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Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

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Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#151

Post by asow92 »

simiones wrote: post #109
asow92 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what's being—albeit atypically—advocated for here: That even steaks are a naturally occurring byproduct of humans and cows because humans and cows naturally exist.

Sure, but then of course absolutely everything is "naturally occurring". Plastic is a naturally occurring substance, computers are naturally occurring objects, C++ is a natural language. Perhaps then only miracles from God (for those who believe in such things) are unnatural?

In your example, I’d opt for supernatural over unnatural, and I get your meaning.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#152

Post by jodrellblank »

simiones wrote: post #61
mavili wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should be so common, right? Yet we're struggling to find any form of life. Not complex, just anything that lives.

I don't think we have any tools that could possibly detect bacterial life anywhere where we don't have a physical presence at the moment. That is, even if Venus were teeming with simple life on every square cm, I don't think any of our instruments could pick it up unless we send a probe to collect and analyze samples. So, at the moment we have no hope of detecting this type of life outside the solar system even if it…

We've got photos from the surface of Venus: https://www.planetary.org/articles/every-picture-from-venus-...

It's visibly not covered in moss, fungus, grasses, algae, slime.

On Earth we talk about hot hydrothermal vents underwater: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/survival-at-hydrothermal-vent... - this says "the Pompeii worm [...] is one of the most heat-resistant multicellular animals on the planet, able to withstand temperature spikes of over 80°C. 'Most animals can't cope with anything over 40°C. Very close to the hot fluid, there are typically only microorganisms. These can survive in temperatures up to around 120°C,' explains Maggie."

The surface of Venus averages 462°C.

Okay we won't know for sure unless we collect samples, but we do know any life would have to be heat resistant beyond anything we know of - beyond what our metal space probes could tolerate - and invisible to the naked camera even in 'teeming' quantities, and leaving no trace of waste gasses in the atmosphere which we can detect remotely.

[ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvkMwv9EYQQ - Venera: The Incredible Probe that the Soviets Sent to Venus ]

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#153

Post by MacsHeadroom »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #128
lachlan_gray wrote: post #79

It's fascinating to me that the complexity of life always goes up. Outside extinction events, complex life generally seems to become more favourable over time. It's interesting that (to my knowledge) we don't see an ecosystem lose complexity in its entirety unless it's dying. Simple organisms make a bedrock for complex organisms, and while the complex organisms have more specific needs, they are better at exploring,…

> complex life generally seems to become more favourable over time. Talk more about this, as I'm not sure how you are arriving at this conclusion... it feels a bit like when people talk about evolution being in some way directed as opposed to just being .

Evolution is "directed" towards the exploitation of free energy, inevitably producing increasingly complex niche methods of obtaining and dissipating energy.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#154

Post by colordrops »

lachlan_gray wrote: post #79

It's fascinating to me that the complexity of life always goes up. Outside extinction events, complex life generally seems to become more favourable over time. It's interesting that (to my knowledge) we don't see an ecosystem lose complexity in its entirety unless it's dying. Simple organisms make a bedrock for complex organisms, and while the complex organisms have more specific needs, they are better at exploring,…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#155

Post by asow92 »

simiones wrote: post #107
asow92 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are, truly, Of Nature, not Above Nature. What gives humans the special designation of their byproducts being unnatural?

You're asking the question backwards. We have a concept, "byproduct of human action". We needed a word for this concept. We more or less arbitrarily chose "unnatural" or "artificial" as the words for this concept. You can argue that "unnatural" was a bad choice for this concept. But that's irrelevant to what words mean. There are other words like this - for example, "antisemitic" means "something that is against Jewi…

Naturally, I would prefer to agree to disagree if you’re willing.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#156

Post by alanbernstein »

lachlan_gray wrote: post #79

It's fascinating to me that the complexity of life always goes up. Outside extinction events, complex life generally seems to become more favourable over time. It's interesting that (to my knowledge) we don't see an ecosystem lose complexity in its entirety unless it's dying. Simple organisms make a bedrock for complex organisms, and while the complex organisms have more specific needs, they are better at exploring,…

I think you're describing the maximum complexity of life over time, which is an interesting thing to think about: the life forms that stand out among the rest for "how far" they evolve.

In terms of other measures (total biomass, long-term survival, short-term adaptability), the life forms that stand out, historically, are very different. Ants, roaches, sharks, bacteria.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#157

Post by flanked-evergl »

lachlan_gray wrote: post #79

It's fascinating to me that the complexity of life always goes up. Outside extinction events, complex life generally seems to become more favourable over time. It's interesting that (to my knowledge) we don't see an ecosystem lose complexity in its entirety unless it's dying. Simple organisms make a bedrock for complex organisms, and while the complex organisms have more specific needs, they are better at exploring,…

As entropy goes up in the universe complexity first increases and then decreases. And life is probably a consequence of this.

Sean Carroll explains it quite well in his book The Big Picture and also in this video series from minute physics

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoaVOjvkzQtyZF-2VpJrxPz...

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#158

Post by mapreduce »

conesus wrote: post #137
adrianN wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now do a lump of plutonium.

How did that lump of plutonium become a lump? That part wasn’t natural.

"How did that lump of plutonium become a lump? That part wasn’t natural."

Allow me to become a little philosophical but since human beings which are product of nature made plutonium, isn't the making of plutonium natural too?

I mean everything that is happening in this universe is natural!

I know the general usage of the words "artificial" for human-made and "natural" for everything else. But when we are talking at the grand scale of life and universe I think a human-made plutonium is as natural as bee-made honey.

Re: Is the emergence of life an expected phase transition in the evolving universe?

#160

Post by manmal »

jmcqk6 wrote: post #89
lachlan_gray wrote: post #79

It's fascinating to me that the complexity of life always goes up. Outside extinction events, complex life generally seems to become more favourable over time. It's interesting that (to my knowledge) we don't see an ecosystem lose complexity in its entirety unless it's dying. Simple organisms make a bedrock for complex organisms, and while the complex organisms have more specific needs, they are better at exploring,…

Check out the work of Ilya Prigogine - he won a Nobel prize in the 70's for his work on self-organizing complexity. There is a selection force in the universe for increasing complexity, being driven by the dissipation of energy. When you have systems in non-equilibrium, there is a strong pressure to explore the possibility space to find ever more efficient ways to dissipate energy. A bacteria the size of a grain of s…

Very interesting. Do you have an intuition for why there is selection pressure towards energy dissipation?
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