Some things about Space Life (part 3)

In "Semiotics" Beagle5 is found in the Triangulum Galaxy cataloged as Messier 33.

Here AL identifies plant life forms. Being able to identify forms of life from a distance may not be so unlikely.

A new tool invented by a group of researchers from the University of Bern makes it possible to take a first, important step forward in this direction. It is a brightness detector able to recognize when the light that is passing through it has been reflected by an organic molecule; it does this by exploiting a unique property of living matter called chirality. The study describing the experiment was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Semiotics is a tribute to Semiosis. Semiosis is a 2018 science fiction novel by American writer and translator Sue Burke. Semiosis is about colonists starting a new life on the planet Pax and their alliances with sentient indigenous plant species. The title of the book refers to semiosis, a communicative process using signs.

In "Semiotics" and in "Just plants" there is a reflection on alien life, on the forms it could take and how it could evolve. If we only take into consideration how many forms life has taken on planet Earth, we can get an idea of ​​how far it could be from the classic alien with two eyes, mouth, two arms and two legs.

Could intelligence and consciousness evolve from beings similar to terrestrial plants? What do we know about our plants? Do they have a communication system? If so, how does it work?

To talk about communication we must start by asking ourselves: can plants respond on a sensorial level to an external event in a period of time compatible with that necessary to formalize a communication system? Between cause and effect, therefore between sender and recipient, can a relationship be defined such as to validate a form of bidirectional information transfer?

A first answer can be obtained by observing Mimosa Pudica, a plant belonging to the Mimosaceae family that has this bizarre behavior: if you touch it, it retracts its leaves in real time.

There are also the classic carnivorous plants which in another way and through their spectacular snap mechanism, make us assume that at least one channel model on the basis of which to establish any communication may exist and act on a time scale proportionate to ours.

In fact, if we think about it, these plants seem more alive than others because of this compatibility in cause-effect relationships.

Let it be clear that we are not talking about a behavior similar to that of any brain in the animal world, also because as we know they are not provided even at the level of a single neuron. That is, plants certainly don't think and don't feel, or at least they don't do it as we understand it.

However, the thing that brings us together and that makes the discussion more interesting is that even in that realm the mechanism of action potentials is exploited, which we can describe in a very superficial way as those signals of stimulation and the birth of a behavior.

Several studies have been conducted in this regard through which, for example, an answer has been given to phenomena such as those that see some plants connect some fringes of their roots in the subsoil, inducing similar plants to arrange themselves so as to grow by wrapping in a circle a plant not of the same species to stop its growth.

These are phenomena that would suggest that a communication system is present.

The action potentials I was talking about are obviously different from those generated by the neurons of our brain, since if the latter are the consequence of an electro-chemical process produced by the sodium-potassium pump, that of the plants instead arose from the movement of ions of calcium, potassium and chloride as well as differing because they are much slower than ours (a few tens of milliseconds instead of a few seconds of the latter, for example in the case of the carnivorous plant we are on the order of 3 seconds).

A good source for deepening the mechanism of the carnivorous plant and its electrophysiological mechanisms can be found in the publication Active movements in plants: Mechanism of trap closure by Dionaea muscipula Ellis. where the due considerations are also made on the fact that the trap does not close by muscular action (since it does not have any) but by rapid osmotic change.

We have come to talk about this because it is clear that although different, at least an internal communication mechanism exists, so much so that there is an entire field of study called plant electrophysiology.

It is interesting, for example, that a recent article in Nature describes the discovery of a propagation of the electric potential along a plant in response to lesions on a leaf.

But is there any experiment that can concretely highlight a communication between plants?

Yes, many, and to close the circle, I report this presentation by Greg Gage, a well-known neuroscientist who has dedicated himself to the more didactic aspect of this science with the aim of making it known even to the little ones in schools around the world.

In his experiment, Greg connects the two plants I mentioned initially through a simple bi-amplifier and stimulating them, makes them interact through that artificial communication channel thanks to which it is also possible to have fun by making some more precise measurements.

Yes, according to a recent Swedish study, plants have an underground communication system!

Electrochemical signals are sent and received through the roots, so they can communicate with each other about what is happening in their surroundings.

A kind of cooperation is created between the plants, the neighbors warn the others of the dangers and the latter react by activating their own defense system.

Indeed, according to some studies, it is said that they are able to understand if the neighboring plant is of the same species or if they have family ties. In short, the trees are interconnected like a vast internet network! According to some experiments they suffer if treated badly, react to touch, remember past stimuli and stresses.

Plants are more complex organisms than they seem!

