Day: April 7, 2010

The first metazoan living without Oxygen

Abstract | The first metazoa living in permanently anoxic conditions.

Three species of multi-cellular eukaryote, phylum Loricifera, have been found in totally anoxic conditions. They have no mitochondria, instead replacing those oxygen-burning energy generators with endosymbionts that look a lot like hydrogenosomes, an organelle seen in unicellular lifeforms in anoxic conditions. Thus ‘complex’ life can live without oxygen – a proof of principle discovery. Only a millimetre long, so maybe oxygen-free life isn’t suited to big lifeforms, but who knows? In the right conditions – a hydrogen and sulfur rich environment – larger forms might evolve.

Faint Young Sun, Warm Dark Earth

Early Earth absorbed more sunlight — no extreme greenhouse needed to keep water wet.

Researcher unravels one of geology’s great mysteries.

The two news pieces discuss a single PreCambrian conundrum – the puzzle of liquid water on an Earth illuminated by a Sun at just 70-75% of today’s luminosity. The solution was previously thought to be lots and lots of carbon dioxide, but new chemical evidence has nixed that idea. Now the solution might be that Earth was, on average, darker because it had fewer and less reflective clouds than it presently does. The single study that spawned the two news-bites suggests different cloud chemistry – but what if the triggering factor for cloud formation was reduced?

Christoffer Karoff at the University of Birmingham suggests that Galactic Cosmic Rays were reduced to the much higher frequency and severity of Coronal Mass Ejections by the early Sun…

A Solution to the Faint Young Sun

…a scenario ably discussed at TechReview’s arXiv blog. As odd as it seems, but that “faint young sun” was incredibly violent and active, producing up to 1000 times more extreme UV and solar wind than it does in its warmer, but more sedate middle-age.

Of course the two effects could have operated in parallel and amplified each other. Coupled with possibly higher levels of nitrogen, thus a more effective CO2 greenhouse, and the conundrum isn’t so puzzling anymore.

Einstein-Rosen Wormholes versus Schwarzschild Black-Holes

Our universe at home within a larger universe? So suggests wormhole research.

Nikodem Poplawski, a physicist at Indiana University, has recently had this paper, Radial motion into the Einstein-Rosen bridge, published by Physics Letters B. The news bite elaborates on some of its implications, that a black hole may well form an Einstein-Rosen bridge into another Universe, one created by the white-hole explosion of the collapsed star that became a black-hole in our Universe. Infalling particles from our Universe will immediately cross the Event Horizon and end up in the ‘Big Bang’ of the daughter Universe, though the time connection between the two isn’t necessarily a direct one.

White-hole cosmologies have been suggested by a number of researchers, notably two “Young Earth/Old Universe” creationists, Russell Humphreys and John Hartnett, but also by more mainstream cosmologists. Cosmological physics doesn’t really care, the equations can be deployed by anyone, though Hartnett and Humphreys fiddle with “achronal regions” and “Space-time expansion” to allow light to travel billions of light-years, but be seen by an observer on a ~6,000 year old Earth. While I disagree violently with their messed up geology-bashing, I do find their critique of accepted cosmological assumptions interesting. Plus their basic idea, of Intelligence making white-hole Universes, might be right.

That’s where the rubber hits the road – the potential validation of Prof. Louis Crane’s ideas about cosmic natural selection and the role of intelligent life in the lifecycle of kosmoi. If artificially generated black-holes form an Einstein-Rosen bridge and a white-hole detonation of the “other side”, then intelligent life will be making black-holes and new kosmoi, which will in turn make new life.

What about natural black holes? Stellar black-holes and their super-massive cousins are likely to be out-numbered by their smaller kin. But large extra-dimensions mean particle collisions can make micro black-holes… but briefly. They may not last long enough to form the E-R bridge and are effectively ‘still-born’. Intelligent activity will be needed to proliferate E-R bridges and new white-hole universes. We won’t be gods by making such kosmoi, as they’re cut off from us by the event horizon – the only way to enter the new kosmos is via infalling. Immanence without transcendence, probably as a spray of high-energy particles in the new kosmos.