Higher levels of classification

[Red Hypergiant]

I came up with a thought the other day:

 

There is a sort of hierarchy in the natural world, pertaining to both living and nonliving things, but focuses around living things. You know:

 

-atom

-molecule

-organelle

-cell (this is where life begins)

-tissue

-organ

organ system

-organism (although organism can come at the cell level, with unicellular organisms)

-population

-community

-ecosystem

-biome

-biosphere

 

But could there be something beyond biosphere? Such as two biospheres interacting?

 

There are some problems with this idea, such as being able to get two biospheres close enough together to exchange materials without having them collide.

 

If this idea is at all probable, what would it be called? And extrashpere?

 

It will be interesting to hear your thoughts.

[emrekanca]

We can not observe all of our universe, right? Than why not.

 

Such as two biospheres interacting?

 

when i try to imagine,it always looks like biosphere

(maybe lack of my imagination)

 

But i realized that

 

when atoms combine and constitutes higher things like organs it does not seem like atoms anymore

yet they are.

Edited November 7, 2010 by emrekanca

[Moontanman]

If, for instance, Venus, Earth, and Mars all had active biospheres like the earth does you would have the possibility of something on a higher level than one planet. If the ideas around transfer of materials from one planet to another are correct then you might get all three planets with the same biosphere, it could be called the solar biosphere (for want of a better name) but if each planet had a separate genesis for it's life forms then you would have three biospheres in one solar system. It remains to be seen if there is any other life in the solar system other than the Earth but, if found, it's resemblance (or lack there of) to life on Earth would be very interesting.

[Maximus Semprus Veridius]

Hmm i'm not sure about this one. GOOD QUESTION! I think that a biosphere is the largest realistic conglomeration of living things that interact. I think it's fairly unlikely (to say the least) that organisms can interact between planets. Although i suppose it is sort of possible, in a warped and hypothetical sense. If however a moon of a planet had an ecosystem, and an atmosphere the orbit could be quite close to that planet and particularly resilient organisms could fly between them (possibly), or atmosphere replishing organisms make the atmospheres so large that they overlap. A nice sci-fi book in the making there somewhere...

[Moontanman]

Hmm i'm not sure about this one. GOOD QUESTION! I think that a biosphere is the largest realistic conglomeration of living things that interact. I think it's fairly unlikely (to say the least) that organisms can interact between planets. Although i suppose it is sort of possible, in a warped and hypothetical sense. If however a moon of a planet had an ecosystem, and an atmosphere the orbit could be quite close to that planet and particularly resilient organisms could fly between them (possibly), or atmosphere replishing organisms make the atmospheres so large that they overlap. A nice sci-fi book in the making there somewhere...

 

What do you mean "interact" between planets? If all three planets had a biosphere similar to earths there is reason to think that over the course of geological time the three planets would share considerable material via asteroid impacts that eject material out into space at escape velocity, (the three planets already do in real life) and while there are very few animals that could survive the journey (there might be a very few) it is thought that lots of microbes will survive the journey. So "if" for instance life first developed on Mars it could very easily been spread to the other two planets. Atmospheres do not have to touch.

 

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast14dec99_1/

 

"Radiodurans' beginnings are thought to be from early Earth," Richmond said, and paralleled a time when the environment may have also approximated that existing on Mars for a few hundred million years. Given the presumed sharing of debris generated from meteorite impacts amongst the early planets, origins of D. radiodurans might even be accidentally common between Mars and Earth. "By nature, it is selected to survive radiation damage very well," D. radiodurans can withstand without loss of viability a dosage that is 3,000 times greater than what would kill a human. "The fact that you can genetically engineer these things is the key to the utility of this bug."

 

There is also the idea of a shadow biosphere.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_biosphere

 

A shadow biosphere is a postulated microbial biosphere of Earth that uses radically different biochemical and molecular processes than currently known life. While life on Earth is relatively well-studied, the shadow biosphere may still remain unnoticed because our exploration targets our biochemistry primarily.