Still in "Semiotics" AL quote the famous phrase of the Apollo 13 astronauts. 

"Houston, we have a problem" is a popular but erroneous quotation from the radio communications between the Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert and the NASA Mission Control Center ("Houston") during the Apollo 13 spaceflight in 1970, as the astronauts communicated their discovery of the explosion that crippled their spacecraft.

The words actually spoken, initially by Jack Swigert, were "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here". After being prompted to repeat the transmission by CAPCOM Jack R. Lousma, Jim Lovell responded, "Ah, Houston, we've had a problem."

Since then, the erroneous phrase "Houston, we have a problem" has become popular, being used to account, informally, the emergence of an unforeseen problem, often with a sense of ironic understatement.

"Just plants" takes inspiration from Yuval Noah Harari’s book: “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, wherein he deconstructs the prevailing narrative of the Agricultural Revolution as history’s biggest fraud:

"Scholars once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap forward for humanity. They told a tale of progress fuelled by human brain power. Evolution gradually produced ever more intelligent people. Eventually, people were so smart that they were able to decipher nature’s secrets, enabling them to tame sheep and cultivate wheat. As soon as this happened, they cheerfully abandoned the grueling, dangerous, and often spartan life of hunter-gatherers, settling down to enjoy the pleasant, satiated life of farmers.

"That tale is a fantasy. There is no evidence that people became more intelligent with time. Foragers knew the secrets of nature long before the Agricultural Revolution, since their survival depended on an intimate knowledge of the animals they hunted and the plants they gathered. Rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease. The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites. The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud.

"Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa."

"Think for a moment about the Agricultural Revolution from the viewpoint of wheat. Ten thousand years ago wheat was just a wild grass, one of many, confined to a small range in the Middle East. Suddenly, within just a few short millennia, it was growing all over the world. According to the basic evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction, wheat has become one of the most successful plants in the history of the earth. In areas such as the Great Plains of North America, where not a single wheat stalk grew 10,000 years ago, you can today walk for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers without encountering any other plant. Worldwide, wheat covers about 2.25 million square kilometers of the globe’s surface, almost ten times the size of Britain. How did this grass turn from insignificant to ubiquitous?"

"Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn’t easy. Wheat demanded a lot of them. Wheat didn’t like rocks and pebbles, so Sapiens broke their backs clearing fields. Wheat didn’t like sharing its space, water, and nutrients with other plants, so men and women labored long days weeding under the scorching sun. Wheat got sick, so Sapiens had to keep a watch out for worms and blight. Wheat was defenseless against other organisms that liked to eat it, from rabbits to locust swarms, so the farmers had to guard and protect it. Wheat was thirsty, so humans lugged water from springs and streams to water it. Its hunger even impelled Sapiens to collect animal feces to nourish the ground in which wheat grew. "

"The body of Homo sapiens had not evolved for such tasks. It was adapted to climbing apple trees and running after gazelles, not to clearing rocks and carrying water buckets. Human spines, knees, necks, and arches paid the price. Studies of ancient skeletons indicate that the transition to agriculture brought about a plethora of ailments, such as slipped disks, arthritis, and hernias. Moreover, the new agricultural tasks demanded so much time that people were forced to settle permanently next to their wheat fields. This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens. "

"How did wheat convince Homo sapiens to exchange a rather good life for a more miserable existence? What did it offer in return? ... It offered nothing for people as individuals. Yet it did bestow something on Homo sapiens as a species. Cultivating wheat provided much more food per unit of territory, and thereby enabled Homo sapiens to multiply exponentially."

“The currency of evolution is neither hunger nor pain, but rather copies of DNA helixes. Just as the economic success of a company is measured only by the number of dollars in its bank account, not by the happiness of its employees, so the evolutionary success of the species is measured by the number of copies of its DNA. If no more DNA copies remain, the species is extinct, just as a company without money is bankrupt. If a species boasts many DNA copies, it is a success, and the species flourishes. From such a perspective, 1,000 copies are always better than a hundred copies. This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions."

“Yet why should individuals care about this evolutionary calculus? Why would any sane person lower his or her standard of living just to multiply the number of copies of the Homo sapiens genome? Nobody agreed to this deal: the Agricultural Revolution was a trap."

Imagination it's a quote from John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, british geneticist and evolutionary biologist.

In Panspermia talk about panspermia, the hypothesis that life exists throughout the Universe, distributed by space dust,[1] meteoroids,asteroids, comets,and planetoids as well as by spacecraft carrying unintended contamination by microorganisms. Distribution may have occurred spanning galaxies, and so may not be restricted to the limited scale of solar systems. Panspermia studies concentrate not on how life began, but on methods that may distribute it in the Universe.

