Lecture 6 Readings notes

AS 6-13

What is life?
What do we look for beyond earth? Look at life's characteristics…
- Reproduction
- Growth
- Energy utilization through metabolism
- Response to environment
- Evolutionary adaptation
- Ordered structure of cells and anatomy
This way of defining life is BAD because of
1. The list describes what life does rather than what life is
2. Most of these aspects of life are not unique
- More explanation of second point on page 6 of AS

Thermodynamics → heat and energy and their relationship to matter, by suggesting that the essence
of life is the presence of stable structures
- Such as: cells and genetic material, alongside entropy produced by metabolic waste and heat
Entropy → NOT disorder but an exact measure of energy dispersal amongst particles (atoms or
molecules)
- Energy disperses spatially and so the energy of groups of particles that move together, which is
COHERENT ENERGY. Can then dissipate
Example: a bouncing ball comes to rest because its coherent energy of motion is converted into
incoherent thermal motion of molecules and atoms through friction

The second law of Thermodynamics

- It states that entropy in the universe never decreases ↓
- The entropy that increase ↑ (or energy dispersal) conserves energy but ruins its quality
- High quality energy is not distrubed but concentrated (i.e, barrel of oil)
- The nucleus of an atom or in photons (particles of light) possessing high frequency and
short wave length
- High↑ quality energy has low↓ entropy

Physicists most linked to entropy life → NOBEL LAUREATE ERWIN SCHRÖDINGER*** IDK
- An organism tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy, which is death
- It can only be aloof from it (i.e, alive by continuingly drawing from its environment
negative entropy
- Introduced concept of negative entropy which does not exist in science, to describe the
ordered structure of food
- Increase in entropy for organisms comes from heat generation rather than the degraded form of
metabolic wasre products compared to food
Linus pauling basically said Schrodinegr is dumb and didnt contribute to shit
- He said he made no contribution to our understanding of life relating to negative entropy

- Low entropy structures such as organisms, spring into existence

- Efficient production of entropy is best achieved by so called dissipative structures involving a
coherent structure of an immense number of molecules that dissipates energy
- Example of this on page 8 AS (cell boiling in water)
- All living organisms are complicated dissipative structures BUT… attempts to define life with
thermodynamics have failed to distinguish clearly between the living and nonliving

Schrodinger did correctly argue…

- That organisms must rrin a sort of computer program which is a → GENOME
Genome → we mean a heritable blueprint subject to small copying errors. Which allows an organism
to have evolved from an ancestor and provides a recipe for life's other characteristics such as
metabolism
Evolution → the changes in populations over successive generations caused by selection of individuals
characteristics
- Only process that can explain the diversity of life and how the features of life that were
listed previously were configured
In Darwin's theory of natural selection mechanism
- Genetic evolution means that some are better adapted for greater reproductive success

Astrobiologist definition of life → “life is sled sustaining, genome- containing chemical systeem that has
developed its characteristics through evolution”

The bare necessities of life (AS pg 9)

- Certain atoms common in terrestrial biochemistry are likely to be used by extraterrestrial
organisms and might help us recognize life elsewhere
- Structural elements in biology are carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen while chemical interactions
take place in liquid water
- Life is constructed from the periodic table (same throughout the universes)

(AS pg 10) DETAILS ON CARBON AND HOW IT…

- Is the only element capable of forming long compounds of billions of atoms such as DNA
- Silicon has similar properties of carbon

Water
- Stable medium necessary for biochemical processes
- For extraterrestrial life it could be a different element
- Any element as long as it doesn't become a solid in the prevailing environment
- Unsal property of water = ICE
 - Ice isn't denser than liquid
- Microbes are where there is water
- Life is as much water based as it is carbon based

6 Non-metallic elements
- Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulphur (SPONCH) or (CHNOPS)
- Make up 99% of living material by mass
- H and O in water → makes up most living tissue
- CHO in the nucleic acids of genetic material and in carbohydrates
- C, H, N, and S exist in proteins
- P is essential for nucleic acids and energy storage molecules

The Significance of life elsewhere (AS pg 13)

- Instance of life that originated elsewhere would prove that life is not a miracle confined to earth
- We have no convincing evidence of life beyond earth as of right now

AS 28-43

The Early Earth

- Earliest aeon of earth is referred to as Hadean
- Probable that life originated in this period
- No evidence because no sedimentary rocks are from this time

Continent formation
- Tiny clues from tiny mineral grains left behind from the first half billion year sor earth's history
- These are zircons
- Zircons suggest that earth's continental crust existed as long as 4.3 ga (isotopes support this
inference)
- Zircones become enriched when surfaces eaters maje clays and the mu di syhen buried and mekts
underground, passing the isotopic signature to igneous rock

In Haden
- Earth was probably hit by a fuck ton of huge piecves of debris left over from soloor system
formation
- partially sterilizing impacts may explain the nature of the last common ancestor for all life on
earth
- This ancestor is thermophile → a microbe that lives in git environments
- DNA analysis implies that your “great, great, great..” Grandmother was a thermophile if
you insert enough greats
- Thermophiles may have been the only survivors of great impacts

CHIRON (AS PG 29-30)

