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Could life be the result of a random chemical “accident” or is it
more likely to be rooted deterministically in the fundamental physics of cosmological
evolution? Our current knowledge of the intricacy and complexity of biological
function, together with hints of its aetiology, clearly render the isolated
chemical accident or serendipitous hypothesis impossible to sustain. Furthermore
attempts over many decades to determine a point of origin for life, the standard
approach, have met with little success because they ignore the increasing evidence
for continuity and tight entaglement that characterizes global evolutionary
processes. In other words, there cannot be a specific point of origin for life
apart from the Big Bang itself. So the question is – What are the physical
processes that would generate biological function as well as the qualifier we
label intelligence? In order to understand life it is essential first to view
it in its context, that of an expanding universe and, as described in the Summary,
this context leads us to consider the situation of intelligent organisms1011
years or so from now, when energy/matter density r(z) will have attenuated to
an extreme degree. At that point our critical dependence on a sufficient concentration
of energy/matter will oblige organisms to develop mechanisms that attract energy/matter
and maintain it in their vicinity, leading to a surprising interpretation of
the nature of organisms as extensions of the gravitational force. To be more
precise, according to this intellectually and emotionally challenging view,
we are robots literally generated by gravity and programmed to undertake the
tasks it is unable to accomplish in its naked physical state. Our mission, whether
or not we wish to accept it, is to comprehend the mechanisms of time dilation
and cosmological expansion so as to manipulate and perhaps eventually control
them. Can this interpretation of life survive rigorous examination?
The first step in answering this question involves understanding gravitational
attraction as a reaction to, and therefore generated by, universal expansion.
The forcible curving or distortion of space/time by Big Bang expansion generates
an equal and opposite counter force, gravity, which as a result acts as if to
return energy/matter to its primordial state in a singularity. If we can accept
this notion, the rest follows logically. This procedure involves tracing, step
by step, the progress and consequences of the gravitational force as it is exerted
through time on energy/matter in the universe.
Since the universe appears to be expanding at an increasing
rate, clearly gravitational forces are frustrated in that they
are not powerful enough to counter the energy released by the Big Bang and re-condense
it in its entirety into a single locality. As a consequence gravity is obliged
to take a more circuitous route to accretion. Fortunately it is still able to
attract and condense, at least locally, limited quantities of matter which can
evolve into galaxies and eventually into solar systems. At this point we can
already begin to appreciate the creative, organizing potential of gravitation
the ability to acquire an amorphous cloud of hydrogen atoms and manipulate
it by accretion alone to create structurally and functionally complex astrophysical
objects. This process of structuring by gravitational accretion and
condensation continues gradually in stellar cores of intermediate mass,
creating step by step all the stable elements up to iron, making use of the
fundamental particles and interactions to bind them into increasingly dense,
massive and complex but relatively stable units. In larger stars where gravitational
forces are powerful enough, this condensation continues unopposed until a black
hole singularity is reached gravitation has finally achieved its goal, as
far as it can under the circumstances. But in smaller stars, those which end
their nucleosynthetic phase with a mass between 1.4 and 3 solar masses, gravitational
forces are not strong enough and the result is a Type II core collapse Supernova
gravitation is again frustrated,
having been prevented from reaching its ultimate goal. This is good news since
the events that follow are what makes our universe interesting because gravitation
still continues to exert its influence, only now through more devious and complex
mechanisms. The universe would be an exceedingly dull place if all stars ended
their active lives with more than three solar masses.
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