From alchemists to ice volcanos: an attempt to understand, and explain, the liquid water oceans sloshing about deep inside the icy moons of Saturn, & Jupiter, &, well, everywhere we look...
It's the heat from the molten core that allows for liquid water - right? So a molten core is a very helpful condition for life. Wondering whether there will turn out to be many more plants / moons with molten cores than would be predicted by standard physics...
You danced right past that "weathered rock" part, when it turns out that it's the key to everything. Before ATP-powered fungi could process phosphorous from rocks, it had to be released somehow, and that somehow is via "weathering" which is a fancy way to say "rain falls onto dry land."
Having liquid water is not enough. You have to have some dry land because rocks don't get "weathered" when they're underwater. It requires rain falling on (dry) rocks to leach the phosophorous out, which then flows down into the ocean.
So that's the first half of the recipe for life - rain up top, falling on (dry) rocks. The second half of the recipe is at the bottom in the form of volcanic/thermal vents, which blast both heat and a rich soup into the liquid water. Combine the two and voila, you got yourself a new lifeform to enjoy, pal.
I have no idea what Enceladus is up to, but your ideas are perilously close to Creationist ideology, especially with the analogy of the Rolls Royce engine parts. But I was intrigued to see someone discussing phosphorus and the origin of life :) Oh, and a shout out to all the poor souls who suffered from fossy jaw RIP ladies.
PS - If Loeb is at the apex of intellectual achievement, then shoot me now, please thanks :)
Ah, nice piece, thanks! I am a big fan of your kind of approach to these subjects, combining Eminem with Robert Hazen... Yeah, I am a huge admirer of Hazen. Glad you like my icy moons piece. I see you have done a bit of thinking about alien life / exobiology; we should talk sometime.
Visual artists, SF writers. You would have felt right at home, I think. Hope they find a way to continue them, in some form, now that the founder has died.
I have a question (tho it may be foolish): because there is life in water in the moon, and the water in the moon is ejected in the space, does that mean that we have life IN water IN space? And if by chance the answer is yes, what impact does that have?
Hi Oscar, there are no foolish questions, please just ask away about anything...
Our Moon is an example of a rock that really is just a rock, I'm afraid: it simply doesn't contain enough water to have a liquid ocean. As far as we can tell, it's a glob of rock, coughed up from inside the Earth after the Earth was hit by another small planet, way back in the early stages of the formation of the solar system. It was once liquid, now it has cooled down and become solid, but it is basically solid rock; there isn't a significant percentage of ice inside it, to get melted by gravitational tides. Unfortunately!
So there is some water on the moon, but it is mostly on the surface, in dark craters permanently shaded from the sun's light. And it is definitely frozen, and has been for hundreds of millions or often billions of years. It probably comes from comet and asteroid impacts (they contain a lot of water), and from the solar wind – which is mostly protons, which are basically hydrogen nuclei, which can combine with the oxygen in rocks to make water. So, there's probably a fairly thin layer of ice in those dark cold parts of the craters of the moon that never get sunlight. (Any parts that DO get direct sunlight, the water has evaporated or been broken up by the sunlight.)
A narcissistic man that TRIES to admit he was wrong but can’t do it deep down:
I don't think I was specific enough. I didn’t refer to our moon (whom I didn’t know to have any beat of water/ice whatsoever) but to any ICE moons in general.
so cool to see the various ways that the evolved universe theory is supported by new evidence. :) it's still difficult for me to fully grasp the idea that our "role" as sentient life is to help create more universes, but it's such a fascinating explanation!
Glad you are enjoying the ride. Yes, the idea that sentient life helps create more universes loses some people (OK, a lot of people!), which is totally fine. It IS the most speculative part of the theory, and thus the most vulnerable to critique. Even Lee Smolin, who came up with the idea of cosmological natural selection in the first place, doesn't like this extension of his theory. He has said he finds it "too science fictional". But the more I've thought about it, the more I like it. The more logical, almost inevitable it looks. Certainly, it's a strange thought the first time you stumble on it! If you are interested in the history of this idea, Clément Vidal has written a book, The Beginning and the End: The meaning of life in a cosmological perspective, which addresses many of the issues around the role of intelligence in an evolved universe:
I don't agree with Clément about everything (because I don't agree with anybody about everything!), but I think he is right about most of the important stuff here. And he's done a lot of fascinating work on cosmological natural selection + intelligence. He might be the most important thinker in that area; he's also done a lot of work, along with John Smart, in bringing other people from other fields together to talk about and explore it. If you are interested, there is a link on that page you can click on for a free book preview (a pdf with a huge chunk of the book, I think roughly 100 pages). The chapters that deal with intelligent life are later in the book, but just have a read of the opening section and you'll know if you're going to like the whole thing.
