Recycling 101

The Webb

As per Space Daily, the Webb mav have discovered something profound, life uses the same components everywhere because nature's lazy and reuses everything as the principle of least action is universal and this finding, if it pans out, proves this take rings true. One can only hope. :)

The James Webb Space Telescope may have picked up the faint chemical signature of a molecule that, on Earth, is made almost entirely by marine life. The molecule is dimethyl sulfide, and the planet is K2-18b, a world about 124 light-years away. If that reading held up, and if the molecule could only be made by living things, it would be one of the most consequential measurements in the history of astronomy.

Both of those conditions are in doubt.

The signal is tentative. It might be dimethyl sulfide, or a closely related sulfur compound, or a blend of ordinary gases mimicking one. Independent teams reanalysing the same observations have not found the evidence robust; in some reductions the signal weakens or disappears, and in others ordinary molecules fit the data about as well. And even if it is there, dimethyl sulfide has turned out to be a weaker sign of life than it once seemed.

Combine this with teasers from Enceladus, Europa and Mars and the notion of laziness becomes clearer along with the concept of Panspermia, the concept of life being delivered to planets from space as organic chemicals are everywhere. 

Panspermia proposes that organisms such as bacteria, complete with their DNA, could be transported
by means such as comets through space to planets including Earth.

Back in 2007, yours truly wrote this. 

In 1937, Olaf Stapledon wrote Star Maker, one of the greatest books ever written. In it, he discusses the inner workings of the universe that is remarkably prescient with references to artificial/collective intelligence, genetic engineering, extraterrestrial civilizations and the universality of life. In essence, the book is awe inspiring but why talk about a work written seventy years ago? In two words, inorganic life.

The Physics News page no longer exist but it does here. :)

Seems that "some" forms of extraterrestrial life may be inorganic (not containing carbon) living in plasmas, "essentially the fourth state of matter beyond solid, liquid and gas, in which electrons are torn from atoms leaving behind a miasma of charged particles." whereby interstellar dust, under the right conditions, forms DNA type strands, replicate and evolve in similar fashion to the carbon based life-forms found here on earth. When this expanded idea of life is looked at in relation to Arthur C. Clark's masterwork, 2001, (Life living on the surface of stars as seen by Dave on his journey to the infinite.) the notion of different kinds of life existing outside the bounds of the carbon construct becomes feasible, especially when articulated by profound thinkers like Stapeldon and Clarke and confirmed by this discovery of plasma generated "life".

At the same time inorganic "life" has been discovered comes the idea of panspermia, or the concept that life on earth "began inside comets and then spread to habitable planets across the galaxy. "

No longer too far fetched IMHO. :)