Just as iconic as Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey is the floating fetus born in a luminous placental sphere at the end, floating in space and staring at the Earth with its alien eyes. The famous director used this image as a metaphor for our species emerging from the cosmos and evolving into interplanetary creatures. Similarly, the seed that appears in Panspermia represents the conquest of space by plants.

Deep space noise reminds us that there is no noise in space. There is no means that could serve as a support for sound waves, therefore no propagation of vibrations is possible. Therefore silence reigns in space. When in science fiction movies we see space shuttles moving in a deafening roar through space, it's not realistic! Just as you can't hear explosions or the sound of laser weapons! At the end of the episode AL plays "Space Oddity" by David Bowie. Perhaps the most famous song ever among those inspired by space. An extraordinary piece, an absolute masterpiece of music history, was inspired not only by the space travel of those years, but also by the many science fiction films and short stories written in that period. Among all also the aforementioned 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick.

As I write this post,  I discovered that in "Solos", season 1 episode 3, titled "Peg" the woman played by Helen Mirren travels in a micro spaceship talking with an artificial intelligence. At the end of the episode the AI puts the song "Space Oddity" by David Bowie. You may think that it was inspired or that it is a tribute but it is not.

Have fun finding references and quotes in the next few episodes! feel free to write your ideas in the comments.

Have a good space explorer trip...

References:

Harari, Yuval Noah (2015). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harper.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2637513/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston,_we_have_a_problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia

Some things about Space Life (part 2)

In "Extinctions" Tom and Al address the issue of extinction.

In 2011, an international team from Berkeley, led by Anthony D. Barnosky, checks the extinction estimates, integrates the paleontological data with current ones, considers all the necessary cautions and comes to a conclusion, somewhat worrying, published in Nature: the sixth extinction. mass is not yet underway, but we are close to it and we are doing everything to get there. The title of the article in Nature is: Has the sixth mass extinction already arrived?

There is nothing unusual about extinctions. They are part of natural history. The vast m ajority of the world's species have become extinct. What is unprecedented today is the role of a species in causing the Sixth Mass Extinction, the fastest of all time. A philosophical paradox emerges: Homo sapiens, descended from mass extinctions of other species (especially of large reptiles, whose disappearance 66-65 million years ago paved the way for adaptive radiation from mammals), is now the agent of a special mass extinction. The sad irony of history is that our efforts to slow or stop the sixth mass extinction may not be enough. According to Butchart et al., One of the results of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity is the successful multiplication of local conservation initiatives. However, this is not enough to reverse the general trends of habitat destruction. The comparison is disarming: the general indicators of environmental protection actions are moderately positive; those that measure the health of ecosystems are, on the other hand, all negative. We are not yet able to see the effects of our good practices. Even if we are so short-sighted as to endanger the conditions of our stay on the planet, some scientific models tell us that life will continue in other forms anyway, probably to the advantage of the most opportunistic species, such as rats.

Indeed, as soon as the human race is extinct, a cornucopia of new life experiments could blossom on Earth. From an evolutionary perspective, the extinction of the Anthropocene is a threat not to biodiversity itself, but to the ecological conditions that currently allow human survival. The end of our species would represent just another new beginning. Thus, from a philosophical point of view, the sixth mass extinction is an anthropological warning about the contingency of life and the fragility of our history as hominids.

Source: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/1/5/e1400253.full.pdf

The paradox of Homo sapiens, as the cause of the sixth mass extinction, is difficult to resolve for two reasons: one political, that is, the lack of international coordination; and the other psychological, that is, the lack of forecasting skills. A single nation can do little if the others don't cooperate. The ecological dynamics do not respect the strict timing of electoral campaigns and the laws of popularity, so the services provided by the ecosystem may suddenly fail.

Implementing a good conservation practice today will bear fruit in at least a couple of generations. Of course, it is not easy to invest money and make an ethical commitment in favor of someone who does not yet exist, but we must arm ourselves with imagination and try to do it (on this topic we recommend Ethics and future generations of Giuliano Pontara).  After all, it could be a clever way to mark what sets us apart from dinosaurs.

Old books is a quotes  from Philip K.Dick,'s "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

In "Thoughts" the Beagle 5 encounters an apparently non-organic alien entity. Here is what Yuval Noah Harari in  Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow, writes about it: 

"The idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking. The current scientific answer to this pipe dream can be summarised in three simple principles:

1.  Organisms are algorithms. Every animal – including Homo sapiens – is an assemblage of organic algorithms shaped by natural selection over millions of years of evolution. 

