III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

A. UniVerse Alive: An Organic, Self-Made, Encoded, Familial Procreativity

Teerikorpi, Pekka, et al. The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life: The Search for our Cosmic Roots. Berlin: Springer, 2009. Among such celestial panoramas, a good temporal and spatial tour with four sections: The Widening World View, Physical Laws of Nature, The Universe, and Life in the Universe. Thirty-three chapters then range from “When Science was Born” to “Human’s Role in the Universe.”

Thompson, Joanna. Life Helps Make Almost Half of All Minerals on Earth. Quanta. July 1,, 2022. A science writer explains and praises the latest major, update contribution by Robert Hazen (search) and Shaunna Morrison, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington DC, Sergey Krivovichev, Kola Science Center. Murmansk, and Robert Downs, University of Arizona about the many ways that living systems have influenced our animated geological compositions. Their paper is Lumping and Splitting: Toward a Classification of Mineral Natural Kinds in American Mineralogist 107/7, 2022.

The impact of Earth’s geology on life is easy to see, with organisms adapting to environments as different as deserts, mountains, forests and oceans. The full impact of life on geology, however, can be easy to miss. A new survey of our planet’s minerals corrects that omission. Among its findings is evidence that about half of all mineral diversity is the direct or indirect result of living entity systems. It’s a discovery that could provide valuable insights to scientists piecing together Earth’s complex geological history — and also to those searching for evidence of life beyond this world.

Morrison and Hazen also identified 57 processes created all known minerals. These processes included weathering, chemical precipitations, metamorphic transformations, lightning strikes, radiation, oxidation, massive impacts, and even condensations in interstellar space. The biggest single factor in mineral diversity on Earth is water in a variety of chemical and physical ways. But they also found that life is a key player whose fingerprints are on about half of all minerals.

Tielens, Xander. The Molecular Universe. Reviews of Modern Physics. Online January, 2013. The senior Leiden University astrobiologist is credited as the discoverer of large PAH Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in celestial space. His The Physics and Chemistry of the Interstellar Medium (Cambridge UP, 2010) is a 500 page review of conducive “galactic ecosystems” found to be filled with complex biomolecules.

Molecular absorption and emission bands dominate the visible, infrared, and submillimeter spectra of most objects with associated gas. These observations reveal a surprisingly rich array of molecular species and attest to a complex chemistry taking place in the harsh environment of the interstellar medium of galaxies. Molecules are truly everywhere and an important component of interstellar gas. This review surveys molecular observations in the various spectral windows and summarizes the chemical and physical processes involved in the formation and evolution of interstellar molecules. The rich organic inventory of space reflects the multitude of chemical processes involved that on the one hand build up molecules an atom at a time and on the other hand break-down large molecules injected by stars to smaller fragments. Both this bottom-up and the trickle-down chemistry are reviewed. The emphasis is on understanding the characteristics of complex Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon molecules and fullerenes and their role in chemistry as well as the intricate interaction of gas phase ion-molecule and neutral-neutral reactions and the chemistry taking place on grain surfaces in dense clouds in setting the organic inventory of regions of star and planet formation and their implications for the chemical history of the Solar system. (Abstract)

Tinetti, Giovanna, et al. Water Vapour in the Atmosphere of a Transition Extrasolar Planet. Nature. 448/169, 2007. A quite international paper by 13 researchers from Frascati, Italy, London, Paris, Taipei, Pasadena, Bellaterra, Spain, Tuscon, USA, and Lyon, France reports for the first time the finding of H2O molecules in the cloudy mantle surrounding a ‘hot Jupiter’ type planet. And so, ovular Earth, via its sentient, collaborative species, armed with such instrumentation, begins to sense the presence of life-friendly conditions across the stellar reaches.

Tirard, Stephane, et al. The Definition of Life. Astrobiology. 10/10, 2010. With coauthors Michel Morange and Antonio Lazcano, philosophers of biology press ahead in the 21st century with this “elusive scientific endeavor.” While delving into physical rootings by inclusions of the pervasive self-organization of living systems, these propensities are then set aside because they are not “genetic” in kind, and therefore do not qualify in a Darwinian way. But would not everything change if an innately organic cosmos might be admitted, whereof such dynamical agencies might take on a true, creative, “genetic” role?

Trefil, James. How Life Began. Santa Fe Institute Bulletin. Winter, 2006. Noted more in The Origin of Life section, and included here for a glimpse of a fertile cosmos which innately engenders complex creatures.

It encourages us to see life not as some highly improbable accident but as a natural outcome of the workings of the physical universe. (7)

Trefil, James, et al. The Origin of Life. American Scientist. May-June, 2009. With co-authors Harold Morowitz and Eric Smith, a state of the art review with an emphasis on the ‘metabolic network first’ approach, versus ‘RNA molecules first.’ All of which, as the quotes say, implies a Ptolemaic to Copernican, sterile machine to biological genesis, revolution.

As we see it, the early steps on the way to life are an inevitable, incremental result of the operation of the laws of chemistry and physics operating under the conditions that existed on the early Earth. As such, the early stages in the emergence of life are no more surprising, no more accidental, than water flowing downhill. (206) Assuming the experimental and theoretical programs outlined above work out well, our picture of life as a robust, inevitable outcome of certain geochemical processes will be on firm footing. Who knows? Maybe then someone will write a book titled Necessity, Not Chance.

