Intelligent Characteristics of Potential Microbial Life During the LHB

Article
Open Access
by Ian von Hegner1
1 Future Foundation Assoc. (Karlslunde, Denmark)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/32/1
Received: 2 January 2024 / Accepted: 14 January 2024 / Published: 5 February 2024

View Full-Text Review Reports Cite This Paper

Abstract

The ‘disparitas conjecture’ states that unicellular life is common in the galaxy but that multicellular life is rare in comparison. A variation of this conjecture is that unicellular life may be common in the galaxy but that intelligent life is rare. However, microbial life can and does indeed display characteristics of intelligence. Thus, in this work, how life could have potentially endured through the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) through intelligent strategies such as decision-making, association and anticipation, communication and self-awareness was investigated. At the LHB, there would have been, for microbial life, an unpredictable environmental fluctuation regarding pools of amino acids, lipids and fluids available when impacts and reimpacts launched organisms into new habitats. Thus, evolutionary strategies must have been favoured that could stretch the available external and internal resources as long and as efficiently as possible. Thus, inclusive fitness or kin altruism could have emerged, where organisms adapt to acquire energy and nutrients from siblings who voluntarily autolysed to replenish the amino acid pool for their kin. A further strategy could also evolve where members of the same species can recognize each other and actively isolate themselves from other species, which allows them to better utilize the amino acid pool. Thus, the organisms will potentially be able to survive for a long time in this manner until new impacts launch them to new spots with amino acid pools. There has thus been an alternating increase and decrease in the number of organisms during this localized planetary reseeding, and life may have endured this way until the bombardments were over. Thus, if a world inhabited only by analogous bacteria, archaea and protists is located elsewhere in the galaxy, the existence of intelligent life there cannot be excluded.

Keywords: astrobiology, bacterial altruism, localized planetary reseeding, the Hadean.

References

Abramov, Oleg and Mojzsis, Stephen J. (2009) Microbial habitability of the Hadean Earth during the late heavy bombardment, Nature, May 21;459(7245): 419-22.

Akaizin, E.O., Voskun, S.E., Panova, L.A., and Smirnov, S.G. (1990) Heterogeneity of Escherichia coli Populations during Induced Autolysis. In Mikrobiologiya, vol. 59, pp. 283-88.

Bell, Elizabeth A.; Boehnike, Patrick; Harrison, T. Mark; Mao, Wendy L. (2015) Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 112 (47): 14518–14521.

Bottke, William F. and Norman, Marc D. (2017) The Late Heavy Bombardment. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 45 (1): 619-647.

Chyba, Christopher, and Sagan, Carl. (1992) Endogenous production, exogenous delivery and impact-shock synthesis of organic molecules: an inventory for the origins of life. Nature, Volume 355, 125–132.

Cleland, Carol E. (2001) Historical science, experimental science, and the scientific method, Geology 29 (11): 987–990.

Cleland, Carol E. (2013) Common cause explanation and the search for a smoking gun. In Baker, V.R., ed., Rethinking the Fabric of Geology: Geological Society of AmericaSpecial Paper 502, p. 1–9.

Coenraads, Robert R., Koivula, John I. (2007) Geologica: Earth’s dynamic forces, Elanora Heights. NSW: Millennium House.

Cordero-Tercero, Guadalupe, Velázquez-Villegas, Fernando, Vázquez-Hernández, Carlos Francisco, Ramírez-Cruz, José Luis, Arévalo-Vieyra, Alejandro, Mendoza-SanAgustín, Asahel, Camacho-Martínez, Fernando (2016) The Mexican Meteor Network: A Preliminary Proposal: Geofís. Intl. Vol.55 no.1 Ciudad de México ene./mar. 2016.

Damer, Bruce (2019) David Deamer: Five Decades of Research on the Question of How Life Can Begin. Life (Basel). Jun; 9(2): 36.

Evatt, G.W., Smedley, A.R.D., Joy, K.H., Hunter, L., Tey, W.H., Abrahams, I.D. and Gerrish, L. (2020) The spatial flux of Earth’s meteorite falls found via Antarctic data. Geology, 48 (7): 683–687.

Finkel, S. E., Zinser, E. and Kolter, R. (2020) Bacterial Stress Responses, Eds. Storz, G. & Hengge-Aronis, R. 231–238. ASM Press, Washington DC.

Hamilton, W. D. (1963). The evolution of altruistic behaviour. American Naturalist, 97 (896): 354–6.

