[extropy-chat] LIMBOIDS

[Terry W. Colvin]

Forwarding permission was given by William R. Corliss.

Science Frontiers, No. 156, Nov-Dec, 2004, p. 2
< http://www.science-frontiers.com >


BIOLOGY

LIMBOIDS

What, if anything, separates life from nonlife?  To be alive, it is widely
promulgated that such entities must metabolize, reproduce, and evolve in
the Darwinian sense.  It is also popularly believed that living matter is
intrinsically different from nonliving matter, although one no longer
speaks of "the breath of life" or of an "elan vital."  Even so, knowing
all we now know, there does still *seem* to be a fundamental gap between
life and nonlife.  Is this gap illusory or perhaps filled by entities of
which we are not yet aware??

Generally speaking, there is no known profound difference between physical
and biological phenomena.  In nonliving entities, such as inorganic crystals,
the energy ground states are deep.  In living systems, entities such as
proteins, are characterized by several shallow energy states.  Proteins,
many exist in several different conformational states with nearly the same
energy levels.  Life, as we know it, therefore, involves macromolecules
that are more "pliable," more malleable by weak forces, such as those that
might be imposed by the environment.  Some proteins such as prions, may
change their shapes spontaneously.

Despite these possibilities of easy manipulation of macromolecules by small
forces and spontaneous shape-shifting, many scientists---the reductionists---
are confident that all of biology is describable by the extant laws of
physics and chemistry.

So, the apparent gap we discern between living and nonliving matters seems
primarily a matter of energy-well depths.  This being so, the gap does *seem*
to be bridgeable by reductionist science.

(Stec, Boguslaw; "Living and Nonliving Matter," *Science*, 305:41, 2004.)

Comments.  But humans and their instruments do not observe everything.  There
may be an unappreciated limbo separating life from nonlife.  This limbo could
be occupied by entities that we'll call "limboids."  Science may not yet
recognize this hypothesized realm of the natural world because:

(1) The limboids are too small---smaller than the controversial nonolife and
still inaccessible to today's science.

(2) The limboids are too large for us to grasp intellectually or
instrument-wise.
F. Hoyle's fictional "black cloud" would be an example.

(3) The metabolisms of limboids are too slow and their lifetimes too long
(millions of years) for us to discern them.  In other words, they *seem*
inanimate.  (This potential attribute was suggested by P. Gunkel.)

(4) The lifetimes of limboids may be too short for us to register them.

(5) The limboids live outside the ranges of our eyes and instruments.

(6) The limboids may incorporate considerable dark matter and be hard to
detect.  Conceivably some manifestations of dark matter could exist in
recognized visible organisms and perform organizing functions that
"breathe life" into inanimate matter!

Scientists have not seriously looked for limboids, but they may have
caught fleeting glimpses of them, and "laid them back in the closet," as
Omar mused poetically.


[Science Frontiers is a bimonthly collection of digests of
scientific anomalies in the current literature.  Published by
the Sourcebook Project, P.O. Box 107, Glen Arm, MD 21057.
Annual subscription: $8.00.]


-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice


Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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