Atoms and Life-forms

Atoms and Life-forms

I think the life-forms on many worlds will consist, by and large, of the same atoms we have here, perhaps even many of the same basic molecules, such as proteins and nucleic acids – but put together in unfamiliar ways. Perhaps organisms that float in dense planetary atmosphere will be very much like us in their atomic composition, except they might not have bones and therefore not need much calcium. Perhaps elsewhere some solvent other than water is used. Hydrofluoric acid might serve rather well, although there is not a great deal of fluorine in the Cosmos; hydrofluoric acid would do a great deal damage to the kind of molecules that make us up, but other organic molecules, paraffin waxes, for example, are perfectly stable in its presence.

Liquid ammonia would make an even better solvent system, because ammonia is very abundant in the Cosmos. But it is liquid only on worlds much older than Earth or Mars. Ammonia is ordinarily a gas on Earth as water is on Venus. Or perhaps there are living things that do not have a solvent system at all – solid-state life, where there are electrical signals propagating rather than molecules floating about.

But these ideas do not rescue the motion that the Viking lander experiments indicate the life on Mars. On that rather Earth-like world, with abundant carbon and water, life, if it exists, should be based on organic chemistry. The organic chemistry results, like the imagining and microbiology results, are all consistent with no life in the fine particles of Chryse and Utopia in the lat 1970’s. Perhaps, some millimeters beneath the rocks (as in the Antarctic dry valleys), or elsewhere on the planet, or in some earlier, more clement time. But not where and when we looked.

Life-forms will be different, but life will be the same (quotations from Megan Jorgensen). Photo by Elena

The Viking exploration of Mars is a mission of major historical importance, the first serious search for what other kind of life may be, the first survival of a functioning spacecraft for a more than an hour or so on any other planet (Viking 1 has survived for years), the source of a rich harvest of data on the geology, seismology, mineralogy, meteorology and have a dozen other sciences of another world. How should we follow up on these spectacular advances? Some scientists want to send an automatic device that would land, acquire soil samples, and return them to Earth, where they could be examined in great detail in the large sophisticated laboratories of Earth rather than in the limited microminiaturized laboratories that we are able to send to Mars.

In this way most of the ambiguities of the Viking microbiology experiments could be resolved. The chemistry and mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for subsurface life; hundreds of tests for organic chemistry and life could be performed, including direct microscopic examination, under a wide range of conditions. The scientists could even use Vishniac’s scoring technics. Although it would be fairly expensive, such a mission is probably within our technological capability.

Democritus’ Thoughts

Democritus argued about atomic composition of material objects. In a related exercise, Democritus imagined calculating the volume of a cone or a pyramid by a very large number of extremely small stacked plates tapering in size from the base to the apex. He had stated the problem that, in mathematics, is called the theory of limits. He was knocking at the door of the differential and integral calculus, that fundamental tool for understanding the world that was not, so far as we know from written records, in fact discovered until the time of Isaac Newton. Perhaps if Democritus work had not been almost completely destroyed, there would have been calculus by the time of Christ (the frontiers of the calculus were also later breached by Eudoxus and Archimedes).

Thomas Wright marveled in 1750 that Democritus had believed the Milky Way to be composed mainly of unresolved stars: “long before astronomy reaped any benefit from the improved sciences of optics; he saw, as we may say, through the eye of reason, full as far into infinity as the most able astronomers in more advantageous times have done since”.

Beyond the Milk of Here, past the Backbone of Night, the mind of Democritus soared. Image: Sketch Drawing Bird © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

As a person, Democritus seems to have been somewhat unusual. Women, children and sex discomfited him, in part because they took time away from thinking. But he valued friendship, held cheerfulness to be the goal of life and devoted a major philosophical inquiry to the origin and nature of enthusiasm. He journeyed to Athens to visit Socrates and then found himself too shy to introduce himself. He was a close friend of Hippocrates. He was awed by the beauty and elegance of the physical world. He felt that poverty in a democracy was preferable to wealth in a tyranny. He believed that the prevailing religions of his time were evil and that neither immortal souls nor immortal gods exist: “Nothing exists, but atoms and the void”.

There is no record of Democritus having been persecuted for his opinions – but then, he came from Abdera. However, in his time the brief tradition of tolerance for unconventional views began to erode and then to shatter. People came to be punished for having unusual ideas. A portrait of Democritus is now on the Greek hundred-drachma bill. But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were beginning to win.