The Principles of Life

[reka]

I have just started to read 'The Principles of Life' by Tibor Ganti.

"What is life?
What are the essential differences between the living and non-living systems?
The exact scientific answer to these ancient questions are indispensable preconditions for the understanding of the origins of life, for the artificial synthesis of living systems, but also for some important social problems,..."


He tackles the issues of the beginnings of life and death from a
chemical engineering viewpoint.

So far the book is fascinating as he describes the workings of the
manufacture of monomeres and polymeres as tiny chemical machines.

I would be very interested in reading from anyone who has read this
book.

It was written in 1971. The man is pure genius years ahead of his
time(in my humble opion).

[reka]

I found this website
http://thelivingmoon.com/43ancients/02f ... fe_02.html

very interesting

Regarding DARK SPOTS on Mars south pole, I also found information that 3 Hungarian scientists (Planetarium and the Institute for Advanced Study, Budapest) who were searching through over 60 000 photos from MGS, claim the following:

Excerpt;

In 2001, three Hungarian researchers, Tibor Ganti, Eoers Szathmary, and Andras Horvath from the Planetarium and the Institute for Advanced Study, Budapest, claimed to have found evidence of vegetation in some of the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) images. Large groups of dark spots in craters in the south polar region of Mars (see photo) which spread every Martian spring could prove there is life on Mars, they said. The team studied 60,000 photographs taken by MGS before concluding that the organisms lived by photosynthesis. "The organisms live between the surface of Mars and a thick ice cover that isolates them extremely well from Martian temperatures of around -120°C," said Ganti. "When the spring comes and light penetrates the ice, these organisms absorb the energy of light and warm up themselves. Under the ice, temperatures rise to slightly above 0°C. A thin inner layer of the ice melts, thus creating the conditions of life. In the summer, when the whole ice cover melts and the water evaporates, they dry out again," he said. The dark spots start spreading in the spring, varying from 10 meters to several hundred metres in diameter. "The organisms could be algae or lichen at the most, similar to organisms that can be found on tundra close to the earth's North and South Poles," according Ganti. However, other, non-biological explanations have been put forward. For example, it has been noted that images taken by the Giotto probe showed that the black color of cometary nuclei is formed when a mixture of carbon and water ice is exposed to ultraviolet radiation. For another possible non-biological interpretation, go here.