julius2

Agree that great strides have been made and the hard work by everyone will continue to deliver progress.

Totally agree about life having a lot of sub-assemblies. If we take a short "tour" of some of these: capture energy build complex molecules store information maintain order Then there is the creation of: amino acids sugars lipids nucleotides DNA allows stable storage accurate replication mutation I understand that there would be ongoing research into how life began and persists from these sub-assemblies. Surely a good proof of the sub-assemblies (demonstrating strong knowledge) would be to do a recreation? Although this would be playing god. I think what I was trying to get to in general is: there is a known gap between quantum mechanics and general relativity. Each theory works well at each extreme. And the mathematics does not allow us to reconcile the two (yet). proposal - LIFE itself provides the reconcilitation between quantum mechanics and general relativity. The problem with unifying QM and GR and the solution may be that we need to go into another "realm" possibly into dimensions we can't imagine or access. But life does this physically. Life operates across both frameworks. If we take a cat, it has a quantum existence, due to the atoms for muscles, flesh, bone etc. But it also exists in the GR world - it uses quantum rules only where they are stable (and follows classical thermodynamics). The difficulty with any kind of research in this area would be trying to find hidden dimensions we cannot imagine or access.

Bacteria has a parent of sorts. My understanding is that to replicate, the one cell grows and the bacterial chromosome is copied. The cell then splits into two forming two daughter cells. So there would be no replicated bacteria without the original cell? Abiogenesis - the origin of life from non-living matter. The thing is , is it possible to create life just by mixing molecules together? It seems that many pieces of the puzzle have been achieved, such as organic molecule formation, partial RNA copying etc. But is it likely scientists will ever be able to create life? Invisible threads proposal This is where early life sprung up from "invisible threads" interacting. Let's say in the early Earth billions of years ago in with matter were these "invisible threads". It may have taken a long time but the interaction of these threads eventually leads to life coming in to existence. In the life we see today the proposal is that these threads still exist. For instance the invisible threads of a male dog and the invisible threads of a female dog combine. This then results in a "download" of more threads. This forms the life basis for the baby dog. In humans the "invisible threads" is the soul. So if scientists or whoever are trying to create life from just molecules they might not be able to do so without taking into account the interaction of these "invisible threads"?? The invisible threads. Why can't we observe them - because they are from a different dimension.

"all the pieces that contribute to life were already alive themselves" Yes, this is right. Life is a "pass down" process. So all living things we see today are as a result of a "pass down" from previous "parents". If this is the case , where / when was the first "pass down"??

"all the pieces that contribute to life were already alive themselves" Yes, this is right. Life is a "pass down" process. So all living things we see today are as a result of a "pass down" from previous "parents". If this is the case , where / when was the first "pass down"?? "If there is a soul, it's nothing physical, it has no mass or energy" Yes, that it right. My guess is that the "soul" develops as we grow. If we have a "soul" and it has never been measured, we can "observe" it's effect - eg through emotions etc. Kind of like observing light through the 2-slit experiment. Because of it's strange nature you need to observe indirectly.

"exceedingly nebulous" - yes that is the idea - I can only report the "facts"

The concept is that "life" comes in through spacetime (at conception). When things die the "soul" returns through spacetime. There is no evidence of this as such. But looking at the wider gambit of physics - particle accelerators, string theory etc. is a crack at finding any such evidence.

Yes, the test would be to test spacetime reaction between organic and inorganic matter. However, my understanding is that the effect on spacetime happens on large scales. e.g. when you look out in to the cosmos. i.e. you can see the bending of spacetime (gravity) between the sun and the planets. I would say an experiment to measure spacetime effect on a human scale or similar would reveal a negligible result. I guess the original idea was that there was "time" before the BB - made up of many "primitive" times (the explanation of which is not available). There was a collapse in these "times" to a "singularity", then the BB itself. Then a reconstitution of sorts. The problem with this idea however is the vastness of the universe outside of earth. Apparently there are trillions of stars, if not billions of galaxies. This is just a mystery.

Thanks. I guess the idea is to try to "hone in" more on how biology affects spacetime. My area of interest would be spacetime at conception. I imagine the focus of IVF research would have much research covered. One paper I found so far is: The Biological Production of Spacetime: A Sketch of the E-Series

Yes, so it seems that there are a number of alternate theories of gravity to help explain phenomena in the current universe. I guess because our current universe is so large and complex. Especially at the cosmic scale the magnitudes etc are mind bending. I guess, I am wondering whether any equations have been looked at if we were to build a "new" universe? For example, a "gravity" where spacetime does not curve but goes at right-angles instead.... I don't know the equations on how you would do this. I guess it would depend on the tensors. It is interesting to note that scientists talk about the Theory of Everything. My understanding is that they are trying to reconcile quantum mechanics to general relativity. ie. the theories governing the very small to the very large. My idea is that you can't have a Theory of Everything unless you include life. There are major challenges to explaining life, so I guess physicists decided to skip it all together..... Without being precise, I say that life involves higher dimensions (as mentioned on post above). So we get away from philosophical and go towards scientific. But finding out about these higher dimensions could be difficult or impossible. And in fact perhaps we are not meant to work it out? In which the planet will keep on turning and economic needs will rule the day.... Although lazy, under this idea and I turned to string theory or M theory etc. this may be the closest we get to "talking about" the higher dimensions. As mentioned, there is a chance we are not meant to discover..... But we would not be where we are today, without trying.

My understanding is that the field equations describe the "mechanics" of the existing universe. So changes in these equations would change the "mechanics" too? Similar to 2T physics which adds another time dimension to spacetime, many people have "toyed around" with different theories in order to discover something new. Just wondering if there are any existing papers / known physicists who have theorised on a universe with a different set of Field Equations???

Einstein Field Equations. Involves the Einstein tensor, Metric tensor, Cosmologial Constant etc. Left side has curvature and distances and angles in spacetime. Right side deals with matter, radiation, energy Understanding, you start with the right side and then solve for the left side giving how distances and times are measured in spacetime. There is the solution for empty space (Schwarzschild solution) or expanding universe (Friedmann equations). Question: If we had slightly different field equations, would we have a different universe?

It is interesting to see Brian Greene talk about consciousness. He says that how can you take a bunch of molecules / atoms, arrange them in a certain way and have consciousness? He says if these fundamental blocks (molecules / atoms) have no consciousness themselves how can this be? Alternatively, if these fundamental blocks do have some consciousness, then a non-living thing, like a chair or table, should (in theory) have some kind of consciousness.

For living things, I don't think it would be as simple as vibrating strings in 10 dimensions.

It is interesting to note that experiments have been done with particle colliders to see if certain particles escape in to the extra dimensions as described by string theory.