Thank you so much!! I am so drawn to the idea that the universe is designed to foster life, and after following your responses to new findings about the early universe (and the present universe!), I feel very convinced that our mere presence and complexity as a species is a sign that we live in an evolved universe. Science should know better than to keep using "random chance" as an explanation for such a wide array of patterns that point to something more refined!
I am an artist, and a student, but not a scientist. So for me I go towards the spiritual, existential implications of this theory, and I wonder if our species will be able to fulfill this "role", and what will drive us to create the technology to create more universes? Maybe all sentient beings are inherently curious, and our desire for knowledge is what helps universes ultimately reproduce?
To help you understand, if the Universe is like a tree and other universes spring from it like apples (fruits which will than become an tree which will than have fruits) than sentinel life is (at this point I am kind of lost in the comparison) smaller than the petal of the flower that makes the apple, but just as important as the trunk. (Please give me feedback, I love making comparisons and metaphors)
OK, I like this metaphor! Yes, in the cosmological natural selection + intelligence model, sentient life is something akin to pollen; it's tiny, it arrives late in the lifecycle, at maturity, but it's very important for reproductive success.
Masterly! I am looking forward to the follow-up posts.
Oh, great! I was gloomily wondering if anyone would be interested. Icy moons seem so esoteric, at first glance. But I find them FASCINATING.
Dogma & Catma 🐶🐱🎯 such a fascinating read! Now to figure out how to write a scienceku or senryu with your information.
I am delighted you like the dogma/catma distinction. I find it very useful! Hope you manage to incorporate it into your poetic practice...
Hail Eris!
All hail Discordia!
Got here though brain a bit befuddled!
It's the heat from the molten core that allows for liquid water - right? So a molten core is a very helpful condition for life. Wondering whether there will turn out to be many more plants / moons with molten cores than would be predicted by standard physics...
You danced right past that "weathered rock" part, when it turns out that it's the key to everything. Before ATP-powered fungi could process phosphorous from rocks, it had to be released somehow, and that somehow is via "weathering" which is a fancy way to say "rain falls onto dry land."
Having liquid water is not enough. You have to have some dry land because rocks don't get "weathered" when they're underwater. It requires rain falling on (dry) rocks to leach the phosophorous out, which then flows down into the ocean.
So that's the first half of the recipe for life - rain up top, falling on (dry) rocks. The second half of the recipe is at the bottom in the form of volcanic/thermal vents, which blast both heat and a rich soup into the liquid water. Combine the two and voila, you got yourself a new lifeform to enjoy, pal.
I have no idea what Enceladus is up to, but your ideas are perilously close to Creationist ideology, especially with the analogy of the Rolls Royce engine parts. But I was intrigued to see someone discussing phosphorus and the origin of life :) Oh, and a shout out to all the poor souls who suffered from fossy jaw RIP ladies.
PS - If Loeb is at the apex of intellectual achievement, then shoot me now, please thanks :)
Love it! Definitely worth seven months.
I wrote a much shorter piece on some of Hazen's earlier work back in 2016.
http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=columns&vol=randall_hayes&article=008
Ah, nice piece, thanks! I am a big fan of your kind of approach to these subjects, combining Eminem with Robert Hazen... Yeah, I am a huge admirer of Hazen. Glad you like my icy moons piece. I see you have done a bit of thinking about alien life / exobiology; we should talk sometime.
Yeah, that would be good. You mentioned Bruce Damer, who used to be a regular at these little quasi-academic conferences at NASA Ames.
https://www.contact-conference.com/index.html
Visual artists, SF writers. You would have felt right at home, I think. Hope they find a way to continue them, in some form, now that the founder has died.