Nice model
- It relies on the astonishing idea that the orbits of Jupiter and the other giant planets shifted at the
end of the hadean
- Mutual gravitational effects caused saturn and jupiter to reach a state called “resonance” in which
stauren orbited the sun once every two jupiter orbits
- Earth must have suffered even more impacts than the moon because of earth's greater size and
gravity

The origin of life (AS pg 31)

- Quite how life arose is unknown
- Could have been created here on earth or it was carried herer by space dust or meteorites
- Latter idea → panspermia
- Does not solve how life originated just pushes problems elsewhere
- Prebiotic chemistry during which more complex organic molecules were produced from simpler
ones
- Charles Darwin → imagined that such chemistry might have occurred in a “warm little
pond”
- Letter he wrote to joseph hooker said
- “The protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex
changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured, or absorbed, which
would not have been the case before living creatures were formed” (pg 31)
- Life is unlikely to originate today because organisms are continually eating the chemical
compounds that are needed

Alexander oparin and J.B.S Haldane

- Both recognized that the environment under which life arose would have lacked oxygen
- oxygen -free atmosphere would have been better suited to prebiotic chemistry because oxygen
converts organic matter into carbon dioxide which prevents the build-up of complex molecules
- Alexander macgregor said he found sedimentary rocks dating from within the Archaean Aeon
that showed the ancient atmosphere lacked oxygen
- Earth’s early atmosphere would have been converted by ultraviolet sunlight or lighting into
organic molecules
- DNA was identified as the real basis of heredity

VOLCANOES (AS pg, 33)

Hadean
- It is thought that the atmosphere in the Hadean was mostly maintained from gases released
through volcanism
- Air should have been consisted predominantly of CO2 and N2
- After Oceans formed , atmospheres produced by impact vaporization would have been ephemeral
- One alternative is that organic carbon came from space
 - Some carbon rich minerals contain amino acids, alcohols, and other organic compounds that
perhaps could have deeded Earth with the materials needed for prebiotic chemistry

Another possible source of organic carbon is deep-sea hydrothermal vents

- Hydrothermal vents → is a spot where hot water emerges from the sea floor

Vents
- Beneath alkaline vents, hydrogen released in reactions between water and rock can combine with
carbon dioxide to make methane and bigger organic molecules

(AS pg 35)
Metabolic energy is used to create a different pH on each side of a cell membrane with the outside usually
more acidic than the inside
- The differential is a proton gradient because pH is an inverse measure of the concentration of
positively charged hydrogen ions (protons) in solution
- The greater the concentration, the lower (and more acidic) the pH
- The proton gradient is essentially a battery
- When discharged electrical current flows through the molecular turbines in the cell membrane
and generates molecules that store energy

Organic compounds must have been on centrated for chemical reactions to happen, which could have
occurred when films formed on mineral surfaces, perhaps arising from drying orr coldness
- For a chemical system to be considered alive it needs to have a metabolism, enclosure by a
semipermeable membrane, and reproduction that incorporates heredity with a genome

Reproduction that incorporates heredity with genome

- DNA provides an instruction set that is transcribed into RNA molecules that carry the
information needed to make specific proteins
- DNA is similar to RNA but more complicated
- RNA once catalyzed its self-replication and assembly from smaller molecules
- RNA would begin to make proteins, some of which would be better catalysts that RNA itself
- DNA would replace RNA because its more stable

Another critical feature of origin of life

- Encapsulation of a genome in a cell membrane
- This was beneficial for a couple of reasons: first, to increase the rates of reaction but
concentrating biochemicals; and second to give an evolutionary advantage to self-replicating
molecules

PRE-CELL INFORMATION ON (AS PG 37)

Chirality (or art of clapping with one hand) (AS pg 37)
- The property of having mirror-image symmetry is called chirality
- Chiarlity arises in biomolecules if a central carbon atom is surrounded by four different groups of
atoms (tetrahedron)
IMAGE ON PG 38?

Life on earth…
- Uses L-amino acids in proteins almost entirely
- D-sugars almost exclusively as swell whether in DNA, cell walls or synthesis
- When chiral substance is made in the lab, equal proportions of left- and right-handed forms are
usually produced, called a racemic mixture

Chiral molecules
- Can have very different effects despite their identical chemical formulae
- I.e, drug thalidomide (bottom of AS page 38)

What caused the common chirality or homochirality shared by all life? (AS pg 39)
TWO GENERAL HYPOTHESES
1. organic molecules from which life started started had a slight excess of one enantiomer that was
subsequently amplified
- Physical processes invoked to induce this excess include polarized light from stars that
might cause organic molecules that seedeed the Earth to develop a chiral bias during their
synthesis in space; alternatively, polarized radiation from radioactive decay might
generate an enantiomeric excess
2. Prebiotic chemistry preferentially assembled only one of the enantiomers
- Chemical kinetics is generally more efficient for a pure substance than a mixture, so this
cause further amplification
- Reproduction of a genome may require homochirality
- Hoomochiralitty was probably needed for the replication in the RNA world
model

SIGNS OF THE EARLIEST LIFE (AS PG 39)

Stromatolites → are laminated sedimentary structures made by photosynthesizing microbial

communities in water that is shallow enough to receive sunlight
- Stromatolites take form of domes of wrinley lamination
- These domes are built up from tapped sediment as sheets of microbes called microbial
mats, growing upwards towards sunlight