Veras, Dimitri, et al. Dynamical and Biological Panspermia Constraints within Multi-Planet Exosystems. arXiv:1802.04279. We note this entry by a six person group from the University of Warwick, Centre for Exoplanets and Habitability, and the University of Toronto, Centre for Planetary Sciences because it well quantifies a true cosmic organic essence. A natural fertility seems made to develop into and spread living biochemical matter everywhere as if some placental, amniotic milieu.

As discoveries of multiple planets in the habitable zone of their parent star mount, developing analytical techniques to quantify extrasolar intra-system panspermia will become increasingly important. Here, we provide user-friendly prescriptions that describe the asteroid impact characteristics which would be necessary to transport life both inwards and outwards within these systems within a single framework. Our focus is on projectile generation and delivery and our expressions are algebraic, eliminating the need for the solution of differential equations. We derive a probability distribution function for life-bearing debris to reach a planetary orbit, and describe the survival of micro-organisms during planetary ejection, their journey through interplanetary space, and atmospheric entry. (Abstract)

Wachtershauser, Gunter. Chemoautotrophic Origin of Life: The Iron-Sulfur World Hypothesis. Barton, Barry, et al. Geomicrobiology: Molecular and Environmental Perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer, 2010. Reviewed at length in The Origin of Life as an extraordinary witness of an earthly materiality which seems made to engender a biological, quickening development.

Wandel, Wandel, Amri and Joseph Gale. The Biohabitable Zone and Atmospheric Properties for Planets of Red Dwarfs. arXiv:1907.11098. We cite this entry by Hebrew University of Jerusalem life scientists in An Organic Universe as a good example, if of a mind to perceive, of how vitally biochemical and evolutionary an ecosmic nature actually is. By this study and many others, every kind of stellar system may be deeply conducive for life to complexity and develop. Might we worldwise peoples at last be able to realize that the universe is not a mechanism or computation, rather by its own inherency possesses an innate biological fertility. For a popular, illustrated article on Red Dwarfs see Life as We Don’t Know It by Igor Palubski and Aomana Shields in Sky & Telescope for August 2019.

The Kepler data show that habitable small planets orbiting Red Dwarf stars (RDs) are abundant, and hence might be promising targets to look at for biomarkers and life. It is shown that temperatures suitable for liquid water and even organic molecules may exist on tidally locked planets of RDs. We chart the surface temperature distribution as a function of the irradiation, greenhouse factor and heat circulation. We find that tidally locked as well as not locked planets of RDs and K-type stars may support life for a wider range of orbital distance and atmospheric conditions than previously thought. We show that when the effect of continuous radiation is taken into account, the Photo-synthetically Active Radiation (PAR) available on tidally locked planets, even of RDs, could produce a high Potential Plant Productivity, in analogy to mid-summer growth at high latitudes on Earth. (Abstract excerpt)

Westall, Frances and Andre Brack. The Importance of Water for Life. Space Science Reviews. 214/2, 2018. A lead article for a Delivery of Water to Protoplanets, Planets and Satellites issue by CNRS-Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire, France astrobiologists which presents a 23 page illustrated survey of a universe “pregnant with life” as the Nobel chemist Christian de Duve, as cited in the Abstract, famously advised. Into these later 2010s, evidence robustly builds for a cosmic revolution able to imagine an innately vital, organic, fertile genesis nature. See also The Delivery of Water during Terrestrial Planet Formation by David O’Brien in this collection.

The elements essential to carbon and water-based life are among the most common in the universe. Carbon molecules and liquid water have physical and chemical properties that make them optimal compound-solvent pairs. Liquid water is essential for prebiotic reactions. But equally important for the emergence of life is the contact of carbon molecules in liquid water with hot rocks and minerals. We here review the environmental conditions of the early Earth, as soon as it had liquid water at its surface and was habitable. Basing our approach to life as a “cosmic phenomenon” (Christian de Duve 1995), i.e. a chemical continuum, we briefly address hypotheses for the origin of life. We continue with the record of early life noting that, by 3.5 Ga, anaerobic life forms had colonized microenvironments from the sea floor to exposed beach environments. We conclude with an evaluation of the potential for habitability and colonisation of other planets and satellites in the Solar System, noting common life forms in the Solar System and probably in the Universe would be similar to terrestrial chemotrophs whose carbon source is either reduced carbon or CO2 dissolved in water and whose energy would be sourced from oxidized carbon, H2, or other transition elements. (Abstract edits)

Whalen, Daniel, et al. Habitable Worlds Formed at Cosmic Dawn. arXiv:2501.08375. This paper by nine University of Portsmouth, University of Vienna, United Arab Emirates University, Kyoto University, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia, University of Virginia and University of Exeter astroscientists can well represent the depth and breadth of the latest Earthuman instrumental and analytic capabilities which indicate how readily these first starry galaxies began to form orbital objects along with an aqueous supply. See also Whalen, Daniel, et al. Abundant Water from Early Supernovae at Cosmic Dawn by Daniel Whalen, et al at arXiv:2501.02051. Altogether it could be said that these findings can factually affirm that life and maybe hope does spring eternal.

Primordial supernovae were the first nucleosynthetic engines in the Universe, forging the elements for the later occasion of planets and life. Here we show that planetesimals, the precursors of terrestrial planets, formed around low-mass stars in the first cosmic explosions 200 Myr after the Big Bang. A dense core collapsed to a protoplanetary disk in which Earth planetesimals arose from their parent star in water fractions similar to the Solar System today. Habitable worlds thus formed among the earliest generation of stars in the Universe, before the advent of the first galaxies. (Abstract)

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