2.  Algorithmic calculations are not affected by the materials from which you build the calculator. Whether you build an abacus from wood, iron or plastic, two beads plus two beads equals four beads. 

3.  Hence there is no reason to think that organic algorithms can do things that non-organic algorithms will never be able to replicate or surpass. As long as the calculations remain valid, what does it matter whether the algorithms are manifested in carbon or silicon?"

Always in Thoughts we see that the alien entity has a form of fullerenes. Fullerenes constitute a class of molecular allotropic substances of carbon. The molecules of fullerene, made entirely of carbon, take on forms that arouse great interest in the scientific community.

These are large molecules with an approximately spherical shape (sometimes called buckyball, short for buckminster-fullerene, with reference to the geodesic domes designed by architect Richard Buckminster Fuller).

Fullerenes have also been identified in space (in a planetary nebula called Tc1, 6,500 light years from Earth) and in terrestrial geological formations.

Fullerenes are also a recurring element in science fiction. For example, in Stel Pavlou's short story, The Code of Atlantis (2001), buckyballs, nanotechnology and complexity theory are used to create nano-swarms that come together to form human-sized golems. The C60 is the basic building element of the lost city of Atlantis. In the television series Andromeda, fullerenes are a common material used to build very strong objects, such as spaceship hulls and body armor. In addition, instead of tractor beams, spaceships use buckycaves to capture and pull other ships towards them.

"Thoughts" and "Extinctions" are ambiented in elliptical galaxies. According to a 2015 study by Pratika Dayal and colleagues (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/810/1/L2), giant elliptical galaxies are home to far more habitable planets than the Milky Way. 

This conclusion is contested by a 2020 study, which considers it a violation of the principle of mediocrity. Who is right? What types of galaxies are the most probable cradles of life?

How is it that we are in a spiral galaxy, if life is born and develops preferably in elliptical galaxies? Are we a rare exception? And, if so, isn't it curious that the only known case of an inhabited planet presents itself as a relatively uncommon phenomenon rather than the rule?

Similar reflections are the focus of another study, published in April 2020 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The author is a professor at the University of Arkansas, Daniel P. Whitmire.

According to Whitmire, the conclusions of the study by Dayal and colleagues represent a violation of the so-called principle of mediocrity. This principle is an extension of the Copernican principle, according to which the Earth does not have a privileged position in the Universe. For the principle of mediocrity, if you choose an element at random from a set of categories, the most likely thing is that the selected element belongs to the most numerous category, not to the rarest one. Let's say, for example, that I have to take a marble, without looking, from an urn that contains 100. Of those 100 marbles, 60 are blue, 20 are red, 15 are yellow and only 5 are green. What is more likely than drawing a blue or a green marble? Obviously a blue marble.

Applied to cosmobiology, that is, to the idea of ​​classifying galaxies based on their potential habitability, the principle of mediocrity suggests that the fact that a technological civilization has evolved on a Milky Way planet such as Earth is no exception, but the rule. Therefore, elliptical giants are not the privileged cradles of life, and of intelligent life in particular, but spiral galaxies like ours. If this is true, then there must be some element that the authors of the 2015 study did not consider and that, had it been evaluated, would have led them to reconsider the role of elliptical giants as the privileged incubators of life.

In "Thoughts" we read that Tom and Al are connected to each other.

Creating an interface that allows the perfect symbiosis between man and machine, through a microchip implanted in the head, and very thin connecting wires between the human brain system and Hi-tech devices is the new challenger.

It is not the script of a film like The Matrix or Blade Runner, but it is what they are already doing in the laboratories of Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup (founded 2 years ago) and another creature of the millionaire and visionary Elon Musk, already famous for giving birth the PayPal payment system, the Testla electric car and the SpaceX space travel agency.

Musk presented to the audience of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco the results of Neuralink's research and development in the creation of a 'brain-computer' interface, which can allow the implantation of devices in the human brain, in order to put it in connection with Hi-tech tools.

A project for which the startup has already raised over 150 million dollars from investors, in addition to funding from the founder. And the results are already surprising: an 8 mm hole in the skull will allow the implantation of sensors connected to the brain, with the help of small flexible wires, to detect the activity of neurons, with a diameter of micrometers (about a third of a hair) injected into the head with a 24 micron cable.

This will be done by a special robot, programmed to minimize the risk margin for brain health and functionality, under the supervision of a neurosurgeon. The chips in turn will be connected to external computers capable of processing the information received.