To find evidence for past life

- Individual dead bodies of a single -celled organisms, since only microbes existed so far back in
the earth history
- Microfossils can only be seen with a microscope are found in sedimentary rocks such as chert
- More convincing if they show signs of cell division, colonial behaviour, or filamentous
structures that occur when cells join up in a line
- They can also be tested to see if they contain organic carbon
Indicators of early life (AS pg 42)
- Isotopes, microfossils, stromatolites, biomarkers (recognizable derivatives of biological
molecules)

AS PG 58-62

On the occurrence of advanced life

- To become complex, terrestrial life had to overcome at least two hurdles
1. Life has to acquire complex cells which were needed for differentiation on the large scale, i.ee,
cells with functional distinctions, such as liver vs brain

Eukaryotic cells

2. Sufficient oxygen of generate lots of energy with an aerobic (oxygen using) metabolism
- Abundant energy is needed to grow large and move
- Anaerobic metabolism, which does not use oxygen, produces about ten times less energy
for the same food intake than aerobic metabolism

Stuff about fluorine and oxygen (AS pg 58-59) → if it can replace oxygen

Trends in evolution? (AS pg 60)

- Trend for the biosphere to use more of the Earth’s resources
- Misconception is to think of evolution as a steady progression ending in us

Around the proterozoic- phanerozoic transition is there a dramatic increase in diversity because at that
time organisms acquire new body architectures and ways of living that persisted

Earth-like planet can remain fit for life, but civilizations are probably ephemeral
- The latter has consequences in the astronomical search for Extraterrestrial intelligence (pg 62)

Lecture 7 AS 63-81 Ch. 5 Life: a genome’s way of making more and fitter genomes

Life on Earth … what makes the Earth so inhabitable? pg.63-65

Biosphere pg. 63-64
 ● Biosphere is the sum of all living and dead organisms
● Biomass on land is about 2000 billion tonnes of carbon (30-50% is living). Biomass in the
ocean is 1000 billion tonnes of carbon (only 0.1-0.2% living). → MORE BIOMASS ON
LAND BECAUSE OF FORESTS.
● A huge mass of microbes extends 1 or 2 km below the seafloor and and >3km below land. As you
go down, temperatures become too hot for microbes to survive
○ Subsurface biosphere biomass is uncertain but estimated 1% - 30% of Earth’s living
biomass
● Biosphere is less than a billionth of the mass of earth
● Biosphere has a big influence on the chemistry of surface environment because it processes a vast
amount of material with rapid turnover.
○ Microbes reproduce in tens of mins. to days, while large multicellular organisms last only
a few thousand years at most before they die for microbial degradation
● Main activity in biosphere is oxygenic photosynthesis and its chemical reversal through aerobic
respiration and oxidation.
● Most numerous organism on earth is a water bacterium Pelagibacter ubique
4 main reasons/components of Earth’s extensive inhabitation pg.65
1. Widespread liquid water - all metabolizing organisms contain organic molecules dispersed in
aqueous solution (means life can live in water and land) → most important
2. Having energy for metabolism - sunlight is main source of energy for biosphere, but some
organisms get their energy from chemical reactions in darkness (means life can exist below the
surface of Earth)
3. Renewable supply of vital chemical elements
4. Presence of interfaces between solids, liquids, gases. → advantageous to live on stable surface
like land or water … gaseous planets like Jupiter don’t have this advantage

Inside view of terrestrial life: the cell pg. 65-70

Organisms consist of different cell makeup that categorize them into 3 domains:
1. Eukarya
2. Archaea
3. Bacteria
● The classification into these 3 domains is motivated by genetics.
● All cells have a large # of ribosomes (which make proteins)
Archaea and Bacteria
● Archaea and bacteria are grouped together to be called prokaryotes and are microbial
● DNA floats freely in these types of cells
● Around 0.2-0.5 microns (millionth of a metre)
1. Eukaryotes
● DNA is inside membrane-bound nucleus
● Can be single-celled (yeast, amoeba, etc.) → but MULTICELLULAR ORGANISMS ARE
ALWAYS EUKARYOTES (humans, mushrooms, etc.)
● Bigger in size (10-100 microns)
 ● Larger eukaryote cells contain organelles to perform specialized functions. Ex. mitochondria for
respiration, or chloroplasts for photosynthesis
● More sophisticated internal dynamic cell skeleton or cytoskeleton than archaea or bacteria
○ Contains protein microfilaments, tiny protein tubes, & molecular motors that control cell
structure and transport signalling molecules to change cell physiology
○ Ability to develop into specialized forms is inherent in the makeup of eukaryotes
● Bigger and more modular genomes than archaea and bacteria → allows for more complexity
● Animals, plants, fungi
● Origin of nucleus of eukaryotes may have evolved from a large DNA virus
● Would evolution make cells like eukaryotes elsewhere? → question of extraterrestrial complex
life
Taxonomy classification - taxonomic levels/domains:
1. Kingdom
2. Phylum
3. Class
4. Order
5. Family
6. Genus
7. Species
● Taxonomic levels of a human: animal kingdom, chordate phylum, mammal class, primate order,
hominid family, Homo genus, and sapiens species
Endosymbiosis pg. 68-69
● Modern genetics implies that eukaryotic cell is assembled in history from bits and pieces of
archaea and bacteria
○ For ex, mitochondrion in eukaryotic cells was derived from bacterium originally living
symbiotically in another cell. The larger cell swallowed the free-living bacterium and the
mitochondrial ancestor came into being.
○ DNA of chloroplasts show that chloroplasts were derived in a similar way from
symbiotic cyanobacteria that ended up living inside larger cells.

