The Deep Biome
I have realized that all life is one immortal organism, and that each of us is but the latest iteration of clumps of cells with independent agency that original creature has arranged to express. Should we breed before we die, we continue that unbroken chain through our cells on and beyond our own selves.
Though we die, our life - all life - has continued. It's an amazing realization, that in a very real sense, our life force is immortal.
Some of that life is inconceivably different from our own form. Not just bugs and worms and plants, but many things we don't even know exist yet. Things that live on completely different scales.
This video discusses some new discoveries that have revealed these strange bits of us, the deep biome that resides below the seas.
There is also life deep in the stone of the Earth's crust, lingering in fractures and feeding slowly on the chemical reactions between water and stone. In the mud discussed in the video, these tiny microbes that may be 100 thousand years old need but a zeptowatt (one sextillionth of a watt, or 1x10^-21 watts) of energy a day, an unimaginably insignificant bit of power. In contrast people need about 100 watts a day.
I found this video fascinating, and her thoughts on how to grow such things that might divide once a century amazing. It's easy to imagine such life might be able to live deep in Mars, Europa, or even on comets or asteroids.
I'll be surprised if there isn't life living orders of magnitude more slowly than us almost everywhere we look, when we get there to look.
Wonders never cease, but we might take a while to find them. That's ok. They're in no hurry.
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
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If we are one, a concept that goes pretty deep despite sounding simple, then it's true that we never die. Some aspect of our life form will continue, at least until this material world is gone, and possibly much longer than that. I think this is a realization the dying often have, and it may be responsible for the "I'm okay with it now" mentality some people close to death develop.
I don't think you're wrong, and my recent taste of mortality supports your thoughts pretty strongly. However, I had this realization even before the heart attack. Maybe a premonition? Dunno. What I do know is that when microbes divide, both cells that result from division are alive. Neither dies in the process. When we higher animals lay eggs or fertilize them, the eggs and sperm are both alive. Neither dies in the process. Seeds and spores may lie dormant for a long time, perhaps were such things part of the deep biome, for millenia. But, dormant is not dead, and when they do begin to grow, they have continued alive, and life has continued unabated.
Life is a continuous chain that has never died, twisting and branching to reach each and all of us, from the deep biome to your dear heart.
I'm ok with that =)
For sure! Still, your unique nature (DNA) and nurture (life experiences) have resulted in an individual that has some value, from my perspective. For example, here you are recognizing and helping others recognize what may be a truer understanding of our interconnectedness than we've had before. Your unique way of seeing, comprehending, and communicating might result in me and others sharing the understanding, perhaps even after you the individual is "gone".
Such a legacy is more than I could ask, or expect.
Thank you.
Do you believe that Earth's ancestors came from outer space?
I think the mixed-blooded Nephilim of angels and humans may be aliens, as in Genesis.
I believe that God created the universe in the fact that life exists only on Earth in the universe.
You seem to believe that you can find life on Mars, but I don't believe it.
I cannot fault you in any way for believing what you believe. I know I cannot know all the facts. Given what I see regarding living things that need but a zeptowatt of energy to live, I see that kind of life is entirely possible on Mars, Europa, or the ten billion billion billion similar habitats across the universe. I do not have any factual basis for ruling out life being in those places. Nothing in the Bible or any other religious tradition says "Nowhere else in the universe but Earth has life."
I can't prove it's there, and I can't prove it's not. I can prove I don't know.
Thanks!
Nothing in the Bible or any other religious tradition says "Nowhere else in the universe but Earth has life." <<<<
Christian priests in the United States and Europe claimed that the Bible indicates that God created life only on Earth.
The reason God created the universe is for humans, the Bible says. Why then there is no earth-like ecosystem on Mars?
The fact that in this infinite universe, only the earth is full of seas and countless creatures, shows that the Christian Bible is the truth.
The universe has a myriad of planets, but the existence of God is revealed by the fact that life exists only on Earth.
I note the Bible also says that man was created to tend the Garden. I don't think what Priests say is always scripture, even if they claim it is.
Today our tending has enabled us to intimately manage not only the landscape, but the genescape of our charge. As we explore the breadth of the gift we have been given in the universe, we bring that garden of life with us, and not only on purpose.
Various living things are so obdurate that it is almost completely impossible to clean our probes, satellites, and space vehicles. It is certain that creatures have hitched rides off Earth on our craft already. I would bet all I own that there are living Tardigrades on Mars, and the moon too. Waterbears can survive extraordinary conditions and enter a state of dormancy when without liquid water.
I reckon we are God's way of enlarging the Garden He gifted us in the beginning.
Why do polar bears not live in the Sahara? Mars is not like Earth. The conditions on the surface, and perhaps even deep underground, are very different than on Earth - but perhaps not too different deep underground for such slow living creatures as are found in the deep biome.
It's also very likely that when life on Earth was less than a billion years begun, conditions on Mars were far more like to Earth now than Earth then was. It's very possible that a deep biome yet lives on Mars. We sure haven't dug down to find it yet, so don't know one way or the other.
I do not think your faith in God should depend on whether or not there are microbes elsewhere, or everywhere. Life being exclusive to Earth seems a poor nail to hang one's belief in so much that has so little to do with where life lives on. I cannot speak for you, nor recommend how you consider faith and life to you, but I don't find my ignorance of what is over the next hill a sound basis for deciding how I feel about what is known to me here. I just don't think that's wise or reasonable, and you seem to be both.
It is often said that the continent was blessed by God after seeing America. Puritans who came from Europe to escape religious persecution found their country.
The fact that democracy spread throughout the world through the founding and independence of the United States seems to indicate that God founded the United States. It is similar to the particularity that life exists only on Earth.
That's an interesting thought. It is true that in the late 18th Century a wave of political evolution swept the world, and the US was at the forefront of the Enlightenment.
Thanks!