Life as a principle of the existence of (our) universe
Earth
To begin, perhaps, should be that life, undoubtedly, has arisen. That is, now life exists, at least on planet Earth. This can of course be denied, but difficult. People will laugh. And once, about 13.7 billion years ago, life was nowhere. To be more precise and boring, there was not this very “where” (where life could be), moreover, there was not this very “then” when life could be somewhere. There was nothing at all, no time, no space, no matter. Usually I want to say that we mean the state “before the big bang”, but this is absolutely incorrect. When you have no time, there is no “before” and there is no state. But “after” appears at some point. Namely, it occurs at the moment of that very big bang. At this moment, everything appears in general, space, time, matter …
Well, what about life? When does life arise? And where does life arise? And what is life in general? Let’s figure it out.
First, find out when life originated on Earth? Scientists tell us that the first traces of life are found in rocks that are 3.9 to 4 billion years old. And the entire planet Earth is only 4.5 billion years old. Moreover, the first several hundred million of them it was a red-hot semi-liquid ball. That is, life on Earth arose immediately, as soon as the planet cooled down more or less. And there was so much of this life at once that traces of it have survived to this day, after four billion years.
What kind of life was it? Scientists tell us they were bacteria and archaea. Boggles the mind! Can you imagine the level of complexity of the internal structure of a bacterium? Compared with that inorganic and organic raw materials, this very primordial broth, in which, supposedly, life was supposed to spontaneously arise and gradually evolve to the level of bacteria. What is the likelihood of such a development of events? Usually, to illustrate this probability, the following analogy is given: it (the probability) is approximately comparable to the probability that a hurricane that has flown into a large city dump will spontaneously collect a Boeing 747 from the mountains of garbage lying there.
With bacteria and archaea, everything is clear and uninteresting. From this level for four billion years of evolution – to what we see today … yes, there are no questions at all. Let us note only in parentheses that for the appearance of the first eukaryotic (nuclear) cells it took something about one and a half billion years, and then another billion was required for the appearance of multicellularity.
But these are all quite understandable metamorphoses and quite reasonable terms. First, we powerfully upgraded the cage. Then they realized that it was convenient to cluster together and, as a result, move away from universality in favor of specialization. And then it started – like a snowball, on the rise.
This is understandable, observable and uninteresting. What’s interesting? An interesting leap from organic-inorganic mud to proteins and RNA-DNA. What was this mystical hurricane? The one that collected over a hundred million years, Boeing in the trash? There was no hurricane! This is unrealistic. Impossible!
You don’t need to be seven spans in your forehead to look at the globe and understand that Europe, Africa and the two Americas were once a single whole. In the same way, looking at the chronology of the evolution of life on Earth, you need to be a very stubborn adherent not to admit that life on Earth was “seeded” from the outside in a ready-made, initially rather complex form (viruses, bacteria, archaea) and gave abundant shoots immediately, as soon as more or less suitable conditions have been formed for this (this is how this life is arranged).
And here we smoothly move on to panspermia, in which, however, we do not see any great sin. When leaning towards panspermia, it is important not to get away from the original question. Well, it is obvious to any unbiased thinking person that earthly life did not originate on Earth, but was “brought” here from the outside. But somewhere, and once, and for some reason, it arose the same. Where and when? In any case, this must be dealt with.
Mars
What do scientists tell us? Scientists tell us: “Here, Mars …” Mars, on the one hand, is the same age as the Earth, but, on the other hand, it is quite noticeably smaller, which led to a noticeably different geological history compared to the Earth. Namely, they say, it was not as hot as the Earth and cooled down much earlier than the Earth. And once, at the start, it had a pretty decent atmosphere, a pretty decent climate on the surface, liquid water and a pretty decent magnetic field.
That is, when the entire Earth was still covered with an ocean of liquid magma, Mars had all the conditions for the existence of (the only form we know of) of life. Then, supposedly, when the Earth cooled down, life was brought to it from Mars. There are mechanisms for such transfer. And even quite decent ones, in contrast to the ridiculous meteorite hypothesis for my taste. But more on that later.
