Physics and the complex life

Von Christian Hermenau

Perhaps particles are only small indefinite objects, half wave half particle of quantum mechanics - free and individual. A nice idea, but could life have ever existed then? Perhaps elementary particles are also the smallest components of huge networks and the resulting emergences are much more than just connections. Small bodies that are communicative and store information in a rudimentary form. Did higher life up to us humans perhaps emerge on the basis of elementary networks that have more influence than we previously assumed?

• Sprache: Deutsch
• Herausgeber: neobooks
• Erscheinungsdatum: 11. Aug. 2020
• ISBN: 9783752911961

Buchvorschau

Physics

and the complex life

Christian Hermenau

Contents

Contents

Physics fails at life

Complexity and Emergence

The world as a whole

Foreign Complexities

The Genome

The life

The Emergence

Complex networked systems

Time and Emergence

Time dilatation

Atoms and the boredom

The desire of matter

Determinism and freedom

The gravitational current

Somatic cells as small living conscious units

The space as emergent size

The Networks

The Elements

Thinking networks

The Fusion

Physics fails at life

Our lonely Earth is perhaps something quite ordinary. It is only one of eight planets that rotate around one of many suns. Of the suns, many, many billions are found only in our Milky Way. But besides our galaxy there are still many billions of such galaxies. They are so numerous that they can only be estimated. The earth seems to be nothing in view of the many planets, stars and moons in the vastness of the universe. It is so ridiculously tiny, so insignificant given the indescribable abundance of objects in a sheer endless space, a space so incomprehensibly vast that we may never pass through it.

To only want to visit our nearest neighbour Mars is an almost unsolvable challenge. We will probably never be able to visit all other planets or moons in our solar system, let alone our neighbouring suns. Because why should we fly tens of thousands of years through the dark space, only to meet a weakly shining sun, around which there are planets, but which are all uninhabitable. There may be microbial life on these planets, but this is so primitive that we are horrified by the thought that this planet could be the destination of our journey.

There is no higher life in our immediate neighbourhood, let alone intelligent life. Not because the solar systems there have no planets, no, planets will probably also be found there, but it is not enough that they are gas giants without a solid surface, similar to Jupiter. Even dwarf suns, like our neighbour suns, are out of the question. They emit so little light that the possible rock planets would have to move far too close to their unpredictable mother stars to get enough heat. Or even multiple systems, which cause planetary orbits that are far too unsafe, are out of the question. Important basic requirements for life, such as liquid water, a magnetic field, self-rotation, a slight inclination and much more would then be missing.

As ordinary as we seem in view of the abundance of objects in the universe, as extraordinary as we are on the other side.

The earth is nothing and yet it is everything!

It is so extraordinary that we feel the incomprehensible about it, and wanted to describe it with only one expression, the word God, as soon as we climbed the first steps of our unprecedented ascent. With the beginnings of consciousness for creation, we were also immediately struck by a deep religiosity. In fact, today we do not believe that there are many other great Gods. Gods those are as numerous as planets with highly developed lives. We do not even believe that such an almighty God is constantly out of reach somewhere in the universe, but we believe that he is only here with us on earth - that we are his true divine creatures.

So unique do we feel on Earth. At the same time so lonely, so abandoned, unattainable for other beings and yet we are there. On this small celestial body in the endless wasteland there is an oasis of such indescribable liveliness. Here, life explodes; here life is the most common thing in the world. It creeps and crawls, flies and flutters, sometimes big sometimes small. Every niche that offers itself is occupied by animals, by plants and always by microbes. If one live on earth, if one are a part of it, one will only be surprised why all this should not exist elsewhere. How can something as ordinary as living creatures or plants exist only here on earth, it grows around us and thrives so effortlessly! 

In fact, it looks like that higher life, higher intelligent life is extremely rare and our reality does not reflect the reality in the rest of the universe. We do not know exactly, but we do know that there is not yet the slightest contact or hint of higher life in the universe. We are still unique despite the immense number of suns and possible planets around us. And that doesn't come as a surprise, because if you seriously deal with the conditions that are necessary for higher life, then the chances look very bad that there are many earths with intelligent life on them. Even if we always orientate ourselves at our earth, the possibilities to create somehow higher complex life in general, seems to be very limited. Maybe higher life wants or would like to arise in many places, but the challenges are much more powerful, much special than we thought. It is by no means enough to have many suns and even more planets. Life is not a question of statistics.

Life is mysterious and special and if the earth did not exist, we would not believe that it is possible at all. That it is possible, in principle, without any foreign addition, out of itself, no matter how much material we have in space and time. We have physics and the language of physics is mathematics. We also think, because formulas and equations are based on abstractions, on universal laws and constants, they would be of universal nature. If the earth did not exist, physics and mathematics would actually be the only and true instrument to describe nature. The universe would then be completely calculable. But there is not only life, not only higher life, but even intelligent, conscious life. And even if this life had been realized only once, then we would have to take this fact into account, but physics doesn't do that, it can't do that at all. Physics fails because of life.

It does not fail, because it is not general enough or the formulas are not abstract enough, but