Plasma and Abiogenesis

[jackokie]

@jacmac Thank you for your reply and the reference to Franklin Harrold’s book In Search of Cell History. I posted my interim thoughts/conclusions while still exploring microbiology because I hoped people would point me in helpful directions, which seems to have paid off.

Re your specific points:

• You say “They might be the oldest and simplest but their complexity is how they are now, not Gazillions of years ago.” Exactly. That’s why I proposed a less complex predecessor. Current thinking is that birds evolved from certain dinosaurs, and it is plausible that over “Gazillions of years” birds resulted from that evolution. However, a bird is not a dinosaur, a Bengal tiger is not a Saber tooth tiger, and an Archaeal microbe is not its hypothetical ancestor.
• Archaea come in many forms, some which can tolerate high temperatures (Thermophiles), and at the other extreme some can tolerate temperatures as cold as -20°C (Psychrophiles). The first Thermophiles were found around deep-sea hydrothermal vents, with a remarkable biochemistry based on chemosynthesis; these microbes are the base of support for complex ecosystems. The Archaea contain thousands of genera, with vastly different properties; for example, from the linked article below: “...animals at hydrothermal vents have special biochemical adaptations that protect them from hydrogen sulfide.”. Here is a good article about the Thermophiles.
  
  https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/deep-s ... ts-pumping

• While most casual discussions of microbes seem to center around their biochemistry, the research literature I’ve read to date has mostly focused on the cell cycle, because that’s where the complexity is revealed and many questions remain. The link below provides details of the cell cycle of Sulfolobus acidocaldariu, the most widely explored archaeon. Here is just one of many examples of how involved and finely orchestrated s. acidocaldari’s cell cycle is: “Several DNA repair genes displayed cyclic induction…”
  
  https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0611333104

In summary,

• The presence of dedicated structures to synthesize proteins (ribosome) or move the organism (archaellum) ,
• The vast number of genera displaying widely varying chemistries,
• The existence of “special biochemical adaptations” in Thermophiles.
• The presence of biochemical messengers to inhibit fission,
• The activity of DNA repair genes,
• The variety of different biochemicals used for the same purpose in different archaeons’ cell cycle steps, and
• The orchestrated steps of the cell cycle that have fall-backs in case a key substance is missing

are evidence of evolutionary responses to conditions encountered by simpler predecessors and are among the reasons to call Archaea “highly evolved”

To repeat, in my opinion it is beyond reasonable that something so complex and dependent on such organized behavior could be the result of a happy accident. Or to put it another way, it is beyond reasonable that the very first cell to exhibit life, i.e., replicate itself, was a fully formed archaeon with all of the structures, DNA, and fault-tolerant cell cycles that the domain exhibits. YMMV.

Thanks again for the reference to Franklin Harrold’s work. That will be the next thing I look at.

[jackokie]

@jacmac I meant to cover these as well:

I am suggesting many many many accidents (incidents) over many many many years, decades, centuries, and millennia.

I am proposing that if lightning strikes can produce cell sized spherical double layers, then the PRIMORDIAL SOUP would get a giant boost
toward reproducibility out of countless random events by finding itself provided with tiny little houses already wired with electricity to do stuff.

Perhaps I should have been more explicit. When saying something evolved, my default assumption is "many many many years, decades, centuries, and millennia.".

In my original post, I said

The demonstrated ability of electric discharges to create amino acids from a “primordial soup” shows that panspermia, i.e., amino acids, etc. carried on asteroids and comets, is unnecessary to account for life’s presence on Earth.

That was to point out that we've already got the mechanism for creating the amino acids, etc. with electric discharges; there's no need to wonder how they ended up on asteroids and comets. You and I are on the same page about electricity and the "primordial soup". Where we seem to differ is that I propose a more continuous electrical environment than just lightning (i.e., telluric currents), and am skeptical that we would see the same plasma structures at nano-scale as we do in the lab and cosmos. Perhaps I'll change my mind after reading Harrold's book.

[jacmac]

yes, jackokie, we are in the same ballpark.

am skeptical that we would see the same plasma structures at nano-scale as we do in the lab and cosmos. Perhaps I'll change my mind after reading Harrold's book.

There is no idea in Harold's book about any plasma involvement.
(that is, the EU plasma) He does seem to give a good summary of the different theories of Biochemists.
I actually E-mailed him and he responded. He was pleasant but I could tell he really did not get what I was saying.

Also, there is the paper om Micro Ball Lightning here:

I have found this document from 2006 on microscopic ball lightning:
https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LewisEmicroscopi.pdf

[jackokie]

@jacmac Thanks for the link. I'll start with that while I figure out which version of Harold's book to order. The comments at Amazon were mostly positive, with one recommending getting the book from the University of Chicago because the Amazon version's print quality was poor.

I also plan to search for any info on nano-scale plasma experiments/observations.

In another area of EU theory I've been wondering if it is possible to detect the relative strength of the current in Birkeland currents, in the solar system and in the cosmic web. For example, could the change in luminance of a variable star be predicted by detecting that the current feeding the star was increasing (not worded very well but hopefully the intent is clear)?

