irtual metabolism

Rocks, clouds, fire, and the governors of steam engines do not have life as they lack one or another of the elements in the cluster that identify living things. For the geneticist, life belongs to (1) systems able to perform complex transformations of organic molecules and (2) to construct from raw materials copies of themselves which are more or less identical. They must, in other words, be able to metabolize by exchanging materials with their surroundings. Maynard Smith writes: "Although the forms of living organisms (3) remain constant, the atoms and molecules of which they are composed are constantly changing; in other words they have 'metabolism:' ... (4) Atoms are continuously entering and leaving the structure of the organism." Paul Atkins writes of molecular change: "Atoms can be dislodged from molecules with only gentle persuasion so that new arrangements or atoms can unfold out of the old." Atoms eating atoms. Metabolism is the flow of atoms (and energy) into and out of organisms. Schrödinger adds:

What is the characteristic of life? When is a piece of matter said to be alive? (5) When it goes on 'doing something' moving, (6) exchanging materials with its environment, and so forth, and that (7) for a much longer period than we would expect an inanimate piece of matter to 'keep going' under similar circumstances.

The above pigeon-holes metabolism as (1), (2), (3), (4) (5) (6) and (7). However, on the lowest foundation of matter – i.e. quarks, protons, neutrons, and electrons supported by virtual gluons, mesons, and photons – we find differences in degree compared to biological life, but not in kind. More exactly, we find the metabolism feature of life we attribute only to the biological which appears to be a metapattern found in the physical as if the physical establishes the guidelines for the biological.¹ We can frame our response from the perspective of the nature of reproduction which would entail that each of the seven conditions above are met. When signalling a response to a particular point we will use the prime sign – e.g. (3') or (5') – and when simply identifying a point use only (3) or (5).

Life differs from non-life in that living things reproduce. Yet, this is what happens between one wave length and the next. Concerning wave propagation: (3) (5) (7) Schrödinger writes: "If you cut a small piece from a wave the rest of the wave moves along a ray with exactly the same velocity."² (3') The wave propagates by maintaining all its quantum numbers as it reproduces itself from crest-to-crest, trough-to-trough. Atoms and small molecules are wave-particles and thus (half-the-time) waves. The importance is that hydrogen, air, and water molecules, etc. reproduce via wave propagation. Air remains air. Water remains water. They remain constant. Their bonding angles remain the same as do all their physical properties.

On a micro-scale, wave propagation is reproduction, multiplication, replication: features we usually identify only with living organisms to the exclusion of the physical. (5') Where energy is involved, radio waves have lengths in 10⁵ to 10³ meters range and gamma rays at the opposite end with lengths of 10^-11 to 10^-14 meters. They reproduce themselves that many times per second. Nevertheless, travelling at the speed of light (no less) they maintain continuity as photons and do so for billions of years. Under these circumstances (7') it might be said that photons out-perform galaxies billions of years old. Due to gravity, galaxies tend to condense into spherical masses later producing black holes or supernovas. In either case, they transform beyond recognition and come to an end. Conversely, photons retain the integrity of their quantum numbers. Photons, protons, and electrons not destroyed (and transformed) during a cataclysmic event such as supernova or crashing meteor, remain unchanged since the big bang some 20 billion years ago. Compared to organic life, photons out-perform organic life by living and functioning orders of millions of years longer.

(1) (4) Between nuitritional intake (absorption in single cells and plant life, eating in animal life) living organisms receive calories to work from stored energy where energy migrates from areas of excess to areas of deprivation. There are "migratory" analogies in the atomic and subatomic world resulting in physical transformation too imperceptible and fast to measure. Heisenberg writes: (4') "In metals, electrons can leave their shells and wander through the whole crystal." (6) Going down lower to sub-atomic particles we find, "When two nucleons come so near to each other that their meson clouds overlap, some of the virtual particles³ may not go back to be absorbed by the nucleon which created them, but may 'jump across' to be absorbed by the other nucleon." The same is true for virtual gluon clouds in the nucleus or virtual photon clouds surrounding electrons. (1') Though imperceptible, the atom which gains or looses these electrons or the nucleon which gains or looses these mesons differ physically by that loss or addition of charge and mass to itself.

(6') These particles of matter, these quarks, protons, neutrons, and electrons are energized – receive their 'kick' – from the vacuum where the virtual particles emerge that sustain them. In fact, an electron in a high-energy gas can produce upwards of 10²⁰ virtual photons per second and "consumes" a similar quantity: intake/waste; they exchange an enormous quantity of material with their environment – in a big way, electrons in a high-energy gas metabolize.

In (6), immediately above, a nucleon receiving mesons from neighbor is involved in an internal exchange of material with its environment: the nucleus as a whole is the body and it exchanges this material within its body. Conversely, the vacuum, we might say, is external to the body of nucleus. To receive virtual particles from the vacuum is to exchange material with the external environment. This two-tier level of material exchange, internal and external, is the phenomena that living organisms are involved in from getting sunshine and radiating heat to burning calories and breathing. However, it is a metapattern that has existed before the first second of creation had been spent. In each case above, the seven features of metabolism we identify with biological organisms were pre-dated billions of years earlier by the physical: though, of course, in the simplest possible form – and a difference of form, not substance. The particle world is small and quick; the biological world made of slow, lumbering giants.

One final point may be made. "The electromagnetic force holds atoms together externally (with each other to form molecules) and internally (it binds electrons to their orbits around the nuclei). The strong force holds the nucleus itself together." Similarly, these virtual particles hold the nucleus, atoms, and molecules together. As cancer, senility, senescence, death, and decay occur when atomic bonds break and degrade, so too would nucleons, atoms, and molecules fall apart (would never have formed) if they did not have virtual metabolism – the glue of virtual particles – to hold them together.

We will continue with the role of error correction mechanisms identified with biological organisms but found in particles.