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Register a new userCosmic Biology in Perspective
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Added by
Christopher Adam Tout
Publication date
2018
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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A series of astronomical observations obtained over the period 1986 to 2018 supports the idea that life is a cosmic rather than a purely terrestrial or planetary phenomenon. These include (1) the detection of biologically relevant molecules in interstellar clouds and in comets, (2) mid-infrared spectra of interstellar grains and the dust from comets, (3) a diverse set of data from comets including the Rosetta mission showing consistency with biology and (4) the frequency of Earth-like or habitable planets in the Galaxy. We argue that the conjunction of all the available data suggests the operation of cometary biology and interstellar panspermia rather than the much weaker hypothesis of comets being only the source of the chemical building blocks of life. We conclude with specific predictions on the properties expected of extra-terrestrial life if it is discovered on Enceladus, Europa or beyond. A radically different biochemistry elsewhere can be considered as a falsification of the theory of interstellar panspermia.
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Invited contribution to Quantum Aspects of Life, D. Abbott Ed. (World Scientific, Singapore, 2007).
Plasma, the fourth and most pervasive state of matter in the visible universe, is a fascinating medium that is connected to the beginning of our universe itself. Man-made plasmas are at the core of many technological advances that include the fabrication of semiconductor devices, which enabled the modern computer and communication revolutions. The introduction of low temperature, atmospheric pressure plasmas to the biomedical field has ushered a new revolution in the healthcare arena that promises to introduce plasma-based therapies to combat some thorny and long-standing medical challenges. This paper presents an overview of where research is at today and discusses innovative concepts and approaches to overcome present challenges and take the field to the next level. It is written by a team of experts who took an in-depth look at the various biomedical applications, made critical analysis, and proposed ideas and concepts that should help the research community focus their efforts on clear and practical steps necessary to keep the field advancing for decades to come.
Life is characterized by a myriad of complex dynamic processes allowing organisms to grow, reproduce, and evolve. Physical approaches for describing systems out of thermodynamic equilibrium have been increasingly applied to living systems, which often exhibit phenomena unknown from those traditionally studied in physics. Spectacular advances in experimentation during the last decade or two, for example, in microscopy, single cell dynamics, in the reconstruction of sub- and multicellular systems outside of living organisms, or in high throughput data acquisition have yielded an unprecedented wealth of data about cell dynamics, genetic regulation, and organismal development. These data have motivated the development and refinement of concepts and tools to dissect the physical mechanisms underlying biological processes. Notably, the landscape and flux theory as well as active hydrodynamic gel theory have proven very useful in this endeavour. Together with concepts and tools developed in other areas of nonequilibrium physics, significant progresses have been made in unraveling the principles underlying efficient energy transport in photosynthesis, cellular regulatory networks, cellular movements and organization, embryonic development and cancer, neural network dynamics, population dynamics and ecology, as well as ageing, immune responses and evolution. Here, we review recent advances in nonequilibrium physics and survey their application to biological systems. We expect many of these results to be important cornerstones as the field continues to build our understanding of life.
The Ulysses spacecraft, launched in October 1990, orbits the Sun on a polar trajectory. The spacecraft is equipped with a highly sensitive impact- ionization dust detector which can in situ measure cosmic dust grains in the mass range 10^-9 to 10^-19 kg. With the Ulysses dust detector dust streams originating from Jupiters volcanically active moon Io have been discovered as well as interstellar dust particles sweeping through the solar system. The distribution of interplanetary dust grains has been measured at high ecliptic latitudes with Ulysses for the first time. The Ulysses measurements of interplanetary dust, dust grains interacting electromagnetically with the magnetosphere of Jupiter and measurements of interstellar dust in the solar system are reviewed.
We discuss the possible role of the Tietze extension theorem in providing a rigorous topological base to the expanding space-time in cosmology. A simple toy model has been introduced to show the analogy between the topological extension from a circle $S$ to the whole space $M$ and the cosmic expansion from a non-zero volume to the whole space-time in non-singular cosmological models. A topological analogy to the cosmic scale factor function has been suggested, the paper refers to the possible applications of the topological extension in mathematical physics.
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