Cell sex pg. 69 (haha 69 that’s ironic) - 70

Reproduction of archaea & bacteria pg.69
● Not sexed
● Conjugate when 2 cells are connected by tube where genes are transferred in plasmids (pieces of
DNA)
● Bacterial surfaces have pili, & during conjugation a special pili extends to partner, providing the
conduit. (picture on pg. 67)
● Doesn’t produce offspring & is quick and easy (like brushing up against someone and acquiring a
gene to instantly changing yours)
● Also acquire genes through transformation (uptake of foreign DNA from environment) &
transduction (virus-mediated gene swapping)
○ Rapid acquisition of genes allows the quick development of bacterial resistance to
antibiotics
Reproduction of eukaryotes pg. 69 -70
 ● World without eukaryotes = world without sex
● Sexed eukaryotes generate gametes ie. sperm and egg cells
● Gametes fuse so that ½ of the genes come from a father and ½ from a mother.
● Before cell division, DNA curls up into visible chromosomes under a microscope.
○ Humans have 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs in each cell, except in gametes, which have
half, ie. 23 chromosomes
● Sex is evolutionarily advantageous for eukaryotes because it mixes and matches genes from both
parents onto each chromosome in recombination. If beneficial mutations occur separately in 2
individuals, sexually reproducing organisms can bring them together and reap the benefits
● Sex can eliminate bad, mutated genes by bringing unmutated genes together in some individuals
○ Self-cloning organisms are stuck with bad genes, and offspring can die because of them
Viruses pg. 70
● Viruses represent a grey area between living and non-living
● Are 10x more abundant than microbes in seawater or soil
● Consist of DNA or RNA surrounded by protein and sometimes, a further membrane
● Tiny → only 50-450 nanometers
● Generally considered non-living b/c they’re inanimate outside a cell and have to infect/hijack
cells for their own reproduction
● Not all viruses cause disease
● Origin of nucleus of eukaryotes may have evolved from a large DNA virus
○ Role of viruses in evolution of life are still up for debate

The Chemistry of Life pg. 70-75

Biomolecules pg. 70-71
● Modular
● They are chains (polymers) of smaller units called monomers
4 main classes of biomolecule
1. Nucleic acids
2. Carbohydrates
● Provide energy & structure.
● C,H,O atoms in a 1:2:1 ratio → sugars with 5 atoms are found in DNA and RNA
● 6 carbon sugars exist in cell walls, like cellulose in plants
3. Proteins
● Are polymers made up of amino acids
● Use is enzymes, structural molecules, etc.
4. Lipids
● Organic molecules
● Insoluble in water but dissolve in non-polar organic solvent
● In cell membranes, as fats for storage, and as signalling molecules
Membrane - major components … on pg. 71

RNA & DNA pg.71

● Are nucleic acids (polymers of nucleotide monomers)
● Each nucleotide is made up of 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate, and a base
 ● 4 possible bases for DNA:
○ 1 or 2 rings of 6 atoms (4 are carbon and 2 are nitrogen)
○ Each base has a letter designation of A,C,G, & T (adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine)
● DNA: uses same 3 bases except T is U (for uracil)
Structure of DNA
● Incorporates 2 fundamental characteristics of life
1. Ability to reproduce → in replication, helix splits into 2 strands, each serving as a
template for new complementary strand
2. Blueprint for development and maintenance- DNA double helix is unzipped by an
enzyme to provide instructions to generate proteins. Part of the unzipped DNA undergoes
transcription into a strand of mRNA (messenger RNA)
● mRNA is complimentary copy of DNA - U instead of T is inserted
wherever A is in the DNA.
● mRNA is fed into ribosome
● In the genetic code, groups of 3 letters (codons) along the mRNA specify
each amino acid in a protein that flows out of the ribosome
● Life has to sustain itself through metabolism, which involves breaking down molecules to make
energy (catabolism) and building up biomolecules (anabolism)
● Ribosomes - responsible for protein synthesis (core function in any cell)
○ 60% of dry weight is made up of rRNA, 40% is protein
○ Smaller in prokaryotes than in eukaryotes
4 metabolic terms for organisms pg. 73-75
1. Chemoheterotroph
- Must acquire food to make energy
- Ex. humans, animals, funghi, many protists, and most microbes
2. Chemoautotroph
- Fix carbon and make their own energy
- Microbe that uses inorganic chemicals like hydrogen, etc. to make energy
- Live in darkness in deep-sea hydrothermal vents by oxidizing
- Might inhabit surface of Mars/Europa
3. Photoheterotroph
- Must acquire food to make energy
- Ex. photosynthetic bacteria from chloroflexus genus (found in hot springs)
- Use sunlight for energy and acquire carbon from organic compounds made by
other microbes
- Might exist in oceans of habitable exoplanets
4. Photoautotroph
- Fix carbon and make their own energy
- Plants, algae, some cyanobacteria
- Use sunlight for energy and acquire carbon from air
- Might exist in oceans of habitable exoplanets
● All organisms fall into one or more of these categories
● Troph means ‘to feed’
● 2 ways organisms get energy: from chemical sources or sun
 ● Chemo - energy from chemical sources
● Photo - energy from sun
● Hetero - carbon is obtained by consuming organic compounda
● Auto - converts inorganic carbon into organic carbon (called ‘fixing carbon’)

