big? Well, if we assume the Universe is infinite, the number of possible civilizations also is infinite. But actually, scientists recently found that there are many more things that affect the chance for a star to make a planet available to develop life than they thought before. Our sun is quite special in this aspect. For example the corona of our sun contains a different composition of elements compared to most other stars. Our sun lacks some of the heavier elements and has a bigger percentage of lighter elements. This plays an important part in the evolution of the earth because scientists think the planets are made out of the elements that came from their sun. Thereby this composition affects the chance of the planet to develop life.
I don’t know why I’m writing all this. Probably because it’s interesting and I didn’t know that much about it until I started writing. It wasn’t my intention from the beginning.But my point is what if we’re not alone? Just taste that thought for a moment. There really are other creatures in this Universe. That makes us not alone. Maybe we are not that special.
Maybe we really are that small. Then what special purpose serves our life? We are only one species among others in this one ecosystem. What we do is not very different from the animals’ way of living; we eat, we sleep, we communicate and reproduce, only we do it in a more unnatural way. Well, actually not that unnatural, because the human brain is built to be able to develop in a way that seems to be exponential. We are doing what is expected of us.But the human brain is a great mystery. Personally I don’t think the animals have an emotional life as wide and intense as ours. This because their sense of solving logical problems demonstrably is not as developed as ours, and it would be strange if one of their cerebral hemispheres (halves of the brain) is extremely developed while the other one is not.And still we don’t use more than maybe ten percent of the capacity of our brain.
This didn’t become the text I thought it would be. I’d better just stop writing now. If I ever remember my final point of this discussion, I will write it later on.
/Ika
What hits me right now, finally having time to read one of Carl Sagan’s articles, is how small we actually are. Even though we at this time are very aware of that Earth is not the center of the Universe around which everything else is rotating, many of us still think the humankind some sort of reason of all life, probably because we are the dominating species on this Earth.
But what we often do forget is that it is just the Earth. We do not know what other types of organisms populate the universe. We think of ourselves as some kind of perfect creatures, or highly developed computers that scan all around us with a faultless capacity of evaluation.But if we look to our situation, what are we, actually?
Is life rare? Do living creatures only exist on this one planet? Our answer to these questions has varied through time. For a long time, we did not know of any other planets at all. Stars were in the sky at night and the sun and the moon rotated around the Earth inside a shell of Gods and their homes.Then we examined the world a little more thoroughly and found out this was not the case. After a while the idea of an infinite Universe was accepted, and we started thinking of how many populations the Universe actually contains. One scientist called Drake even came up with a formula for calculating the amount of the number of possible populations in the Milky Way (excuse for the Swedish explanations; it’s from Wikipedia):
R* = hur många nya stjärnor som årligen föds i Vintergatan
fp = hur stor andel av dem som har planetsystem
ne = hur många planeter av samma typ som jorden det finns i genomsnitt i ett planetsystem
fl = den andel planeter av samma typ som jorden där det föds liv
fi = den andel planeter där livet utvecklar sig och blir intelligent
fc = den andel planeter där det intelligenta livet uppnår en hög teknologisk nivå
L = den teknologiska civilisationens genomsnittliga livslängd i år
N = antalet utvecklade civilisationer i Vintergatan i varje ögonblick
There are quite a lot of factors, which with the right values make the possible amount of populations in the Universe huge. This, assuming that we can figure out the value of every factor, which as you can see is not that easy in every case.
But recently, we started to examine this saying a little more thoroughly. Is the probability of other civilizations in the Universe really that big? Well, if we assume the Universe is infinite, the number of possible civilizations also is infinite. But actually, scientists recently found that there are many more things that affect the chance for a star to make a planet available to develop life than they thought before. Our sun is quite special in this aspect. For example the corona of our sun contains a different composition of elements compared to most other stars. Our sun lacks some of the heavier elements and has a bigger percentage of lighter elements. This plays an important part in the evolution of the earth because scientists think the planets are made out of the elements that came from their sun. Thereby this composition affects the chance of the planet to develop life.
I don’t know why I’m writing all this. Probably because it’s interesting and I didn’t know that much about it until I started writing. It wasn’t my intention from the beginning.But my point is what if we’re not alone? Just taste that thought for a moment. There really are other creatures in this Universe. That makes us not alone. Maybe we are not that special.
Maybe we really are that small. Then what special purpose serves our life? We are only one species among others in this one ecosystem. What we do is not very different from the animals’ way of living; we eat, we sleep, we communicate and reproduce, only we do it in a more unnatural way. Well, actually not that unnatural, because the human brain is built to be able to develop in a way that seems to be exponential. We are doing what is expected of us.But the human brain is a great mystery. Personally I don’t think the animals have an emotional life as wide and intense as ours. This because their sense of solving logical problems demonstrably is not as developed as ours, and it would be strange if one of their cerebral hemispheres (halves of the brain) is extremely developed while the other one is not.And still we don’t use more than maybe ten percent of the capacity of our brain.
This didn’t become the text I thought it would be. I’d better just stop writing now. If I ever remember my final point of this discussion, I will write it later on.
/Ika
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