To folks reading this thread - this is not a private conversation between @jacmac and myself. I have seen plenty of insightful comments on this forum, so if you feel like contributing to this discussion please join the party.

[jackokie]

Abiogenesis update;

• I'm going to hold up on ordering Harold's book - it's $43 for the paperback, and I'm thinking that at this point it's clear electrical activity can create the basic constituents of life, so the remaining question is any effect electric charge has on fissioning.
• I'm going to do a deep dive into the fissioning mechanism - stages, roles of the various biochemicals, etc. - to see if I can find support for my hypothesis that just the affinity these biochemicals have for one another could have caused the first cell replication. As part of this research I'm also going to review what's known about gene expression in Prokaryotes to determine of the first primitive cell could have done without DNA.
• I intend to come back around to the subject of electrical activity in microbes once this research is done. Given my other obligations, it will likely be at least a week before l have anything to report.

I'm going to repost my concluding paragraph from an earlier post because I think it's an important idea:

If Wal Thornhill’s hypothesis is correct - that electric charge is the fundamental source of gravity - then positive and negative charges are the foundation of the universe from the smallest to the largest manifestations. We have seen that electric discharges can create elements and complex molecules. If my speculation about the beginnings of life is anywhere close to reality, then what we see in the cosmos – the filaments, galaxies, stars – is a web of life, a factory that creates the raw materials and provides the resulting life with the energy it needs to thrive. Is electric charge the Yin and Yang of Life?

[jacmac]

jackokie:

In another area of EU theory I've been wondering if it is possible to detect the relative strength of the current in Birkeland currents, in the solar system and in the cosmic web. For example, could the change in luminance of a variable star be predicted by detecting that the current feeding the star was increasing (not worded very well but hopefully the intent is clear)?

To my knowledge, the "current feeding the star" has not been found in our solar system.
On page 114 in his first book, under the title QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED Dr.Scott says
"What is the exact circuit diagram ?"
There is talk and assumption about polar circuits, but there is no evidence of a current strong enough to light up the sun.
I do think Dr. Scott's drift current in the entire solar system, moving toward the sun is reasonable; along with high energy cosmic rays.

Also, I am of the opinion that the solar wind from the sun outward is a feedback mechanism found mostly in the
vicinity of the planetary orbits, while the drift currents are everywhere else in the solar system.

[jacmac]

Ps. jackokie,
in a book I'm reading called LIFE(2016 Harper Perennial page 89) Freeman Dyson says:
"So, my version of the origin of life is that it started with metabolism only.
You had what I call the garbage-bag model The early cells were just little bags of some
kind of cell membrane.......and inside you had a more-or-less random collection of organic molecules.....etc"
It goes on to describe things evolving and replication comes later.

Sounds similar to what I propose..... little cell sized spherical double layered "little bags of some kind of cell membrane"
Jack

[jacmac]

Ps 2
I think the electric charge is the Yin and Yang of just about everything .

[Marioantonio]

@jacmac Thank you for your reply and the reference to Franklin Harrold’s book In Search of Cell History. I posted my interim thoughts/conclusions while still exploring microbiology because I hoped people would point me in helpful directions, which seems to have paid off.

Re your specific points:

• You say “They might be the oldest and simplest but their complexity is how they are now, not Gazillions of years ago.” Exactly. That’s why I proposed a less complex predecessor. Current thinking is that birds evolved from certain dinosaurs, and it is plausible that over “Gazillions of years” birds resulted from that evolution. However, a bird is not a dinosaur, a Bengal tiger is not a Saber tooth tiger, and an Archaeal microbe is not its hypothetical ancestor.
• Archaea come in many forms, some which can tolerate high temperatures (Thermophiles), and at the other extreme some can tolerate temperatures as cold as -20°C (Psychrophiles). The first Thermophiles were found around deep-sea hydrothermal vents, with a remarkable biochemistry based on chemosynthesis; these microbes are the base of support for complex ecosystems. The Archaea contain thousands of genera, with vastly different properties; for example, from the linked article below: “...animals at hydrothermal vents have special biochemical adaptations that protect them from hydrogen sulfide.”. Here is a good article about the Thermophiles.
  
  https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/deep-s ... ts-pumping

• While most casual discussions of microbes seem to center around their biochemistry, the research literature I’ve read to date has mostly focused on the cell cycle, because that’s where the complexity is revealed and many questions remain. The link below provides details of the cell cycle of Sulfolobus acidocaldariu, the most widely explored archaeon. Here is just one of many examples of how involved and finely orchestrated s. acidocaldari’s cell cycle is: “Several DNA repair genes displayed cyclic induction…”
  
  https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0611333104

In summary,

• The presence of dedicated structures to synthesize proteins (ribosome) or move the organism (archaellum) ,
• The vast number of genera displaying widely varying chemistries,
• The existence of “special biochemical adaptations” in Thermophiles.
• The presence of biochemical messengers to inhibit fission,
• The activity of DNA repair genes,
• The variety of different biochemicals used for the same purpose in different archaeons’ cell cycle steps, and
• The orchestrated steps of the cell cycle that have fall-backs in case a key substance is missing

are evidence of evolutionary responses to conditions encountered by simpler predecessors and are among the reasons to call Archaea “highly evolved”

To repeat, in my opinion it is beyond reasonable that something so complex and dependent on such organized behavior could be the result of a happy accident. Or to put it another way, it is beyond reasonable that the very first cell to exhibit life, i.e., replicate itself, was a fully formed archaeon with all of the structures, DNA, and fault-tolerant cell cycles that the domain exhibits. YMMV.