The tree or web of life pg. 75-79

● Evolution is the change in inherited characteristics in a population from one generation to the
next
● Fitness- Some individuals will be better adapted and have greater reproductive success in their
environment because of genetic variability.
● Natural selection- Individuals of lower fitness are lost
○ Over many generations lineages accumulate genetic adaptations and new species evolve
● Species (in sexual groups)- groups that cannot interbreed naturally
○ It’s more difficult to designate species of microbe (reason on bottom of pg. 75)
Relatedness of species
● We can assess the relatedness of life forms by comparing genes
○ Compare the sequence of amino acids in proteins or nucleotides in RNA and DNA
○ Genes define sequence of amino acids in a protein, so differences in the protein sequence
between species indicate disparity or relatedness
○ As species become more distantly related, protein sequences diverge. With this
data,analysts draw trees that relate all species. This is called phylogeny (ex. on pg. 76)
● Lateral (or horizontal) gene transfer- Microbes swap genes willy-nilly, sometimes even to
unrelated species
○ Microbial branches of the tree of life are more like a web of life, criss-crossed by lateral
gene transfers.
Steps for sequencing a single gene from environmental factors
1. Isolate DNA from cells
2. Copy a DNA gene many times using a procedure called polymerase chain reaction
3. Obtain gene sequence
4. Compare with other organisms
5. Produce phylogenetic tree
Human genome has roughly 21,000 protein-coding gene
● Human protein-encoding genes cover 1.5% of 3 billion nucleotides. The rest of the sequence is
non-coding or junk DNA
○ Many parts of non-coding DNA regulate when certain genes are expressed or code for
non-protein products like rRNAs
Division of Archaea and Bacteria
● Revealed by genes confirmed by biochemical difference
● Ex. cell walls, cell membranes, etc … pg. 78
● You can get diseases from various bacteria, but never from archaea (because it’s never a
pathogen)
Molecular clock pg. 78-79
● Another use of phylogeny is that the genetic difference between taxa can be related to the time in
geological history that they diverged, making a molecular clock.
 ● Molecular clocks work best with closely related groups of species that are likely to have had
similar rates of mutation.
● To use a molecular clock, a calibration point from the fossil record fixes the date of a particular
ancestor in a computer algorithm applied to the molecular data.
● As we go back in time, there are fewer fossils, so the method becomes challenging
● Molecular clocks indicate that the last common ancestor of animals occurred about 750-800 Ma,
which predates the oldest animal fossils.
Interpreting tree of life pg. 79 (2nd paragraph)

Life in extreme environments pg. 79- 81

Extremophiles: organisms that thrive under environmental conditions that are extreme
● growth/replication of extremophiles either requires extreme conditions or is optimal at them
● Upper limit → 95 degrees for bacteria, 122 degrees for archaea, compared to 62 degrees for
eukaryotes (celsius)
● Record holder → methanopyrus kandleri has optimal growth at 98 degrees
● Extremophiles indicate that life exists in a much wider range of environments than we
thought possible. → opens up possibility for life beyond earth
○ Ex. thermophiles might survive deep underground on Mars because they exist deep in
Earth’s crust.
● List of types of extremophiles on pg. 81

Granular outcomes of lecture 7 that I googled... couldn’t find all of them sorry

Dualism model of the brain- the mind is a nonphysical—and therefore, non-spatial—substance.

Descartes clearly identified the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and distinguished this from
the brain as the seat of intelligence.
Materialism model of the brain- A materialist theory of mind suggests that mental illnesses are just
diseases of the brain (Fuchs, 2012). ... According to non-reductive materialism, the brain necessarily
generates and sustains mental states but cannot account for all of their properties.
Idealism model of the brain- reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental,
mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism
about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing.
Paradigm of signal transport through the brain- Neurons Transmit Messages In The Brain. Neurons
are the cells that pass chemical and electrical signals along the pathways in the brain. They come in many
shapes and sizes. Their shapes and connections help them carry out specialized functions, such as storing
memories or controlling muscles.
Kantian brain
Young-Helmholtz theory of colour vision
The Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory of color vision claims that humans perceive color because the
eye can receive light of three different wavelengths and combine them into the entire visible spectrum. ...
Today, we know that these three wavelengths correspond to blue, green, and red light respectively
Lightwave vs. colour
Visible light waves consist of different wavelengths. The colour of visible light depends on its
wavelength. These wavelengths range from 700 nm at the red end of the spectrum to 400 nm at the violet
end. Visible light waves are the only electromagnetic waves we can see.
Dorsal and ventral stream
The ventral stream (also known as the "what pathway") is involved with object and visual identification
and recognition. The dorsal stream (or, "where pathway") is involved with processing the object's spatial
location relative to the viewer and with speech repetition.