Hamilton, W.D. (1964) The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I. J. Theor. Biol., 7 (1): 1–16.

Hamilton, W.D. (1964) The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II. J. Theor. Biol., 7 (1): 17–52.

Lisse, C.M., Chen, C.H., Wyatt, M.C., Morlok, A., Thebault, P., Bryden, G., Watson, D.M., Manoj, P., Sheehan, P., Sloan, G., Currie, T.M. (2011) Linar and Planetary Institute Science Conference Abstracts 42, p. 2438, Spitzer Observations of η Corvi : Evidence at ~1 Gyr for an LHB-Like Delifeery of Organics & Water-Rich Material to the THZ of a Sun-Like Star.”

Lowe, Donald R., Byerly; Gary R. Kyte, Frank, T. (2014) Recently discovered 3.42–3.23 Ga impact layers, Barberton Belt, South Africa: 3.8 Ga detrital zircons, Archean impact history, and tectonic implications. Geology 42 (9): 747–750.

Marchi S., Bottke W.F., Elkins-Tanton L.T., Bierhaus M., Wuennemann K., Morbidelli A., Kring D.A. (2014) Widespread mixing and burial of Earth’s Hadean crust by asteroid impacts. Nature 511, 578-582, 2014.

Marchi, S., Drabon, N., Schulz, T., Schaefer, L., Nesvorny, D., Bottke, W.F., Koeberl C. and Lyons. T. (2021) Delayed and variable late Archean atmospheric oxidation due to high collision rates on Earth. Nature Geoscience.

Maruyama, S., Ikoma, M., Genda, H., Hirose, K., Yokoyama, T., Santosh, M. (2013) The naked planet Earth: most essential pre-requisite for the origin and evolution of life. Geoscience Frontiers 4, 141e165.

McCollom, Thomas M. (2013) Miller-Urey and Beyond: What Have We Learned About Prebiotic Organic Synthesis Reactions in the Past 60 Years? Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Vol. 41:207-229.

Melosh, H. J. (1989) Impact Cratering: A Geologic Process. Oxford University Press, New York.

Mirumur (2011) Available online: https://depositphotos.com/vector-images/bacterium.html

Mirumur (2014) Available online: https://depositphotos.com/49770579/stock-illustration-ecoli-bacteria-isolated-red.html

Reyes-Ruiza, M., Chaveza, C.E., Acevesa, H., Hernandezb, M.S., Vazqueza, R., Nunezc, P.G. (2012) Dynamics of escaping Earth ejecta and their collision probability with different Solar System bodies, Icarus.

Schopf, J. William, Kudryavtsev, Anatoliy B., Czaja, Andrew D., and Tripathi, Abhishek B. (2007) Evidence of Archean life: Stromatolites and microfossils Precambrian Research. Volume 158, 5 October 2007, Pages 141-155.

Takeuchi, Yuto, Furukawa, Yoshihiro, Kobayashi, Takamichi, Sekine, Toshimori, Terada, Naoki and Kakegawa, Takeshi (2020) Impact-induced amino acid formation on Hadean Earth and Noachian Mars, Scientific Reports, Volume 10, Article number: 9220.

von Hegner, Ian (2020) Interplanetary transmissions of life in an evolutionary context. International Journal of Astrobiology.

von Hegner, Ian (2022) The indeterminacy bottleneck: Implications for habitable worlds. Acta Biotheoretica, Volume 70, Issue 1.

von Hegner, Ian (2021) Evolutionary processes transpiring in the stages of lithopanspermia. Acta Biotheoretica, 10 April 2021; preprint published online in HAL archives-ouvertes.fr | CCSD, 21 April 2020.

von Hegner, Ian (2023) A potential survival strategy during the Late Heavy Bombardment. Serbian Astronomical Journal, Vol. 206, Iss. 1. hal-03563069v2.

Westerhoff, Hans V. Brooks, Aaron N. Simeonidis, Evangelos. Garcia-Contreas, Rodolfo. He, Fei. Boogerd, Fred C. Jackson, Victoria J. Goncharuk, Valeri and Kolodkin, Alexey (2014) Macromolecular networks and intelligence in microorganisms. Front. Microbiol..

Share and Cite

von Hegner, Ian (2024) Intelligent Characteristics of Potential Microbial Life During the LHB. Philosophy and Cosmology, Volume 32, 4-26. https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/32/1
Back to the list of Articles