What does life do, then?

[Fred56]

Gravity and Charge

 

We have (we believe) answered many questions about the nature of the universe around us. We are now at a stage where we are capable of exploring very small or very energetic or extremely remote (in time and distance from us) events. We are regularly probing the structure of reality with finer and finer precision, but more importantly, greater accuracy (some believe that the limit has already been reached, with the announcement at an Australian University of the measurement of two slightly out of phase pulses of light which they claim was at the Heisenberg limit:

http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.65.042313

).

 

We are, apparently, upon the threshold of making some kind of bold leap in terms of our understanding. We may be on the verge of understanding why matter attracts itself; this attraction which we call a force, which is much weaker than any force that matter itself can produce (except we know, or understand that if enough of it attracts itself together and accumulates, or condenses, this can produce a force that results in the complete domination of this 'attraction' over any other, and it somehow "folds" itself up into a superdense state)

-- in electrochemical, or EMR terms, and especially not against any 'forces' that interaction at the nuclear level can produce (which can convert some matter back into energy).

 

We have understood this interaction for perhaps the longest part of our learning, and it was one of the first we learned to harness, and exploit with heavy objects, spears, and then arrows. Eventually our innovative and experimental approach brought more learning, along with our increasing knowledge of the power and usefulness of numbers we learned to build more and more useful contraptions.

 

The other interaction that we learned about was the one we now know is responsible for what we see: for light itself; the same thing (fire and the 'fire' that is the sun) that gave us warmth and light for tens of thousands of years has only just recently (in anthropological terms) been explained as the interaction of charged particles, and the fine structure of matter itself (atoms with charged nuclei), the stuff we have harnessed and "played with" for so long.

 

We may also soon learn to build devices, contraptions, inventions that will represent another kind of leap; in our ability to harness matter and its electrochemical interactions, and those combined with our ability to harness light itself in novel and almost magical ways. This will surely represent eventually some resource that we might use to construct a realistic copy, or simulacrum, of a human, (maybe something like a chimp or dolphin brain). Even an actual downloaded conscious mind, a 'soul', as we call it. This would be remarkable indeed, if we could eventually understand ourselves to this extent, and reproduce a kind of existence that could simulate a 'real' one (even if only temporarily --i.e. exploratively or "game" wise). I believe that we will try this, as we are trying to understand consciousness as well, but that the learning process may not be finding some ultimate answer, but perhaps just beginning.

 

Our inventiveness has brought us to understanding of the nature of light, the next most obvious feature that the universe throws, or uses to interact with us. We have yet to understand that other obvious feature of our world that holds it (and us) together --which even a completely blind organism also experiences constantly-- in the same, apparently stable place (well, except for all the earthquakes, eruptions, floods and other dangers, at least)...