Lecture 8: Life in the Solar System (AS 82-109 PL 27-29)

● 9 Abodes Where Life May Exist in the Solar System and Distance from the Sun
Name of Body Type of Body & Distance from Why it might have life
Sun (AU)

Mars Planet, 1.5 AU Might have subsurface pockets

of liquid water

Ceres Largest astroid, 2.8 AU Might have subsurface ocean

Europa Large icy moons of Jupiter, 5.2 Evidence of subsurface oceans

Ganymede AU
Callisto

Enceladus Icy moon of Saturn, 9.6 AU Evidence for a subsurface ocean

or sea, and presence of organics

Titan Largest moon of Saturn Evidence for subsurface ocean

and presence of organics

Triton Largest moon of Neptune, 30.1 Might have subsurface ocean

AU

Pluto Larger Kuiper belt object, 39.3 Might have subsurface ocean
AU

● Sunlight and Habitability of Inner Planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) (AS 82-85)
○ Temperature
■ Location in comparison to the sun is crucial in terms of a planet's habitability
● Sunlight spreads into a sphere with a surface area that grows with the
square of the planet - sun distance
● Solar flux - wattage
● Earth - 1AU, sunshine = 1,366 watts/ square meter
● Jupiter - 5AU, sunshine= solar flux 25x smaller than Earth
● Mars 1.5AU, sunshine = 2.25x smaller than Earth
● Mercury
○ 0.4 AU from Sun, lifeless, no liquid -water never did
○ Surface temperature reaches 430 degrees celcius
● Explains why venus and mars are hostile to life (not entire story)

● Was Venus Inhabited in the Past? (AS 86 - 88)

○ Runaway Greenhouse effect
■ When baked by intense sunlight, the evaporation of water can make an
atmosphere so moist that it becomes completely opaque to the infrared radiation
emitted from the planets surface.
■ Would cause venus oceans to vanish
○ Moist Greenhouse Effect (online)
 ■ It happens when thermal radiation from a planet's surface is absorbed by
atmospheric greenhouse gases which send that thermal radiation bouncing
around in all directions.

● Watery Mars: an abode for life?

○ Missions ( i doubt well use this but whoops)
■ Mariner 4 1965
■ Revealed mars was a heavily cratered surface like moon
● Put a damper for hopes of life
■ Mariner 9 1970s
● Photographed dried up river valleys, and extinct volcanoes.
○ Suggested mars was earth like after all
■ Mars Global Surveyor
● Orbited from 1997 -2006
○ Mapped mars and imaged sedimentary layers.
○ Implied many cycles of erosion and deposition
■ Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
● Discovered clay minerals and salts which may have formed in liquid
water.
■ Mars Explorations Rovers
● Found fossilised ripples from past liquid water and sedimentary rocks
■ NASA Phoenix Lander
● Dug up subsurface ice in polar region and measured soluble salts in soil
■ Nowadays
● Mars seen in reality as
● Cold
● Windswept
● Global desert with dust storms
● Daily dust devils
● No rainfall
● Hostile to life (3 reasons)
○ While ice exists, liquid water was not been identified
■ Polar caps are water ice, topped with carbon dioxide (dry ice) that grows when
30% of the atmosphere freezes.
○ No Ozone Layer
■ Allows for harmful ultraviolet sunlight to reach surface
○ Chemical Reactions in atmosphere
■ Make hydrogen peroxide
● Same chemical used in hair bleach
● Destroys organics once reaches surface
● Liquid Water (AS 90-94)
○ Geothermal heat underground might allow for liquid water and life to exist
○ Evidence
■ Images showed gullies, dried up river valleys, deltas, and enormous channels.
 ■ Soil and rocks contained minerals that form in the presence of liquid water
○ Gullies
■ Water worn ravine
■ They lack superimposed craters and sometimes flow over sand dunes
● Shows they must've been recent
○ Valley networks
■ Dried up river like depressions that spread out in tree like branches with
tributaries
● The Early Atmosphere and Climate on Mars (AS 94- 96)
○ Scientist disagree over early Mars
■ One side: warm and wet climate (nope)
● More favourable for life
● Unexplained
● The Sun was 25% fainter
● Would've need a greenhouse gas effect of 80 degrees celsius to keep
Mars above freezing
■ Other side: Cold climate
● Impacts would have vapourized ice into steam, which in turn would have
produced rainfall that eroded river valleys.
● Erosion might have been produced through snowmelt as a response to
past fortuitous combinations of Mars axial tilt.
● Tilt of axis:
○ High tilts - summertime, polar ice faces the sun, vapourizes, air
currents transport vapour to the cold tropics where it snows
○ Low titls - sunlight couldve produced melt waters and fluvial
erosion
○ Moderate tilts - might explain reclit milatitude patches of dust
that were once ice cemented.
● Looking for Life on Mars (AS 96 - 99)
○ Viking Landers (3 experiments)
■ Carbon assimilation experiment
● Tested to see if martian microbes obtained carbon from air
○ Another experiment done after proved inorganic chemistry was
responsible for carbon - 14 and not Martian microbes
■ Gas Exchange experiment
● Monitored martian soil and a solution of organics brought from Earth, to
see if gases were generated from metabolism.
○ Strangely oxygen was released
■ Chemicals decomposed into oxygen with water and heat
■ “Not it chief”
■ Labelled release experiment
● Added organics containing carbon -14 to soil
○ If martians metabolized the organics, they would give off carbon
- 14 containing CO2
 ■ Radioactive gas was emitted , while sterilized soil
(normal soil) released no radioactive gas
■ At a face value this was a detection of life
● Other scientists debuncted it
● Ceres: a serious candidate for habitability ? (AS 99)
○ Surface contains water ice and clay minerals
○ Clay suggests past liquid water
○ In the core
■ Possibility for very salty subsurface ocean, perhaps it once flowed to the surface
■ Not habitable now, perhaps in the past
● The icy Galilean moons of Jupiter (AS 99 -102)
○ 67 moons, 3 may be habitable
○ Europa
■ Possible subsurface ocean
● Europa's interior does not create its own magnetic field but uses the
massive one from Jupiter
○ Causes for weak and varying induced magnetic field which
would require an electrically conducting fluid exist within
200km of Europa's surface.
● Most likely solution:
○ Salty ocean up to twice the size of Earth
○ Besides liquid water, possibility of life depends on energy sources, interfaces and
availability of SPONCH elements
■ Sponch elements = elements required for living
● Sulphur
● Phosphorus
● Oxygen
● Nitrogen
● Carbon
● Hydrogen
● Enceladus and Titan: icy moons of Saturn (AS 102 -106)
■ Enceladus
● Special because it has active geology
● Rocky core, icy shell, and an underground sea
○ Jackpot combination of organic molecules, energy, and liquid
water implies that life might exist inside.
○ Could be feeding off hydrogen produced by water - rock
reactions
■ Titan
● Titan flexes too much to be entirely solid, which is evidence that Titan
has a subsurface ocean. The ocean exists below an icy crust of less than
100km thichkness.
● The seafloor should be dense ice rather than rock because Titans mass
allows for such high pressure forms of ice.
 ● Two types of life might exist on Titan (AS 106)
○ Earth - like life in the subsurface ocean
■ When titan formed, the heat released from the capture of
smaller bodies should have created liquid water on the
surface temporarily.
○ Weird life in the hydrocarbon lakes.
■ Limited to biological complexity
● Triton: a captured Kuiper Belt object
○ Geologically active because crater counts suggest that resurfacing is only 10 Ma and
there are icy structures like vents, fissures, and lavas.
○ Early triton might have been more habitable
■ Today the ocean might be below hundreds of kilometers of ice, and would be
underlain by high pressure forms of ice.

