Earth, DNA and Humanity: Part 1 - The Brew of Life

The Brew of Life

 

This series of blog entries focus on the relationship of Earth, DNA and Humanity, using the lenses of science. This first part of 3 parts centered on the brewing of life on Earth. The succeeding parts focus on (Part 2) DNA and Intelligence; and (Part 3) Cultural and Epigenetic Landscape.

The Kaaba, a shrine that had housed the idols of pagan Meccans during pre-Islamic times was re-dedicated to the worship of Allah and became the Muslim center of pilgrimage. The Kaaba also houses the Black Stone, purportedly given to Ishmael by the Angel Gabriel. (Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge, International Edition, Vol. 11, p.3) The Black Stone is of meteoric origin; the pilgrims were ironically venerating the possible origin of life.   

The Organizing Field  

The smallest living things known are viroids, which are composed of less than 10,000 atoms, exclusively of nucleic acid (Carl Sagan, Cosmos, p.28). The nucleic acid has a particular DNA code. The DNA may be subdivided into molecules like sugar and amines, and these into atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. When not tied to DNA, a hydrogen or carbon atom does not have timing built into it.

                In billions of other combinations, hydrogen and carbon simply exists; yet in DNA, they contribute to a mastery, over time, an ability to produce something new everyday, which lasts, in a human being, more than 70 years, every stage, developing according to the DNA’s time-table. Hydrogen (63 percent) and oxygen (25.5 %) constitute the most common of the 24 elements in the human body. Yet, it is carbon in humans that defines its gene and therefore its bioelectric field, that is, the field of life. 

                Higher levels or patterns observed through the interplay of various aspects of the electromagnetic field also operate in man. Like an atom, the individual always wants to achieve a stable condition, where an absence of an electron will cause it to seek out other electrons through magnetism or ionization. In the absence of or addition of a neutron, it becomes an isotope, which makes the atom a heavier or lighter. The absence of a proton causes decay and imbalance, as with radioactive elements. The difference is that the grandeur element called life was factored in, giving breath to a purely physical form. 

                Former Mt. Wilson astronomer Gustaf Stromberg proposed that consciousness is rooted in a world not built on physical matter and the mind reflects some of the fundamental characteristics of its origin, i.e., thinking and planning. The development of a living organism is like planning and building a machine designed to perform a definite function in the future. Only an intelligent being can make that plan, with his attention focused not only on his past experience, but also on the purpose for which the machine was made. Since an impersonal nature cannot have such characteristics, one is led to the idea of a personal cause beyond the physical world. 

             The “field of organization,” in the life of a larva, determined the structure of its body and the functions of its organs. It further guided its constriction during the pupa stage until it disappears, leaving behind a disorganized mass of living cells, with no apparent purpose. Then, a miracle happens: a new field of organization emerges (as if from another world) and expands from a point in the mass of living cells. The outcome is the complex body of a butterfly.

             This organizing field is affirmed by the theory on recapitulation expounded by Ernst Haeckel, about the metamorphosis of a fetus inside the mother’s womb. First, the embryo undergoes the fish stage and lives within the ammonic inside the placenta of its mother. It does not need the gills because it is nourished via the umbilical cord, but it follows the sequence of its ancestors. Then it develops the brain stem and medulla and acquires the vertebrate, followed by the cerebellum of the reptiles, the cerebrum or limbic system of the mammals, before it becomes human, a Homo sapiens, with the cortex and neo-cortex, the thinking and reflective part.   

Origin of Life

In February 8, 1969, a giant meteor struck Pueblito de Allende, a small village in Ceballos, in Northern Mexico, bordering Texas and California. The Allende meteor contained 47 percent iron, 25 percent nickel, and 24 percent sulfur, a mixture similar to the white-hot molten core of earth. Moreover, it contained chrondules, tiny spheres of almost pure glass, containing carbon, calcium, sodium, aluminum, potassium, chromium and cobalt, among others.

