JWST is revolutionizing also astrobiology

JWST continues to make discoveries revolutionizing not only the cosmology and astrophysics, but also the views about the evolution of life. The talk “Nobody Expected JWST To Find Signs of Oceans on Makemake and Eris + More From Kuiper Belt” of Anton Petrov (see this) told about the newest findings related to the Kuiper belt and about surprising findings related to the dwarf planets Eris and Makemake.

Second Kuiper belt?

Consider first the discoveries related to the Kuiper belt made by satellite New Horizons. The Kuiper belt seems to be either much thicker than thought or that there are actually two of them. According to the findings of New Horizons satellite, the latter option looks more plausible. The candidate for a new Kuiper belt consists of a very dense dust. Solar wind could have blown the dust from the inner Kuiper belt to this region but this explanation is not very plausible.

TGD view of the formation of astrophysical objects (see this and this) suggests the possibility of belt like structures and even spherical layers. The empirical findings suggesting that ionosphere involves plasmoids as primitive non-biological life forms suggests the symbiosis of biomolecules associated with the dust particles with plasmoids led to the development of primordial life forms (see this).

What came as a surprise to me was that the Kuiper belt is the most colored object in the solar system. The explanation would be the presence of organic molecules emitting light at visible frequencies. This also explains the reddish color of the belt. Also Pluto and many dwarf planets have turned out to have relatively young surface layers with an organic chemistry involving highly complex organic molecules, in particular molecules with ring structures. This suggests that the chemical life developed at the outskirts of the solar system and then moved inwards.

Dwarf planets are not we expected them to be

JWST provided information suggesting that Eris and Makemake have oceans and complex surface chemistry. This makes them candidates for the seats of primordial chemical life. Orcus, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, and Makemake are dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt extending from the distance 30 AU of Neptune to the distance of 50 AU. Also some solar system’s moons such as Neptune’s Triton and Saturn’s Phoebe might have originated in the Kuiper belt. Even the Moon could have emerged by a collision of an object possibly coming from Kuiper belts with Earth. Eris, at a distance of 68 AU and Makemake at a distance of 46 AU are examples of dwarf planets located outside the Kuiper belts.

In a sharp conflict with expectations, Pluto, dwarf planets and many moons are very active and involve a complex organic chemistry giving them their reddish colors. For instance, Pluto is very active. It possesses a thin exosphere and 5 moons creating tidal effects, which also can provide metabolic energy. JWT has now managed to provide information of elements present at the surface of Eris and Makemake and even isotope ratios D/H and C13/C12 at the surface of Eris and Makemake. This allows us to conclude that the surface is very young. An interesting question is how the active surface structure has emerged. Also evidence for geochemical processes, solid state convection, and subsurface oceans have been found. These oceans seem to resemble Enceladus, which is a moon of Saturn regarded as a strong candidate for simple exterrestrial life. All that is needed by life on the Earth, including oceans, seems to be present.

The TGD view of the findings

In the TGD view of life, the TGD counterparts of both gravitational and electromagnetic fields have a fundamental role, in particular the long range electric and magnetic fields of both Sun, Earth, and other planets would are important (see this). The electric body of Earth provides electric fields in the ionosphere, which is in many respects analogous to cell membrane. Earth resides at the outskirts of the electric body of the Sun.

One of the very first predictions of TGD was that any body with gravitational mass must have electric charge although it can be arbitrarily weak. The negative electric charge generating electric fields can be generated by the Pollack effect transforming protons of ordinary matter to dark protons at the magnetic bodies of various objects. Dark particles have an effective Planck constant which can be much larger than ordinary Planck constant. Darkness in this sense explains the missing baryonic matter and plays a key role in TGD based biology. Galactic dark matter in turn can correspond to what colleagues call dark energy and would be associated with long cosmic strings, whose thickening to monopole flux tubes is the TGD counterpart for the decay of the inflaton field generating ordinary matter.

Negative charges are a basic aspect of living systems: DNA, cell, and Earth itself are basic examples. The delicacy is that the charge separation generated in this way is between the biological body and magnetic body rather than the system and its environment in the ordinary sense. Charge separation is like loading of a battery and requires energy. The formation of biomolecules as bound states of simpler constituents could provide the energy needed by this process. Water and the formation of silicates would be essential ingredients. Also galactic cosmic rays could have served as a source of this energy in Kuiper belts.

See for instance the articles Magnetic Bubbles in TGD Universe: Part I, Magnetic Bubbles in TGD Universe: Part II, and About long range electromagnetic quantum coherence in TGD Universe. (see this)

p For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.