We can assume all this, and everything looks quite plausible and quite realizable. If not for one problem. Bacteria and archaea were brought to Earth. We have already agreed on this. This means that bacteria and archaea were frolicking on Mars at that time (maybe there were many more, but this would already be an insufficiently substantiated assumption). Yes, no doubt about it. And the problem is that Mars still had the same one or two hundred million years of “head start” relative to the Earth, for which, as we (hopefully) agreed, life could not “spontaneously” emerge from the inanimate. Well, really, it’s absolutely unimaginable.
In summary, the Martian hypothesis has every right to exist. Moreover, we can almost confidently say that we are all Martians. The trouble is that on Mars we do not find the answer to the original question, or rather even one of the original questions (very private and not very, in fact, interesting): where did life originate? Certainly not on Mars, anyway. Mars could be (and even, almost certainly, was) an intermediate staging base for life on Earth, but in the same way, it came to Mars from the outside in a ready-made, incredibly complex form, in the form of the same bacteria and archaea.
Information
The entropy of the universe, like any closed (thermodynamically) system, does not decrease. More precisely, it, entropy, increases monotonically. We will not argue with this. At the same time, no one disputes that in non-closed systems, locally, fluctuations may and obviously exist, within which the entropy decreases. Even if it is temporary, it is not so important (which is temporary). Moreover, these fluctuations can be very (on the human scale of the perception of time and space) macroscopic. Take, for example, an arbitrary spiral galaxy. The entropy of a spiral galaxy is incommensurable, cosmically less than the entropy of the gas and dust cloud from which it was formed.
We can think of the process of decreasing entropy as a process of “creating information.” In this place, we will not get hung up on strict definitions, we will get by with a general intuitive idea of the subject of the conversation. So, the process of galaxy formation generates an incredible amount of information. And what gives rise to this information? Some kind of mystical power? Universal superintelligence? In no case! All this information is generated by the now quite understandable and very well studied laws of nature (the universe). Gravity, electromagnetic interaction, weak and strong interactions, the laws of chemical reactions … Nothing more!
That is, the very fundamental laws in accordance with which our (and, as you know, modern and very serious science asserts that hypothetically there is also an infinite number of “not ours”) universe, theoretically and practically (and very visibly) are aimed at the “production” of information. Moreover, this orientation or “desire” to generate information (using the available material at hand in the form of matter) is absolutely omnipresent and completely irresistible. Try to imagine what you could oppose to the “tendency” of a gas and dust cloud to transform into a galaxy.
The fact that the main and almost the only function of every living creature from bacteria to blue whales (which, we note, by and large is nothing more than a “huge colony of bacteria”) is a local decrease in entropy, or, in other words, the generation of information is now a common place that no one will argue with. Life is based on the same simple, understandable fundamental laws. And thus, life is nothing more than a small (at least for now) brick in a fundamental, universal principle: the laws of nature (locally) generate information (from chaos) everywhere and from everything that comes to hand. The “pressure” of this principle is enormous and irresistible, and life (protein-carbon-water) is a tiny “information fountain” caused by this gigantic pressure, sooner or later “bursting out” wherever there are suitable conditions for this.
Life
So, life arose insofar as its emergence not only contradicts nothing, but, on the contrary, is absolutely conditioned by the course of things in this universe. Where and when? Probably everywhere as soon as possible. If we narrow our interest to the terrestrial form of life, it can almost certainly be argued that it originated somewhere in our galaxy. Although, it is also not a fact. Having already formed, our galaxy has not collided with any other. But it was formed from something (from a gas-dust cloud, obviously). And in this cloud of gas and dust there could already be “biomass” from older galaxies that once flew nearby.
The solar system, in turn, formed from a local galactic cloud of gas and dust that roamed the galaxy for about five billion years before becoming the solar system. And here, in this cloud, there were probably “spores of life” in the literal (spores of bacteria) and figurative sense. And for the formation of these “spores of life” (of which we are direct descendants) there was already quite enough time. Several billion years.
So, what is next? And then you can safely take smart books on abiogenesis (that is, the emergence of life from inanimate matter), delve, if interested, into the details of the hypotheses that they set forth. Since this is exactly how it was, by and large, life arose from the inanimate as a very effective “technology for the production of information based on matter.” It is quite possible that exactly as described in one of these books, or maybe not quite so. And the head can be given for cutting, which is not on Earth. But that certainly doesn’t matter.
