Basic Principles. 0001

1. Basic science tells us that matter can be converted to energy (relatively simple) and that energy can be converted to matter (far less simple), but neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed. This is a very fundamental principle that almost anyone knows, if not understands. However, something lost on most people is that if A can be converted to B and B to A, then A and B are really the same thing! That thing usually has a name, call it D. For example, we can handle liquid water. At 32°F, liquid water turns to its solid form, ice, and had 212° F (at sea level) that same liquid water boils away into steam, a gas. We know that they look and feel different, but we know that they are really the same thing. What is hard for us to accept is that the electricity, radio waves, my big toe, the family dog, and my automobile are all, fundamentally, the same thing! Unfortunately, that fundamental thing has no name. There is no simple, English language label.
2. 10.0020 Absolute Nothingness And The Edge Of The Universe. What happens when we reached the edge of the universe? Does it just go on forever? How long is forever, and how big must something be to be infinitely wide or long or high? This is a question that even physicists argue about to this day. Do we live in the finite bounded universe? That is, a universe in which we can reach the edge. Do we live in a finite unbounded universe? As soon as we approach it and, does the universe stretched, like a balloon being filled with air? What’s on the other side of the edge of the universe? Is there another universe? Are there an infinite number of other universes? Was our universe created when the black hole of another universe reach some limit and exploded?
3. 10.0030 What Is Life? As far as we know, as far as we are taught, there are three forms of stuff in the world: animals, vegetables, and minerals. Using this broad categorization rocks and soil are certainly mineral. In the broader categorization as one of the three types of things, all of the elements on the periodic table, and all compounds made from them would be considered mineral. Thus, even the bodies of animals and vegetables are composed of is minerals, albeit with something extra. On a macro level, we think it is relatively easy to distinguish among them. However, when we look more closely, it becomes difficult. A sponge is an animal, so is coral. However, sponges, coral, and even sea anemonies sit in one place, a mobile, and catch and eat food that passes by. And what about the Venus fly trap? It has chlorophyll, it turns toward the sun, and it converts minerals it receives through its roots into energy for its growth. That’s all very plantlike. However, the Venus fly trap also catches and eats insects! The fine distinctions between plant and animal can be very deceptive. In fact, one could say that the distinction was purely artificial. As far as we know, everything is composed of some form of mineral, by the above definition.

4. 10.0040 The Hierarchy Of Life. Let’s think, for a moment, about life itself. We know that life as we know it is composed of cells. A cell has a cell membrane, fluid, a nucleus, and the areas and sundry other components that have been identified by scientists. The cell, as far as we know, is the smallest object that can be defined as being alive. Cells used to be classified as animal or vegetable. Then they were semi-living things such as viruses which consume and expend energy, but have no way intrinsically to create the energy. Then there are those kooky things called prions, that appear to be almost alive, but not quite. As far as we can tell, things that are alive, such as plants and animals, are made up of elements and combinations of elements which are not alive.

Question. What is it that animates life, or more specifically, your life? And, what is the boundary between living in nonliving? Can cells be said to be alive because they can acquire and metabolize food into energy? What about viruses? Are they alive, or almost alive? Viruses are incapable of acquiring or metabolizing anything. Viruses latch onto a cell, and draw their energy directly from the cells metabolism. They are unlike any other nonliving, elemental or chemical compound in that they consume energy and multiply. Most other nonliving things do not multiply, do not process. The same can be said for prions. Is there a stage between living in nonliving – call it quasi-living? Did quasi-living exist prior to living?

5. Does Size Matter? When we look at one celled plants or animals, they are very small, and not usually visible to the naked eye. However, we know they exist and can see them with a microscope. Evolution has created multi-cellular plants and animals. Take people for example. We are living beings composed of literally billions of cells. We have skin cells and bone cells, muscle and heart, lung and kidney cells. Barring an anomaly, these cells make up a unique person. Now what’s interesting, is that I can take a few of those cells – skin or liver or kidney – remove them from the body to which they are attached, put them in a petri dish with the proper nutrients, and they will continue to grow.



While science may not be advanced enough yet to be growing a new heart, it can certainly keep heart cells alive for a long time, outside the body. Here is another fact. Over time, virtually every cell in my body will be replaced. Older skin cells will die and slough off, only to be replaced by new living cells. With the possible exception of neurons, as nerve cells are called, our entire body is replaced many times, cell by cell, over the course of our lives.

I am physically not the same person as I was yesterday, last month, or last year. Aside from being me, the personality that we all know, I am a product of the food I eat, water I drink and air that I breathe. The person who went to bed last night is physically not the same person that woke up this morning! This raises a number of very interesting questions such as who or what am I… or anyone else for that matter. I am literally a colony of independent cellular level organisms that live together, have their own goals, and have the shared goal of staying alive. They start out like a new colony, grow and prosper as a mature city or country, and eventually, and inevitably, die like the ghost towns of the wild West, with only our skeletons surviving the ravages of time to prove that we once walked here on the earth. Understanding this points out an interesting conundrum. Who am I? Is that essence which is me – my personality, separate from that colony of living cells which represents my body? Or, is my essence, me, simply a product of this colony of cells living, growing and sharing themselves? It would certainly seem that the unique thing, that unique living organisms that I identify as myself, is separate from some biological processes that make up my body.