NEXT BOOK (PL 27- 29)

● Habitable Zone (around every star - Sun)

○ Is the distance where the surface temperature on a planet would be neither too hot nor too
cold for life.
■ Sometimes called Goldilocks Zone.
○ Habitable refers to the ability to maintain life of any kind, even just simple microbes
○ Because our type of life requires water
■ The habitable zone can be seen as the distance from a star at which the surface
temperature of a planet would be able to maintain liquid water.
○ •Habitable zone: range of distances at which worlds similar to Earth could exist.
■ –Example: a region where a world could have liquid surface water
○ •Existing within a star's habitable zone is insufficient (e.g., Moon).
○ •Stars brighten as they age, causing habitable zones to evolve, moving outward
from a star with time.
○ •Life can exist outside a habitable zone.
■ –Mars: Pockets of subsurface liquid water heated by geological
mechanisms could provide necessary conditions for life.
■ –Europa, Ganymede, and Enceladus provide evidence of liquid water
heated via radioactive decay and tidal resonances.
■ –Rogue planets, orphaned worlds thrown from their forming
protoplanetary disk, number, at minimum, in the billions.
○ •An Earth-sized world with no star could maintain a thick hydrogen atmosphere,
insulating planetary heat and keeping oceans liquid.
○ •Titan and its liquid ethane, methane, and ammonia, also give possible conditions
for life outside the habitable zone, expanding the number of moons capable of
supporting life.
Extra LEC things
Earth Habitable if Earth was at orbit of Venus
● Due to solar irradiation, surface temperatures on Venus are 30°C higher than on Earth.
 ● During Cretaceous period, sea temperatures exceeded current levels by 17°C and deep
sea temperatures were higher by 15°C to 20°C.

Lecture 9: Chapter 7 Far off Worlds Different Suns

Classes of methods for detecting exoplanets (AS 111 - 115)

● Indirect Detection
○ Looks for stellar properties such as position or brightness, which are affected by
the presence of unseen planets.
■ Types (AS 111 - 113)
● Astrometry
○ Measures motion of a star using telescopes
● stellar doppler shift
○ Relies on when the light of a star is split into all its colours,
the spectrum has dark bands like a barcode.
● Transits
 ○ Measures the decrease in starlight when the planet crosses
the face of a star
● gravitational microlensing
○ When an object crosses between a distant star and us.
● Direct Detection (most important) (AS 113 - 115)
○ Using an image or spectrum of its light.
○ Challenging because planets are dim bodies close to a vastly brighter star
■ Hubble Space Telescope
● Corongraphy
○ A mask to block starlight
● Adaptive Optics
○ Procedures to sense and correct the distortions caused by
the shimmering of the Earth's atmosphere.
● Nulling Interferometry
○ Uses more than one telescope mirror to precisely align light
waves arriving from a point in the sky so that wave crests
cancel troughs and light is turned into darkness.
■ In this way the starlight can be nulled to see the
planet.
● Transit timing variations
○ Can provide the mass of planets and thus density
○ Results of Data
■ Shows that number of exoplanets increases at lower masses, so rocky,
earth sized planets should be common.

