'You are not the centre of the universe!'

You may have heard this statement before. People say this when they want to communicate that somebody is being self obsessed. But cosmologically, can you be the exact centre of entire universe?

Does the centre of the universe actually exist?

We all know about the big bang, how our universe was born 14 Billion years ago. From a small singularity, it just exploded into what we see today.

But we often imagine the big bang incorrectly, it wasn't an 'explosion', because an explosion requires a space to explode into.

In the beginning, there was nothing, 
In the end, there was everything.

The concept of space didn't make sense before the big bang. We imagine the vacuum of space that the big bang dumped all the matter, energy, stars and galaxies into but with birth of universe, the concept of space was born.

The universe is big. Mind bogglingly big. Possibly, infinite. Uncountably infinite.

We often imagine the observable universe to be spherical. If that were true, then the space would have a boundary, which it doesn't. Its infinite. Only our field of observation is spherical, because the earth is spherical. But the big bang didn't occur at a single point and that point isn't in the universe.

Imagine it this way, take a graph paper. 2 dimensionally, it is an infinite plane. The graph paper has boundaries but the paper only is a small sample representation of 1 plane of the entire 3 dimensional universe.

So, if on a cartesian graph, with regular 1mm intervals, we mark a point somewhere in the graph and take it XY(0,0) then that is the centre of origin.

The two axis X and Y originate from the 0,0. But you mark 0,0 at any point on the graph paper, in the centre or the left side bottom corner, or anywhere. The cartesian plane is infinite on both axes.

Apply this principle you used on a 2 dimensional cartesian plane to a 3 dimensional universal space.

You can choose any point of origin (0,0,0). It isn't bound by any law of science that you can't take the (0,0,0) randomly.

Therefore, you can, literally, cosmologically, mathematically, astronomically, physically, quantum mechanically and philosophically be the centre of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE. You just have to assume you are the (0,0,0) and voila! You are the centre of the universe. The point of origins. The centre to everything. 

But then again, even if you are the centre of the universe, remember that the world doesn't revolve around you and therefore you shouldn't be so self centered even if you are central to everything. 

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In  my first post on this blog, I left the reader with two questions,

What is the purpose of life?




We should always question the question before thinking about answering the question.

Why did you even assume that life has a purpose? 

What is meant by...a purpose? And why would life have any purpose?
When we think about our life and our existence, we like to fancy ourselves as the 'main character' of a story that runs in real time. Now, it is not being self centered or wrong but just a normal psychological perspective that we see ourselves to be the main 'hero' of the story. The story of our life. Why wouldn't we be the main character of 'our' life? It gives us comfort to think that we have a purpose, to think that we were created for a reason and we shall spend our life time achieving that purpose. But...what is it? Getting your dream job? Visiting the world? Loving, marrying and making a family? Reproduction?

Those are the purposes that we give to ourselves.

But I am not talking about the purpose of our lives, but the purpose of THE life. The biological entity known, as life. YOU give purpose to YOUR life.

Coming back to biological life.

We have seen different programs on tv about, birds migrating thousands of kilometers or polar bears hibernating the cold harsh winter or ants constructing colonies and feeding their young or perhaps a plant competing with other plants for sunlight on the floor of a tropical forest under the dense canopy of green where the monkeys constantly forage for berries or humans trying to build capitalise on resources.


But why? Why are we in a constant struggle for food, survival and reproduction? What purpose do we serve by doing all that?

Why do animals, plants, microorganisms and all forms of life do what they do? And for what?

Let's look at this from another angle. Let us cease our search for the direct answer but observe what every living entity is trying to accomplish.

It might be so that the whole point of life is to reproduce.


I mean, it makes sense, every living entity out there, is trying to pass down its genes into the next generation. We eat, survive, reproduce and die. The one who is fit will survive and will pass down its genes and hence the its genetic code will survive.




We could analyse life by looking at the code of life, the genome. We are born, we live and then die. That's the end for one organism. But if we find success in reproduction, the code within us, carries on; carries onto the next generation and contribute to the grand story of evolution.

But then again, for what?

What purpose does evolution fulfill? Say, in a million years, earth life forms are so evolved that the earthlings might just conquer the entire galaxy. But then what? Is our entire existence preparing us for some deep future event? But why? Does it take the plane of complexity of matter and order to a next level?


Wait a minute.

Matter and order.
Life is nothing special than matter.

If you notice a very peculiar behaviour of the universe you will observe that everything, and by that I mean, every thing in existence itself, is trying to lower in energy. The second ubiquitous truth of existence is that everything follows the second law of thermodynamics.

Ah, now you are wondering what was the second law of thermodynamics again? I remember I read it in high school, but can't recall it.
No worries, I got your back.

"The entropy or the randomness in a cyclic process or a closed system is always increasing or remains stable." 

"The entropy of the universe is constantly increasing."