Thanks again for the reference to Franklin Harrold’s work. That will be the next thing I look at.

https://youtu.be/5vOMGQTjW9k

https://youtu.be/ut0KH3h7JVs

[jackokie]

@Marioantonio Thank you for these links. I'll add them to my "investigation queue" and definitely watch them. Given the size of that queue it may be a little while before I can respond.

[jacmac]

From a July 28 post on this topic, Re: Earth - How Hollow?
nick c has given us a link to an article about lightening causing small, about 50 um sized, glass spherules.
50 um is 50 millionths of a meter.
https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/ge ... -spherules

Glass spherules have been documented in many geologic deposits and are formed during high-temperature processes that include cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, volcanic eruptions of low-viscosity magmas, and meteorite impacts.

Lightning shapes spherules of glass this size when striking surfaces as described in the article.
These sizes are basically the same, or similar, as the size of biological cells.
This lends supporting evidence for my suggestion that the contribution of lightning to Abiogenesis
is the ability of plasma( in the form of lightning) to create the spherical, double layer, membranes
needed for the beginning of biological cells.
If lightning striking a certain kind of environment results in cell sized glass beads why not lightning striking
various primordial soup environments resulting in prototype cell structures containing bits of various primordial soup.
Over a long time, with many opportunities, chemistry eventually becomes biology.
Jack

[jacmac]

update:
I have found these two papers, each giving an extensive overview
of the recent state of studies and theories of Abiogenesis.

The requirement of cellularity for abiogenesis (2021)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 7021001422
And
The Emergence of Life (2019)
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 019-0624-8

From the 4th paragraph in the Introduction section:

What cannot be avoided in these discussions is that individual cells require
between a million and a billion electrons a second to function,
or as Albert Szent-Györgyi (1968) put it, life is “bioelectronics”

and from this paper, linked to the above quote.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/ ... .2005.3225
Energetics of the smallest: do bacteria breathe at the same rate as whales?

Maximum mass-specific metabolic rates displayed by growing bacteria are close to the record tissue-specific metabolic rates of insects, amphibia, birds and mammals. Minimum mass-specific metabolic rates of prokaryotes coincide with those of larger organisms in various energy-saving regimes: sit-and-wait strategists in arthropods, poikilotherms surviving anoxia, hibernating mammals. These observations suggest a size-independent value around which the mass-specific metabolic rates vary bounded by universal upper and lower limits in all body size intervals.

From my viewpoint as a completely untrained in bio chemistry or bio anything person,
it is obvious that the possibility of lightning providing a cell sized double charge layered sphere
that might then be involved in the origin of living cells or living cell precursors is not present in these papers.
They seem to be ok with ignoring the electronics part of "bioelectronics".
Comments welcomed.
Jack

[danda]

Dr. Tom Cowan talks about some related things, such as:

1. Cells are composed mainly of water, nucleus with dna, and cell membrane(s). Most of the cell structures we learned about in textbooks are simply theoretical constructs and artefacts of slide preparation and have never been proven to exist in a living cell. He says to read the works of Harold Hillman and Gilbert Ling.

2. Water in living cells is "structured water" or "ez-water" as described by Dr. Gerold Pollack (who spoke at EU 2017). It is a "fourth phase" of water, and is separated into negative and positive charge regions... much like a double layer.

3. DNA may simply be an antennae (tuned to the solar system diameter) that connects our physical matter with the etheric conciousness/spirit/soul that animates and directs matter. So in other words, looking for human conciousness or organizing principles in the body is like looking for Google's search algos in your laptop or phone. never going to work.

4. Nerves conduct electrically, not chemically. synapses are artefacts that do not actually exist.

[jacmac]

Thanks Danda.
My main idea here is to point to the possible generation of the right sized spherical double layered forms
by lightning strikes that could become the cell membranes needed for biological cells.
Contributions about the contents of cells are welcomed but I don't have enough (none) training in biology, to respond intelligently.
Jack

[Surik]

"The classic 1952 Miller–Urey experiment demonstrated that most amino acids, the chemical constituents of proteins, can be synthesized from inorganic compounds under conditions intended to replicate those of the early Earth."

The above quotation from Wikipedia, contrary to the theses of blind evolution, reflects the essence of the course of evolution. An intelligent being participates in it. Including a scientist. In the beginning, there had to be information without which no such complex, according to advocates of intelligent design, would have been able to accomplish, because it contains irreducible structures. RNA is a record of information, so what prevents the recognition that this information is placed in it from the outside. Second, information is the domain of the mind that processes it. One without the other has no reason to exist. Recent images of the cosmos in terms of Rendgen waves show the similarity of the cosmos's structures to the human brain. Connect the dots and everything will become clear to you.