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

3. Earth Alive: An Ovular GaiaSphere Sustains Her/His Own Viability

Vernadsky, Vladimir. Geochemistry and the Biosphere. Santa Fe, NM: Synergistic Press, 2007. The volume is the first English translation of the 1967 Russian edition of Selected Works, here translated by Olga Barash and edited by Frank Salisbury. Vernadsky (1863 - 1945), noted elsewhere, was a Renaissance person whose scientific interests over a long career ranged across nested earthly realms from strata to sentience. These essays, some technical, offer insights into his novel vision of an organic cosmos whose “living matter,” “a planetary phenomenon of cosmic character,” complexifies along with an increasing intelligence and reason, much akin to the work of his contemporary and collaborator Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In Paris in the mid 1920’s, with Edouard Le Roy, they conceived and foresaw a further emergent stage of a worldwide cerebral faculty, the Noosphere. A friend of Leo Tolstoy, Vernadsky strongly opposed Marxist totalitarianism, which he could get away with because of his international stature.

Man is commonly referred to as an individual, freely living and moving over our planet and freely building his history. Up till now, historians, and humanitarians in general, and to some extent biologists, consciously disregarded the natural laws of the biosphere, the only terrestrial envelope where life can exist. Naturally Man cannot be separated from it. And this inseparable connection is becoming clear to us only at present. (407) In the geological history of the biosphere, a great future is opened to Man if he realizes it and does not direct his mind and work to self-destruction. (414)

Now we are going through a new geological evolutionary change of the biosphere. We are entering the noosphere. We are entering this new spontaneous geological process at a terrible time, at the time of a destructive world war. But the important thing for us is the fact that the ideals of our democracy correspond to a spontaneous geological process, to natural laws – to the noosphere. So we can look at the future with confidence. It is in our hands. We should not let it go. (417)

Vilovic, Iva, et al. Variations in climate habitability parameters and their effect on Earth's biosphere during the Phanerozoic Eon. arXiv:2308.08470. Technical University of Berlin, MPI and Gottingen University astrobiologists Iva Viloviæ, Dirk Schulze-Makuch, and René Heller post a latest, deeply sophisticated reconstructuin into better or worse phases for life's occasion. At once, an arduous trek is revealed to show how variable the course can be. We ask whom is our long emergent global knowsphere that can then retrospectively achieve this? As a philosophia witness, whatever manner of fantastic reality might we find this place to be? Might it imply an especial, Earthmost candidate?

We compiled environmental and biological properties of the Phanerozoic Eon from various data sets and did a correlation analysis to assess changes relevant to the habitability of Earth's biosphere. We showed that environmental parameters such as oxygen, global surface temperatures, runoff rates and carbon dioxide are interrelated. There were several periods with a thriving biosphere, with present day biodiversity and biomass. High oxygen contents are diagnostic of continental plant life and can provide an even more habitable environment compared to today. Beyond Earth, these results will help us to understand how environmental parameters affect extra solar biospheres and guide our search for extraterrestrial life. (Abstract)

Our study emphasizes that Earth experienced periods during which habitability parameters varied strongly throughout the Phanerozoic. A more thriving biosphere was characterized by higher oxygen levels and runoff rates, as well as moderate global surface temperatures. We found a direct correlation of oxygen content to a highly thriving biosphere and show that a high oxygen content is diagnostic of increased biomass production in the last 300 Ma when plants dominated the continents.

Volk, Tyler. Gaia’s Body. New York: Copernicus Books, 1998. An earth scientist elucidates an anatomy and physiology of the biosphere through its atmospheric, oceanic, vegetative, geological and chemical cycles and their intricate interplay.

Waltham, David. Half a Billion Years of Good Weather: Gaia or Good Luck? Astronomy & Geophysics. 48/3, 2007. Earth’s climate over the last 550 million years of the Phanerozoic era of “visible animal life” has been remarkably stable, while previous eons showed an order of magnitude of more variability. A University of London geologist finds such long consistency in accord with a biosphere which can self-maintain atmospheric conditions favorable to its flora and fauna. Also noted in Planetary Self-Selection.

Wilkinson, David. The Fundamental Processes in Ecology: A Thought Experiment on Extraterrestrial Biospheres. Biological Reviews. 78/2, 2003. In addition to a hierarchical structure from genes to Gaia, an alternative process-based approach is considered with regard to energy flow, multiple guilds, ecological hypercycles, a merging of organismal and ecological physiology and carbon sequestration.

Williams, George. The Molecular Biology of Gaia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. The senior evolutionary biologist in search of a theoretical synthesis of the micro and macro realms of earth life.

Is it possible to take Lovelock’s idea of geophysiology seriously and go on to suggest, just as the physiology of cells and organisms is now understood in light of the underlying biochemistry, so the workings of the planetary ecosystem will be understood in terms of the molecular details of the relevant biological processes?…What I have tried to do is raise the possibility that the Gaian idea is, at least in principle, capable of being viewed in terms with which most biologists, even those whose practice is strictly reductionist, can feel reasonably comfortable. (xi)

Yang, Yi and Xiaodong Song. Multidecadal Variation of the Earth’s Inner-Core Rotation. Nature Geoscience. January, 2023. In a paper that became science news, Institute of Theoretical and Applied Geophysics, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University researchers describe a wide array of deep findings to report that the inner core of our planet is not static but moves and turns within a predictable cycle. However as a philosophical view, isn’t it incredible that some billions of years on, an evolved, emergent worldwise observant capacity can quantify itself. What then might our verdant globe be, who are we sapient folks to be able to do this, and for what purpose?

Differential rotation of Earth’s inner core relative to the mantle is thought to occur due to geodynamo effects on core dynamics and gravitational core–mantle coupling. This rotation occurs due to temporal changes of repeated seismic waves that should traverse the same path through the inner core. Here we analyse seismic waves from the 1990s and show that previous temporal fkuxes have ceased over the past decade. This global pattern suggests that inner-core rotation has recently paused. For example, we also studied Alaskan seismic records to 1964 which revealed a turning-back of the inner core as a part of a seven-decade oscillation. (Excerpt).

Zahnie, Kevin and Richard Carlson. Creation of a Habitable Planet. Meadows, Victoria, et al, eds. Planetary Astrobiology. Tempe: University of Arizona Press, 2020. This opening chapter by NASA Ames and Carnegie Institution for Science astroscholars provides a local and cosmic (cosmocal) scenario by way of a deep review of the accretive formation of Hadean Earth, geochemical, metallic and energetic aspects, onto origin studies, how crucial water is, and more. A theme which runs through the volume is then noted as a growing realization that our home planet and solar array are not typical at all, but a rare, optimum occasion.

When the Copernican Principle is applied to a discussion of the origin and evolution of Earth, it suggests that the solar system should be typical, with Earth typical of orbital planets, and life evolving on Earth as typical. To date there is no evidence that any of this typecasting is true. The Anthropic Principle can lead to a very different perspective. In the known universe there are some 100 billion galaxies each containing 100 billion stars. If most stars have presumed planetary systems, we might expect on the order of 1022 planetary systems. If Earth as we know it is a near miracle that occurs once in say 1019 chances, there would still be 1000 Earths in the cosmos. (16, edits)

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