Oh, if those ever get off the ground again, tell me! Very sorry to hear the founder has died.
I have a question (tho it may be foolish): because there is life in water in the moon, and the water in the moon is ejected in the space, does that mean that we have life IN water IN space? And if by chance the answer is yes, what impact does that have?
Hi Oscar, there are no foolish questions, please just ask away about anything...
Our Moon is an example of a rock that really is just a rock, I'm afraid: it simply doesn't contain enough water to have a liquid ocean. As far as we can tell, it's a glob of rock, coughed up from inside the Earth after the Earth was hit by another small planet, way back in the early stages of the formation of the solar system. It was once liquid, now it has cooled down and become solid, but it is basically solid rock; there isn't a significant percentage of ice inside it, to get melted by gravitational tides. Unfortunately!
So there is some water on the moon, but it is mostly on the surface, in dark craters permanently shaded from the sun's light. And it is definitely frozen, and has been for hundreds of millions or often billions of years. It probably comes from comet and asteroid impacts (they contain a lot of water), and from the solar wind – which is mostly protons, which are basically hydrogen nuclei, which can combine with the oxygen in rocks to make water. So, there's probably a fairly thin layer of ice in those dark cold parts of the craters of the moon that never get sunlight. (Any parts that DO get direct sunlight, the water has evaporated or been broken up by the sunlight.)
Oceans, though? Nope, sadly.
A narcissistic man that TRIES to admit he was wrong but can’t do it deep down:
I don't think I was specific enough. I didn’t refer to our moon (whom I didn’t know to have any beat of water/ice whatsoever) but to any ICE moons in general.
so cool to see the various ways that the evolved universe theory is supported by new evidence. :) it's still difficult for me to fully grasp the idea that our "role" as sentient life is to help create more universes, but it's such a fascinating explanation!
Glad you are enjoying the ride. Yes, the idea that sentient life helps create more universes loses some people (OK, a lot of people!), which is totally fine. It IS the most speculative part of the theory, and thus the most vulnerable to critique. Even Lee Smolin, who came up with the idea of cosmological natural selection in the first place, doesn't like this extension of his theory. He has said he finds it "too science fictional". But the more I've thought about it, the more I like it. The more logical, almost inevitable it looks. Certainly, it's a strange thought the first time you stumble on it! If you are interested in the history of this idea, Clément Vidal has written a book, The Beginning and the End: The meaning of life in a cosmological perspective, which addresses many of the issues around the role of intelligence in an evolved universe:
https://www.clemvidal.com/book-summary
I don't agree with Clément about everything (because I don't agree with anybody about everything!), but I think he is right about most of the important stuff here. And he's done a lot of fascinating work on cosmological natural selection + intelligence. He might be the most important thinker in that area; he's also done a lot of work, along with John Smart, in bringing other people from other fields together to talk about and explore it. If you are interested, there is a link on that page you can click on for a free book preview (a pdf with a huge chunk of the book, I think roughly 100 pages). The chapters that deal with intelligent life are later in the book, but just have a read of the opening section and you'll know if you're going to like the whole thing.
Thank you so much!! I am so drawn to the idea that the universe is designed to foster life, and after following your responses to new findings about the early universe (and the present universe!), I feel very convinced that our mere presence and complexity as a species is a sign that we live in an evolved universe. Science should know better than to keep using "random chance" as an explanation for such a wide array of patterns that point to something more refined!
I am an artist, and a student, but not a scientist. So for me I go towards the spiritual, existential implications of this theory, and I wonder if our species will be able to fulfill this "role", and what will drive us to create the technology to create more universes? Maybe all sentient beings are inherently curious, and our desire for knowledge is what helps universes ultimately reproduce?
Looking forward to more!
To help you understand, if the Universe is like a tree and other universes spring from it like apples (fruits which will than become an tree which will than have fruits) than sentinel life is (at this point I am kind of lost in the comparison) smaller than the petal of the flower that makes the apple, but just as important as the trunk. (Please give me feedback, I love making comparisons and metaphors)
OK, I like this metaphor! Yes, in the cosmological natural selection + intelligence model, sentient life is something akin to pollen; it's tiny, it arrives late in the lifecycle, at maturity, but it's very important for reproductive success.