  Scientists at the University of Texas and University of Chicago estimated Allende to be 4.5 billion years old and its origin from a carbon-rich zone of a star, 6-8 times the size of our own sun, being catapulted by a supernova explosion at a time of the formation of our solar system. It’s chrondules contained aluminum 26, believed to be a short-lived species formed during the origin of the universe. Moreover, it contained xenon 129, a by-product of the long extinct radioactivity of iodine 129, created when elements were born. The chrondules also contained numerous amino acids, such as valine, alanine, glycine, proline, aspartic acid and glutamic acid, all prominent in earthly animal and plant proteins. This discovery affirmed that after the Big Bang, countless other suns might have been formed with their corresponding planets, which contained the same star stuff as our own solar system. (Gerry Hunt, The Zone of Silence, 1986, pp. 97-101)

In the 1980s, physicist Dr. Cyril Ponnamperuma, Director of the laboratory of Chemical Evolution at the University of Maryland and his team created a miniature earth within a spherical glass chamber. Attached to it are slim glass-tubes that fed a brew of the elements available on the Earth’s surface millions of years ago: hydrogen, ammonia, methane, formaldehyde, and others. An assortment of electrodes and wires lead from the apparatus to output and input controls. The crackling electrodes provided a likeness of prehistoric lightning and atmospheric electrical charges. The result was a replica of the primordial soup that once existed on earth.

In the chamber, the amino acids from Allende were introduced. After several hours of activation, microscopic analysis confirmed a mind-boggling breakthrough: proteins came into being. The experiment duplicated the origin of life 4 billion years ago, in Maryland USA. After several replications of the experiment, it proved beyond doubt that, given the right conditions, chemicals from earth and those contained in meteorites can sprout the origins of life. (Gerry Hunt, The Zone of Silence, 1986, pp.102)

The 4.5 billion year-old Earth is only about one-third of the age of the universe (15 billion years). Dr. Cyril Ponnamperuma opined that: “given similar atmospheric conditions, light-years away, in another galaxy, it seems highly logical that a similar form of life might evolve”  (Gerry Hunt, The Zone of Silence, 1986, p. 101). The human race, with a brief 150,000 years of its pedigree, is only at the very dawn of its existence. Life somewhere else must have evolved to higher forms after billions of years.

Realms of Nature

From the Guinness Book of Records, 1992: Our tiny Earth is an oblate spheroid flattened at the poles, with a polar diameter of 7,899.8 miles, 26.6 miles less than the equatorial diameter of 7,926.4 miles. It has a mass of 6.6 sextillion tons. The center of the core weights 0.4729 lb per cubic inch, with a pressure of 364 Gpa or 26,432 tons per square inch, and a temperature of 8,232^o F.

Earth, mythically known as Gaea, is the habitat of humanity and all living species known to man. In its cradle lie many realms, which evolved since 4.5 billion years ago. Its realms serve as the ecosystem that nurtures life. Rodney Collins, in his book “The Theory of Celestial Influence” explained that nature has different realms, with the densest occupying the bottom of our globe. The realms are herein presented, with slight updates on the core or inner earth and incorporating the hydrosphere.

Realms of Nature

                                                                                Human Kingdom – 10 per square mile

                                                                Vertebrates – per sq feet up to acres

                                                Invertebrates – per square inch of lithosphere

                                Plant kingdom – enveloping the soil and water

                Hydrosphere – water and minerals – 2.21 miles average depth (71 % of surface)

                    Lithosphere - soil and minerals – 60 mi thick, enveloping the barysphere

     Barysphere – metals – 1,745 miles thick enveloping the core of the earth

 Earth Core – iron  - 2,164 miles radius (thickness)      

At the center of the earth is an iron rich metal core with a radius of 2,164 miles, making the iron the most abundant element inside the earth. Next from the core is the barysphere, an outer and inner rock layer or mantle extending 1,745 miles thick from the outer edge of and enclosing the central core of the earth.  The lowest levels are deduced to be composed of iron or nickel, by the way the barysphere reacts to earthquake waves.  

Enveloping the barysphere is the outer shell called lithosphere, about 60 miles thick, consisting chiefly of basalt, granite and other vitreous volcanic rocks. These rocks are crystalline forms of silica, iron, titanium and magnesium. With oxygen accounting for 46.4 percent of the mass of the lithosphere, the rocks appear to be formed by the oxidation or combustion of the metals. It may be said therefore that rocks, which are chiefly oxygen-metal compounds, as living or feeding upon the metals. They form the realm of the minerals, which include the topmost strata of soil of the earth’s surface.

 The area covered by water is the hydrosphere, estimated at 139,781,000 square miles or 71 percent of the total surface, with an average depth of 11,660 ft. (2.21 miles) and a weight of 1.45 quintillion tons (.022 percent of the earth’s weight).

