The Shadow Biosphere
I've always been interested by the spaces between objects. The idea of the universe being a vast emptiness for such huge distances that planets and stars become the anomalies. Atomic particles - a microcosm of their cosmic counterparts - are mostly made-up of empty space. The gulf between the electrons and nucleus of the particle is huge when compared to the overall size of its components. Even when you look at iron under a mircoscope, the uniformity of the metal is lost on the ridges and valleys of the surface.
It's no wonder that I am incessantly drawn to the fiction of Lovecraft and his contemporaries, writers who looked into the vast abyss and saw not benevolence, but vast wastes with nothing but the promise of interstellar horror. What exists in this space? A question that they and their ilk asked to challenge the traditional conceptions of the world around us.
But all of that aside, I recently came across a term (in Wired magazine) that got me thinking. The shadow biosphere bascially refers to the idea that there could be substances on earth that are so apart from our "normal" biological processes that we wouldn't even know that they exists. For example, all of our knowledge around the make-up of terra firma is based on our own periodic table - all of the elements that make up life and the natural world around us.
But what if there is something else - something we can't understand because it exists outside of our five senses.
Let's consult my ever-favorite Wikipedia for more:
A team of astrobiologists at the University of Colorado at Boulder have defined a shadow biosphere as, "...a microbial biosphere that is so chemically and molecularly different from life as we know it that it wouldn't be in direct competition with familiar life; familiar life couldn't metabolize it and it would occupy ecological niches that were underpopulated by familiar organisms. Such organisms might have proteins made of completely different amino acids or amino acids with the opposite chirality or it might have nucleic acids whose sugars have the opposite chirality, to name a few possibilities."
The term was also mentioned in the "Jargon" section of the May 2006 issue of Wired magazine where it was described as, "alternative microbial life that evolved from chemistry entirely unknown to modern science..."
Taken from - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_biosphere
I am not insinuating that the Great Cthulhu really does exist in the Atlantic Ocean (but wouldn't that be fun?), but that there could be a lot more around us than we can actually comprehend. This does have a bit of a tie-in to Keel's ultraterresterials (mentioned in a previous post) - the idea that the whole UFO/ET/ghost/angels phenomenon is based on a type of being that has been around as long or longer than us, but exists in an alternative dimension.
It's a cool idea in either case.
Let's all hope that we'll find something more exciting than a new form of bacteria.
I've always been interested by the spaces between objects. The idea of the universe being a vast emptiness for such huge distances that planets and stars become the anomalies. Atomic particles - a microcosm of their cosmic counterparts - are mostly made-up of empty space. The gulf between the electrons and nucleus of the particle is huge when compared to the overall size of its components. Even when you look at iron under a mircoscope, the uniformity of the metal is lost on the ridges and valleys of the surface.
It's no wonder that I am incessantly drawn to the fiction of Lovecraft and his contemporaries, writers who looked into the vast abyss and saw not benevolence, but vast wastes with nothing but the promise of interstellar horror. What exists in this space? A question that they and their ilk asked to challenge the traditional conceptions of the world around us.
But all of that aside, I recently came across a term (in Wired magazine) that got me thinking. The shadow biosphere bascially refers to the idea that there could be substances on earth that are so apart from our "normal" biological processes that we wouldn't even know that they exists. For example, all of our knowledge around the make-up of terra firma is based on our own periodic table - all of the elements that make up life and the natural world around us.
But what if there is something else - something we can't understand because it exists outside of our five senses.
Let's consult my ever-favorite Wikipedia for more:
A team of astrobiologists at the University of Colorado at Boulder have defined a shadow biosphere as, "...a microbial biosphere that is so chemically and molecularly different from life as we know it that it wouldn't be in direct competition with familiar life; familiar life couldn't metabolize it and it would occupy ecological niches that were underpopulated by familiar organisms. Such organisms might have proteins made of completely different amino acids or amino acids with the opposite chirality or it might have nucleic acids whose sugars have the opposite chirality, to name a few possibilities."
The term was also mentioned in the "Jargon" section of the May 2006 issue of Wired magazine where it was described as, "alternative microbial life that evolved from chemistry entirely unknown to modern science..."
Taken from - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_biosphere
I am not insinuating that the Great Cthulhu really does exist in the Atlantic Ocean (but wouldn't that be fun?), but that there could be a lot more around us than we can actually comprehend. This does have a bit of a tie-in to Keel's ultraterresterials (mentioned in a previous post) - the idea that the whole UFO/ET/ghost/angels phenomenon is based on a type of being that has been around as long or longer than us, but exists in an alternative dimension.
It's a cool idea in either case.
Let's all hope that we'll find something more exciting than a new form of bacteria.
posted by golgo13 at 11:24 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home