If I call the self aware entity a spirit or a soul, then it is certainly something different from the collection or colonies of differentiated cells that make up my body. In scientific terminology, something that we have to Discover is whether that thing we call the soul is an emergent property of the elements and compounds that manifest themselves as cells, or, whether it is something different entirely which a particular batch of cells provide access to these four dimensions! Is the body of machine, like an automobile or a telephone which transports matter or information that is used by some spirit – some type of organized energy? Or, is what we define as intelligence and the ability to communicate something that is inherent in the particular combination of elements and compounds can higher-level structures that make up a person?

6. Existing in Four Dimensions. We are told that we live in a four dimensional universe. Length, width, height the three dimensions that exist in space. That which exists in those three dimensions also passes through the dimension we call time. Time, the fourth dimension, by our perception, always marches forward. The arrow of time, as the physicists call it, always points to the future. However, as explained by noted physicist Stephen Hawking, there is nothing in physics which tells us that the arrow of time always points to the future. It may be our senses, our built-in, hardwired psyche which can only perceive the forward movement of time.

But even more astonishingly, he tells us that the laws of physics, as we understand them, tell us that there must be more than four dimensions! Hawking states that for the equations of physics to work, there must be at least seven dimensions. These new dimensions (or at least new to us mere mortals) are not perceptible with sight, sound, taste, touch or smell – the classical human senses. These extra dimensions would require a sixth sense to perceive. This brings up an interesting point. If the dimensions themselves cannot be perceived, perhaps the mechanism for perceiving them cannot easily be perceived either. However, it does not preclude the possibility that we do have a sense, and in existence, and those other three or more dimensions. If the dimensions exist, perhaps there is a portion of ourselves that also exists in some or all of those dimensions. And, perhaps there is some sort of interface between our mind, brain and the extra dimensional existence.

7. Atomic Stuff. I will digress for a moment to talk about atoms which make up elements which make up all other matter – living and not living. Let’s use lead as an example. We see a block of lead. It is grayish in color. It’s heavy. Lead is just about the heaviest nonradioactive element. If one were to taste it (not advisable, since it is toxic to life) it would even taste slightly sweet. Lead as an element is composed of only one type of atom – the lead atom, whose symbol is PB (for its Latin name, plumbum). We think of lead as a metal, albeit a relatively soft one. We can and make it led into a bar, and bend it with our bare hands. We can hit someone over the head with a lead pipe and knock them out as they used to do in the old-time movies. We think of it as rigid.

There are two things that give lead these physical properties. One thing is the number of protons in the nucleus of the lead atom. It is In the case of lead, there are 82 protons, and correspondingly, 82 electrons. It is this nucleus which gives it its weight, color, hardness and flavor. The other thing is the number of electrons which float around the atoms nucleus. In order for an element to be stable, it should have as many electrons as it has protons.

Now here’s what’s interesting. The proton is like a ball of marbles. Each smashed up next to the other. Each ball or bundle has a certain weight which makes it what it is, for example lead. Now stripped of its electrons, the little balls of lead just bounce around. They would never come together to form a solid block without electrons. It is when two or more atoms sharing electron that the nuclei become stuck together! We see a lead pipe because the electrons in the lead have caused it to stick together! Now if we were to be able to photograph that leadpipe down to the microscopic level we would find something wondrous, and perhaps, to some, a little disturbing!

Each atom from the central nucleus to the outermost electron is mostly empty space. If we were to blow up and atom to the size of a basketball, the nucleus which contains the protons and neutrons (which we did not discuss here) would be perhaps the size of a marble. Then there is empty space. In relationship to the size of the entire atom, there is in fact quite a bit of nothingness between the nucleus and the first ringe of electrons. Then we take about an inch of space from the outer cover in, and put approximately 8 electrons in an orbit and we make several shells or orbits. This means that an added, that fundamental element of everything solid liquid or gas, is mostly empty space!

What makes the atoms stick together are the electrons! Without explaining in detail suffice it to say that the universe wants the outer shell of most atoms to have a specific number of electrons. What makes something solid is when two of these atoms come next to each other and share one or more electrons! We perceive the lead as solid but really it is 90% nothingness filled with atomic nuclei held together only by the electrons in their orbits. This is true for the most vaporous gas to diamond hard solids! An atom of carbon in a person is the same as in atom of carbon in your charcoal grill or in the wood you burned in your fireplace!

We are made up mostly of empty space punctuated by protons glud together by orbiting electrons with mostly empty space in between!

continued on r-4



The Classification Of Things

Animal
Vegetable
One cells – nucleus
One cells – no nucleus
Virus
Prion

Non-metabolic (mineral)
element

Project Outline

1. Matter and energy
2. Absolute nothingness in the edge of the universe
3. What is life?
4. The hierarchy of life
5. Does size matter?
6. Existing in four dimensions
7. Atomic Stuff
8. How big is life?
9. Immortality
10. Beyond life as we know it

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