 The soil and the realm of minerals are covered with the thin green realm of plants, which feed upon mineral salts. Being cellular, the plant kingdom is sensitive to light, and transforms the solar radiation, combined with carbon dioxide, into energy for its own use in the process known as photosynthesis. Living and feeding upon the world of plants and the plant waste of oxygen is the much thinner realm of invertebrates. These include the millions of species and infinite army of worms and insects upon the earth, of mollusks and crustaceans in the sea. Most invertebrates enjoy the power of locomotion and besides feeding on plants; they render the return service of breaking up and re-earthening the soil for them, aside from releasing carbon dioxide.

               

Every square inch of the temperate and tropical surface of the earth is occupied with invertebrates. In contrast, the next realm of vertebrates is a much thinner layer, with every square feet or even acres for their elbowroom. With the vertebrates, are the parallel systems of the brain and nervous systems, which permits the power to see and act. They are able to transform, not only solar energy to their use, but individual impressions created by such radiation. They react to specific patterns of light, sound and vibrations, such as those formed by the image of man, his scent and the sound of his voice.

 Finally, we have the realm of the human being, which is sparser, for even with population explosion; only 10 people occupy a square mile of the earth’s surface. Humans live on plants, invertebrates and on the fleshy part of vertebrates. In contrast to the vertebrates, human beings use tools, cook their own food, wear cloths, think in concepts, have a sense of right and wrong; and each human has the capacity for individualization, that is, of creating his own soul.

The Layers of the Atmosphere

The earth is one gigantic crystal formation. The Earth’s crust (the lithosphere), at present, is composed primarily of crystalline forms of silica, iron, titanium and magnesium. With oxygen accounting for 46.4 percent of the lithosphere, the rock-minerals were formed by oxidation of metals. The area covered by water (hydrosphere), estimated at 71 percent of the surface, is composed of crystalline (salt) water and other minerals. In the course of evolution, minerals were brewed first through oxidation. Then, carbon-based life forms were brewed atop a huge crystal cookware, heated by the sun.

 The atmosphere is the environment for most of the biological activities on earth. It also protects earth life forms from harmful radiation and cosmic debris. It is composed of four major layers – the troposphere, stratosphere, the thermosphere and the exosphere, and two special layers, the aurora and the ionosphere.

The first 40 to 50 km. above the earth (troposphere and stratosphere) contain the total mass of the earth’s atmosphere and is generally of uniform composition, except for a high concentration of ozone at 19 to 50 km, which protects the earth from the sun’s harmful ultra-violet rays. The aurora borealis in the northern hemisphere and the aurora australis in the southern hemisphere constitute the polar lights. Auroras are visible at some time on every clear dark sky in the polar areas within 20 degrees of the magnetic poles, measured between 45 to 620 miles in height.

Layers of the Atmosphere

   Major Layers

                Troposphere -    from earth up to 5 miles (8.5 kilometers) at the poles

                                                                                         7 miles (11.3 kilometers) in mid-latitudes

                                                                                       10 miles (16.1 kilometers) at equator

                  Stratosphere -    ozone layer - outer limit of troposphere up to 30 mi (50 km.)

                  Mesosphere - from ozone layer up to 50 mi (80 km.)                                 

                Thermosphere -  from mesosphere to about 400 mi (640 km)

                Exosphere -        from thermosphere up to 435 mi (700 km)

  Special layers

                 Aurora       -       the northern and southern lights appearing in the thermosphere

                 Ionosphere -     50 to 400 mi. (80-640 km.) –high concentration of electrically 

                                           charged particles (ions), which reflect radio signals important for telecommunications

The gaseous constituents of the atmosphere are nitrogen, 78.1 percent; oxygen, 20.95 percent; argon, 0.93 percent; carbon dioxide, .03 percent and minute traces of neon, helium, methane, krypton, hydrogen, xenon and ozone. The lower atmosphere (troposphere) contains varying amounts of water vapor which determines humidity, condensation and sublimation within the atmosphere, cause clouds or fogs, the resulting liquid water and ice and which precipitates to the ground as rain, snow, dew or frost. The air also carries many kinds of dusts –meteoric, terrestrial dusts, microorganisms, pollens, salts and various gaseous and solid impurities from pollution.


Amidst the "brew of life," the conclusion of Gustaf Stromberg: there are strong reasons to believe that, at death, the organizing field, which determined the structure of the brain and nervous system, is not destroyed. Instead, like other living fields, it disappears into its origin in a nonphysical world.  (Stromberg, Gustaf, “My Faith,” in The Human Aura, edited by Regush, Nicolas, Berkley, New York, 1974, pp. 218-222)