"Another revolution lies in the design of the electrodes developed by Neuralink: in addition to reading the data, this particular technology allows information to be sent directly to neurons, bypassing the areas possibly damaged by trauma or disfunction", anticipates Elon Musk.

The system is completed with a small device, to be placed behind the ear and similar to hearing aids, which will be the prosthesis with which the machine will read our commands through our thoughts.

In this way, according to the forecasts of Neuralink experts, humans will be able to interact with computers and Hi-tech resources of knowledge, information and learning. Even going so far as to enhance the brain and human thinking, the scientists at Neurolink hope.

"The system was tested with encouraging results on mice and on a monkey, which was able to control a computer with its brain," notes Musk, who certainly does not need sophisticated devices to conceive, and develop, futuristic projects.

What Musk proposes goes beyond the head-controlled prosthesis: it is a neural loop for the brain that can synchronize it directly with the digital world, he is talking about thoughts and memories that mix with digital ones. When you think something like: "How long is the Nile?", The question is transferred to an artificial intelligence such as 'Google Neuro' (wirelessly, of course) and, after a quarter of a second, you will know the answer.

And he explains, or tries to explain: “the solution that seems the best is to create a layer of AI, attached to the brain, that can work well in a symbiotic way with the person. Just as the cortex works in a symbiotic way with the limbic system, the third digital layer could work in concert with the person ”. Simple, isn't it?

"Reality" is based on a quote from Philip K. Dick. Always him...

“There’s a one in billions chance that this is base reality,” announced Elon Musk at the Code conference last week in California. The billionaire entrepreneur stoked new fire under one of pop philosophy’s most debated questions: are we all living in a computer simulation?

While the idea of living in a computer simulation is fun to consider, the consequences of such a reality are quite frightening. If belief in a creator god lets humans off the hook for our destiny, or if belief in a mechanical universe drops us into nihilistic despair, what might believing that we are all sims in a video game do? The possibilities are both wondrous and horrifying.

Sci-fi writers have been imagining life inside computers for decades. Robert Heinlein’s They (1941) and Ray Bradbury’s The Veldt (1951) both toyed with simulated realities long before the computer technologies we take for granted today existed. A decade later saw Daniel F Galouye’s Simulacron-3 (1964), one of the first literary explorations of lifelike virtual reality. The story of a computer simulation so detailed its inhabitants believe it is real, the novel later inspired the cult movie Thirteenth Floor.

The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1974) reads almost like a factual account of life in 2021. Alice Sheldon, writing as James Tiptree Jnr, wove a terrifying tale of corporate society, celebrity culture and marketing as mind control, all driven by the power those who shape reality hold over those who merely inhabit it.

William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, beginning with Neuromancer (1984), features “simstim” entertainment and a virtual reality where the dead can be summoned back to life. The novels kickstarted the cyberpunk movement, with its fascination for directly connecting the human brain to technology, or “jacking-in”.

But the early master of simulated reality stories was, without doubt, Philip K Dick. In short stories such as The Electric Ant, and novels such as Ubik (1969) and his masterpieceValis (1981), the sci-fi master dived through the twisted philosophical consequences of not accepting reality as entirely real.

In many books that came after Dick – Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Tad Williams’s Otherworld, Jeff Noon’s Vurt, Iain M Banks’s Culture novels – simulated realties and the consequences of computer technology dominate the discussion.

These ideas born from sci-fi novels spread to movies - from Tron (1982) to The Matrix (1999) to Inception (2010) – and brought speculation about the nature of reality into mainstream entertainment. But audiences packed into today’s multiplex cinemas are far from the first to question our reality.

But why are we so fascinated by stories that question reality? Is it pure entertainment, or a deeper quest for truth? It’s one thing to believe reality is a video game if, like Elon Musk, you get to make up the rules, but quite another if you’re only a sim! Maybe our whole reality is running on a server in the basement of some geek’s parent’s bungalow – or, as is rather more likely, we just like the idea that it is. Whatever reality we’re in, sci-fi writers will be speculating about it for ever.

Have fun finding references and quotes in the next few episodes! feel free to write your ideas in the comments.

Have a good space explorer trip...

Reference:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jun/10/how-sci-fi-simulates-simulated-reality-elon-musk

https://www.uaar.it/uaar/ateo/archivio/106/verso-sesta-estinzione-massa/

https://spazio-tempo-luce-energia.it/ipotesi-sulla-distribuzione-della-vita-nelle-galassie-a7484ee44afd

https://en.wikipedia.org/

Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow