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Interstellar Dust Could Be "Alive"
reezle writes "An international team has discovered that, under the right conditions, particles of inorganic dust can become organized into helical structures. These structures can interact with one another in ways that are usually associated with organic compounds and with life. Not only do these helical strands interact in a counterintuitive way in which like can attract like, but they also undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules, such as DNA and proteins, say the researchers. For example, they can divide to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbors. And they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma. 'These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter,' said the lead researcher. 'They are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve.'" The research, published in the New Journal of Physics, was carried out using a computer model of molecular dynamics.
They could have mentioned that somewhere at the beginning of the summary. I was reading the damn thing and my heart rate was increasing. And then I saw that it was all from an MD simulation :(
Great, I may live to hear some alien life form call us "ugly bags of mostly water." Just don't let them near the laser drill.
Ooooo...shades of Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud !
Organic doesn't mean biological! Organic chemistry, which is the bread and butter of modern chemistry, really has very little to do with life. It's the science of synthesizing new molecules which use carbon as its framework (as well as oxygen, nitrogen and other elements.) So things that are alive are always organic, but things that are organic are not always alive!
If the dust decides to invade Earth (the next John Carpenter flick, The Dust), duct tape your door and window seams and arm yourself with a Swiffer and bottle of Pledge.
That's it. I just wanted to make a post with "panspermia" as the subject. You've got to sieze such opportunities whenever they arise...
Maybe our universe is just a simulation, running inside a simulation, in a much bigger universe that itself is just a molecule in an even bigger universe that is just a molecule in that cloud of pot smoke you just exhaled. Ever think of that?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Lots of them out there... We could be the strange and unusual forms of life in the universe...
Deleted
Do astronomers have any idea why the dust chose to be gay?
Intergallactic schools started requiring the reading of "Dusty Has Two Like Progenitor Strands"?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The New Journal of Physics, http://www.iop.org/EJ/njp is an open access journal.
j p7_8_263.html
The article is here:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1367-2630/9/8/263/n
Something that bothers me about the article is this paragraph (which has no references, though he claims this to be a well-known problem):
"Self-organization of any structure needs energy sources and sinks in order to decrease the entropy locally. Dissipation usually serves as a sink, while external sources (such as radiation of the Sun for organic life) provide the energy input. Furthermore, memory and reproduction are necessary for a self-organizing dissipative structure to form a `living material'. The well known problem in explaining the origin of life is that the complexity of living creatures is so high that the time necessary to form the simplest organic living structure is too large compared to the age of the Earth. Similarly, the age of the Universe is also not sufficient for organic life to be created in a distant environment (similar to that on the Earth) and then transferred to the Earth."
Emphasis mine.
Sounds a little like this guy's been buying into "Intelligent" design a little too much...
Strangely, the rest of his article doesn't look terrible to me. I do not do plasma physics--slept through that class--but I do publish scientific articles for a living.
After all, this is just a computer model of some possible arrangements of particles. Even if the model is perfectly correct, it doesn't mean these living dust particles are actually out there in the universe.
For example, a computer model could tell you that a 12-foot tall flightless bird would thrive in New Zealand, and it would be right... except that they don't exist (having been hunted to extinction a few centuries ago).
Computer-simulated life is very exciting and cool, and can help scientists understand the evolution of living things (such as with the Avida system). But it can't PROVE that a particular kind of life actually exists in the natural world.
My bicyles
You can't fool me! It's turtles all the way down.
News about the Kettle Open Source project: on my blog