Entropy is basically a measure of randomness. (Yeah, I know, it is weird.)



Here, dS is the change in the entropy.

These are a few ways the law could be stated.
Now, compare this law to life and evolution. If the randomness or the disorder of the cosmos is increasing, then how is life so organised?

Why do we have intricate cellular machinery like a flagella (Who says life hasn't evolved wheels for locomotion)

or DNA replication, transcription, translation and all the organised cells, tissues, organs and organ systems.

If the second law of thermodynamics dictates that the randomness of the universe should be increasing (Assuming the universe is a closed system, that is a whole another aspect of cosmology) shouldn't life behave in such a manner? After all, life is matter and a very integral part of the universe. Life can't break the laws of physics. Then how come we are trying to get more and more 'energy' and everything else...the non living realm is trying to lower its energy and increase its entropy.

This is called the 'Schrodinger's paradox'

 

In his famous book 'what is life?' nobel laureate Erwin Schrodinger describes life to go against law of entropy. He argues that life, contrary to common matter, decreases entropy by feeding on 'negentropy'.
It is argued that this property differentiates life from the non living realm.

Now, of course, this is an abstract concept and will require various considerations like, the second law of thermodynamics only follows in a closed system, but can the environment be considered as closed system.

However, bioenergist Albert lehninger (Yes, the one who wrote the bible of biochemistry) argues that the order produced within cells as they grow and divide is more than compensated for by the disorder they create in their surroundings in the course of growth and division. In short, according to Lehninger, "living organisms preserve their internal order by taking from their surroundings free energy, in the form of nutrients or sunlight, and returning to their surroundings an equal amount of energy as heat and entropy."

Therefore biochemists, while studying the energy changes in a living things often use Gibbs free energy rather than entropy. 

So, what does this mean? 

It means that life is an entity which increases the net entropy in spite of being in such order. 

Let us do a thought experiment. 
Consider you are on a field with only one tree. Now, analyse the exchange of matter you and the tree have. The tree absorbs sunlight, performs photosynthesis, makes sugars, stores them in the fruit. You eat the fruit, and combust it to produce energy and carbon dioxide (Respiration), now the plant absorbs the carbon dioxide you produce and perform photosynthesis, and produce a fruit again. 



So the atoms that constituted the plant at one point, now start to constitute you and vice versa. This is a continuous cyclic process. 

So if atoms (matter) are leaving your body and entering the plant, and plant's atoms are leaving its body and getting into yours, at what point would you stop being YOU and composed of atoms of the plant? And at what point does the plant start becoming 'you'? 

In fact, every 11 years, human body replaces every single atom present in the body. So are you the same person you were, 11 years ago?

Lehninger said, that the entropy or the 'chaos' that we create by converting complex molecules into carbon dioxide is increasing the overall entropy.

And that is it.

The purpose.

If you really think of what life really is, you might say that life is a very complex, evolving catalyst for chemical reactions that increase the overall entropy of the universe.

Chemical reactions happen, because of increasing entropy in the first place.

Change... happens because of entropy of the universe increases.
The arrow of time thus, is said to go forward.

Life is a biochemical machine that operates to increase randomness of the universe. That is why we exist. We are a result of, and going towards, the ever increasing entropy.

Every chemical reaction happens in your body happens because of matter trying to get itself to its lowest energy state, thus increasing entropy.

It doesn't matter if we reproduce or have some moral, religious, spiritual or scientific epiphanies, the cosmos wants, and is in the process of, decreasing the energy of the universe and increasing the entropy.

We are a part of the universe and hence we are going to follow the laws set by the cosmos.


There is no purpose. There is just the 'happening', the process by which the cosmos is governed.

And we are a part of it.

We are in a universe which is infinitely big and the utter indifference of the universe towards a tiny wet ball of dirt away in some galaxy speaks volumes of how insignificant, life and we are.

The cosmos doesn't care if you have a purpose. So why should you?

The cosmos just exists. It is bound by the laws of physics and entropy and therefore we are bound by the laws of physics and entropy.

Perhaps life doesn't have a purpose. We don't have any purpose. All the things around you don't have a purpose.

How does that make you feel?

Scared? Sad? Exhausted from all the brain work I am putting you through?

Well, answer me this,

Do you really want a purpose?

It might be sad that there is no purpose to life, but let us say that there is, would you really want it? 

Think about it this way, we breed and raise animals and plants for many commercial activities. So their sole purpose for existence is to satisfy our consumer market. They were created for a reason, they will do what we want them to do and then they will die. Like lambs to slaughter or flowers to harvest. 


So is purposelessness really such a bad notion?

This makes living just as equally good or worse as death.

Because in the end, it doesn't really matter, the entropy has increased either way.

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What is life? How is the living different from the non living? One could say we breath air, we eat food, we live our lives and reproduce and rocks don't, so that that separates us, but what is life in on itself?

