'Exploring Life'

Exploring Life

Chapter One: Introductions

How did life originate? It is strange, life easily could not have existed in the first place, there could just have been planets, suns and gaseous dust, not even plants – how boring to have no subjectivity or anything abstract. But how fortunate are we to experience said observations, yet we abuse life's gifts, how tragic. Now I understand cells and I have observed that in the beginning to survive this miracle of life four ingredients from inorganic precursors, a bacterium, archaea, gene and protein (all independently manifested), decided to synthetically bond, they could have been selfish enemies and attacked each other internecine but they were a bit altruistic and saw the bigger picture and became mutual symbiotic and something better. But how did life start before that, well I guess molecules were just right and different, if rich soil then plants, fish, dinosaurs, insects, animals and humans can be. But why have organic machines grown on Earth, or rather, why does Earth have organic machines, is it alive? Why does Earth need to convert energy from the sun, lightning and water? There seems to be a purpose, a logical circumstantial conclusion, allowing life to manifest, or perhaps it is all random, things were just happening and a functionality was a basic law for everything and began a series of organic mechanical machine prototypes objectively creating something that would later become subjectively existential.

Chapter Two: Lifeforms
         
13.8 billion years ago the Big Bang allowed chemistry to lead to life beginning shortly after it, during a habitable epoch when the Universe was only 10–17 million years old.
According to the Panspermia Hypothesis, microscopic life—distributed by meteoroids, asteroids and other small Solar System bodies—may exist throughout the universe.
The age of the Earth is about 4.54 billion years old. The earliest life on Earth arose at least 3.5 billion years ago, during the Eoarchean Era when sufficient crust had solidified following the molten Hadean Eon.
Earlier this year in March, NASA scientists reported that, for the first time, complex DNA and RNA organic compounds of life, including uracil, cytosine and thymine, have been formed in the laboratory under outer space conditions, using starting chemicals, such as pyrimidine, found in meteorites. Pyrimidine, like Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), the most carbon-rich chemical found in the Universe, may have been formed in red giants or in interstellar dust and gas clouds, according to the scientists.
Organism lifeforms are composed of one or more cells of which they undergo metabolism, maintain homeostasis, can grow, respond to stimuli, reproduce (either sexually or asexually) and, through evolution, adapt to their environment in successive generations.
The diversity of life on Earth is a result of the dynamic interplay between genetic opportunity, metabolic capability, environmental challenges, and symbiosis.
All lifeforms require certain core chemical elements needed for biochemical functioning. These include carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur—the elemental macronutrients for all organisms. Together these make up nucleic acids, proteins and lipids, the bulk of living matter.

To survive selected micro-organisms can assume forms that enable them to withstand freezing, complete desiccation, starvation, high levels of radiation exposure, and other physical or chemical challenges. These micro-organisms may survive exposure to such conditions for weeks, months, years, or even centuries. Extremophiles are microbial life forms that thrive outside the ranges where life is commonly found. They excel at exploiting uncommon sources of energy.
Lifeforms evolve from the same common ancestral origin, thus plants and fungi vary in form yet mechanically similar, albeit an echo of similarity resembles in and on the surface of everything, and animals evolved from (jellyfish) fish, and (worms) insects. Humans evolved from apes of which we have spilt from their lifestyles.
The inert components of an ecosystem are the physical and chemical factors necessary for life — energy (sunlight or chemical energy), water, temperature, atmosphere, gravity, nutrients, and ultraviolet solar radiation protection.
We benefit from what we eat and so those things we eat live on through us. Lifeforms have negative entropy, of which means living processes can be viewed as a delay of the spontaneous diffusion or dispersion of the internal energy of biological molecules towards more potential micro-states.

Chapter Three: The Fourth Soul

Aristotle's Hylomorphism theory, (322 BC), mentions that all things are a combination of matter and form. In this view, the form of a living thing is its soul/life-force.
There are three kinds of souls: the vegetative soul of plants, which causes them to grow and decay and nourish themselves, but does not cause motion and sensation; the animal soul, which causes animals to move and feel; and the rational soul, which is the source of consciousness and reasoning, which (Aristotle believed) is found only in humans.
Each higher soul has all the attributes of the lower one.
Aristotle believed that while matter can exist without form, form cannot exist without matter, and therefore the soul cannot exist without the body.
Some say that artificial life and viruses are not living, but are neutral, like vampires are undead. But I think they possess the fourth soul of Perspicacious Knowledge, keenly knowing how to profit from their wisdom. “Why?”, you may ask, well, because that is essentially and basically what and how they are, they unstoppably exist for the purpose of making things happen. Their discernible capabilities and attitudes are absolute, swift and severe.

Chapter Four: Death not so ultimate

99% of all the Earth's species that have ever lived have gone extinct. Mass extinctions may have accelerated evolution by providing opportunities for new groups of organisms to diversify.
Since everyone realised what death could be, whether by accident, medical conditions, biological interaction, malnutrition, poisoning, senescence, murder, or suicide, they have opined that it is the end, like the decay of plants, well there are some instances where death can be resuscitated and decay reversed. Just like with cancer, wait too late and a cure won't be possible. The conditions must meet the criteria. I have written about cryonics before this essay and explored that the next few moments after death sets in is very important for the preserving process for later healing. There is much hope for a second chance at survival. With decay, as long as there is struggling vigour still hanging on to life, its vegetative soul can be ameliorated.  

Chapter five: Conclusions

So life is precious, it is the only thing of which can observe the marvellous and wonderful cosmos as well as wilfully manipulate it, its limits of faculties and complexities are unknown, and its blueprints are arcanely, elaborately, and intricately awesome.
Now humans live on the pointy razor's edge of a sword of responsibility, fate is a suggestive thing, thus we can either save or destroy ourselves and hope that those who replace us are better at protecting life once again. So what will you do, which side are you unknowingly helping? Shouldn't you know better?