The Habitable Zone (AS 115 - 117)

● Refers to the region around a star in which an earth like planet could maintain liquid
water on its surface at some instant in time.
● The “continuously habitable zone”
○ Is the region around a star in which a planet could remain habitable for some
specified period of time, usually the stars main sequence lifetime.
● Too far from its host star it
○ Ices over
● Too close to host star
○ Too hot for liquid water

Is there a Galactic Habitable Zone (don't think too important but AS 117-118)
● Scientists note that the sub is two thirds of the way from the centre of the Milky Way,
whereas planetary systems near the densely populated centre would be perturbed by
supernovae or passig stars.
How we find inhabited planets (Biosignatures) (AS 118-119)
● To determine exoplanets properties and look for life…
○ Need planets visible or infrared light spectrum
■ Different molecules and atoms absorb different frequencies in spectra.
● Primary Transit
○ The spectrum in a primary transit when a planet crosses the face of a star includes
light passing through a ring of atmosphere around the planet.
● Secondary Transit
○ take a spectrum when the planet is behind the star

AS 125-129

The Rare Earth Hypothesis

Rare Earth Hypothesis → fortuitous circumstances that have allowed complex life on the Earth are so
uncommon that earth might harbour the only intelligent life in the Milky Way
- Earth being in the right place in the galaxy, having Jupiter in our Solar system to capture comets
that might otherwise collide with the earth
- Earth's unusual recycling of volatiles by plate tectonics to keep the atmosphere ging, the
contingencies in obtaining an oxygen-rich atmosphere, and the luck of having a large Moon that
stabilizes the Earth axial tilt and so its climate

Rare Earth was a polemic that railed against the Copernican Principle
Nicolas Copernicus
- Latter idea
- Said that there is nothing special about our location
Astronomers note several factors in its favour
1. The earth is surely one of many rocky planets in the universe
- Our Sun, a G-type star, is not special because 1 in 10 stars are G-type
2. We also live in a humdrum location in the galaxy, along one of many spiral arms
3. Our galaxy is unremarkable among many in the observable universe

The problem with the Rare Earth hypothesis is that it assumes too much knowledge about habitability,
whereas, in reality, much is uncertain
- Example in AS pg 126
- Details about jupiter and commits on pg 126-127

Ambiguous parts of the Rare Earth hypothesis

- Earth uniquely has plate tectonics
- But for plate tectonics, a planet must be big enough to have adequate internal heat to dive the
plate motion and it probably needs seawater to cool oceanic plates and lubricate their movement
While Rare Earth Hypothesis is correct…that planets without a large moon will suffer larger axial tilt
variations than Earth, climatic variations at low altitudes might benign
- But Thicker atmospheres more extensive oceans and lower rotation rates of an exoplanet can
smooth the climatic differences between poles and tropics caused by a varying tilt
What seems to be correct about the rare earth hypothesis…
- Is that microbial-like life should be much more common than intelligent life
- Microbes have a remarkable range of metabolisms and can live in a far wider variety of
environments than complex organisms

Prospects of astrobiology and finding life (AS pg 128)

Enceladus
- Ought to be one of the highest priorities for the world's space agencies
- It has a source of energy (tidal heating), organic material and liquid water
- Jeets that spurt Enceladus organic material into space
- Shit about spacecrafts on 128

Europa
- Is probably the best prospect for life
- The first step would be a EEuropa orbiter to study the moon in detail and determine the thickness
of the ice above a subsurface ocean lake lenses
-

PL (116-125)

Exoplanets
- Sun like stars must be accompanied by planets
- → brown dwarfs (pg 116)

Detection methods
- Evidence that young sun-like stars have a shading ring of dust

Radical Velocity pg 117

- Detecting slight changes in a star’s radial velocity
- This is the speed at which a sta is travelling towards or away from the earth
- Radial velocity change can be determined at a remarkable precision of one metre or second by
measuring shifts in the exact same wavelength at which characteristic absorption lines appear in a
star's spectrum
- These shifts to shorter wavelengths (‘blue shift’) if the star is moving towards us and to longer
wavelengths (‘red shift’) if the star is traveling away → Doppler effect
- Variations in radical velocity had long been used to measure tiny influence of a much less
massive exoplanet on a relatively much more massive star requires very sensitive modern
instrumentation
Sun-like stars there is a well-understood relationship between stellar spectral type and mass
- Knowing this we can use the period and magnitude of radial velocity changed to determine the
mass of thee exoplanet responsible for the forward and back motion of the star
- Tue changes in velocity must be greater than what we detect

Radial velocity method

- Works best for larger planets orbiting close to their star, because large mass and close proximity
both lead to the greatest change in thee star’s radial velocity

Jupiter's stars pg 118 PL

Tranists pg 118 PL

Imaging and other methods

- exoplanets are exceedingly challenging to image because they are so much fainter than their
- Astrometry is based on a very precise measurement of a star's position in the sky
- Any unseen orbiting companion will tug the star from side to side

Naming exoplanets pg 120 PL

Life on exoplanets pg 122 PL

Is anyone out there? Pg 123