A set of biological processes and structures? One thing universal to all (known) forms of life is a set of molecular instructions- The genome as biologists call it. Instructions which command all functions of a cell, The DNA. The DNA is a very huge sequence of nucleotides Adenine (A) Thymine (T) Guanine(G) and Cytosine (C) the- ATGC. The basic units of the 'Code of life'

The english alphabet has 26 letters yes? 26 symbols which when put in a very particular sequence represent some information. If you want to represent the information of the apple then you will spell it as the sequence A-P-P-L-E. Now imagine a language with only 4 letters. Only 4 letters to represent any piece of information you want to convey. Only these four letters - ATGC. This is the language of Life, this is the symphony of life, the magna opera of the 'Composer'...if..he exists.

It's not too hard to imagine. Take your telephone number for example, it is a sequence of 10 digit code which represents the information which will dial to your phone. Just a sequence of 10 symbols to represent the information to contact you among billions of people. That is the language of telecommunications.

Similarly the sequence of these nucleotides can be millions and billion of digits long. It can go on and on... AGTTACCGAA... Absolutely randomly.

And sometimes... not absolutely randomly.

You see, the central dogma of life dictates the very essence of our existence. There are 3 basic things which are essential to life and the central dogma.

1. DNA
2. RNA
3. Proteins

The DNA as we discussed has has the sequence of information.

The RNA- Ribonucleic acid, is another type of Nucleic acid other than the DNA with nucleotides. The function of the Ribonucleotide is to read the code on the DNA. It is also a chain of nucleotide exactly complimentary to what it read on the DNA. (Transcription)

The RNA then form another long chain molecule, the protein. (Translation)

Ok now, now, Anybody who is familiar with this level of biology will say, 'hey we know that already' and anybody who isn't has no idea what I am talking about. If you want to know more about the central dogma, look it up on wikipedia...you will literally know the basics of how life works. Literally.

Central Dogma of Biology

Just remember, If you want to send a letter, your 26 letter sequence language is the DNA, the postman is the RNA and the recipient is the PROTEIN which follows whatever instruction you give. Ok? Ok.

Ok back to proteins, proteins form....EVERYTHING. All your biological cells, tissues, organs are formed by proteins. All the physiological reactions happening in your body right now is because of enzymes (they are proteins). Your nails are proteins, your hair, your skin, a  plant, a bacteria. A protein transports oxygen to your system (Haemoglobin), a protein helps you digest something. Any bodily function, you name it, done by a protein.


So how does all this play into life? This central dogma is the main reason why the living posses a very complex set of Metabolic reactions which govern everything from body temperature to production of alcohol from yeast.

Ok, so life contains DNA. And the inanimate objects don't. Is that what makes life...life?

Well, most of them. But there are entities which are in the blurred lines between the Living and the nonliving...in a way they are both living...and nonliving.

Wait what? They are both Living and Non-Living?

Yes. Viruses. Biologists debate whether they should be classified as the living or the non living.

Why? Because Viruses have DNA (some have RNA as their genome and they called retro-viruses example HIV) but they lack any metabolic functions of their own. What they essentially are is a capsule of protein covering their genome (DNA or RNA).

Viruses integrate their genome into a host cell of a bacteria, plant or an animal. They literally 'hijack' the cell's central dogma, produces proteins of its own which form the capsule and a thousand more copies of itself which ultimately burst the cell open and thousands of viruses are made.

Viruses do have a genome, but they lack a metabolic machinery of their own...so are the living or are they...just a bunch of protein coated nucleic acid molecules?

They are so simple that they blur the line between a 'molecule' and an 'organism'

So the whole concept of life is slightly ambiguous and we can't have a perfectly rigid definition of life.

But we can safely say that any kind of life has nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) and with that and their complex biochemical metabolic machinery that entity is called ... the living.

Or can we?

Must life have these complex biological systems?
Must life be...carbon ...based?

What if, in a 100 years we develop Artificial Intelligence so advanced that it is nearly identical to a human mind? That it would able to think like a human and feel human emotions. That it will feel pain and happiness just like humans? That it will have sentience? That it will be able to copy its code and reproduce just like living organisms do?

Will that AI be considered living?

It doesn't have carbon based code. It has a binary code.

It doesn't have any biological molecule.

Yet...it lives.

It's ...Alive.

Will it be a silicon based life instead of a carbon based life form? If so, will it be ethical to switch off or delete it's files? Will that be considered death?

If we are the 'Composers' of this grand symphony of this computer code...Did we create life? We would be their creators? Their Gods?

We don't know.

Life... doesn't have rigid definitions. Not anymore.

But does it matter how humans define it? Will it change anything if we are able to successfully define life? The universe's indifference to us will continue. Is the concept of life be just a construct of human mind trying to justify it's existence or is it just a complex organisation of matter?



After all, we just know life exists and fulfilling it's purpose.

Wait.

What is the purpose of life then?

Why life exists?

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