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Gaia Water & Humic AcidD. Grant New Deer-Turriff UK
The Gaia Hypothesis, the idea that the Earth is somehow like a
living
organism, seems to lack any convincing supporting evidence.
Perhaps the most helpful definition of life a is that this is
always a multicomponent super-interactive system; alternatively
put: life is always todo with symbiosis. Single stand-alone units
or species are not favored.Rather, life depends on
multiple-unit-multiple-species-interactions. Theessential-to-life
interaction subunits and interactions that they engage inare
themselves part of life. And this surely includes their environment
as
part of any properly-defined living system. This obviously
includes the
(surface) of the planet Earth. The Gaia Earth in symbiotic
relationshipwith the species which inhabit it can therefore be seen
as an essential partof this living system.
The mechanism of this symbiosis of this system currently
involves acritical role for the decomposition of detritus produced
by livingorganisms to form humic polymers which can also act as
feedback water
buffers which seems to be part of the mechanism used by Gaia to
keepthe composition of the sea constant and also can influence
the
composition of the atmosphereb
.
Living cells contain various kinds of imperfectly understood
surface andextracellular polyelectrolyte surface active systems
which, as is now
pointed out, show unexpectedly closely similar physical and
chemical properties to the humic-matter-polyelectrolytes which
occur in naturalwaters and soils. This note now further suggests
that the similarity of themanner in which humic acid and
un-degraded biological polyelectrolytesystems of polyanions exist
at the surface of the Earth and the surfaces of living cells could
further support the Gaia hypothesis. This similaritycould
especially help to re-define the role of the water and
water/soillayer of the Earth which contain the said ubiquitous
polyanionic(abundant aggregate-polymer-C(O)O - anionic group
containing) humicclass of organic substances. This class of
material is the most abundantform of organic chemical
molecule-class on the surface of the Earth andit also constitutes
the principal organic carbon store (being present both inseawater
rivers in terrestrial soils and geological sediments).It should be
noted that the above soil and natural polyelectrolytes(including
humic and fulvic acid salts, (algal) alginates, and
(animal)heparin) always may exist naturally as multi-inorganic
element matriceswhich are analogous to (human) blood serum and
seawater in their multi-
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Footnotes
a
The rigorous definition of what constitutes a living organism
depends on the rigorous definition of what constitutes life. A
commonly-held belief is that life is expected always to depend on
the presenceof carbon compounds especially amino acids which are
assembled according to DNA or RNA templatesystems. This clearly
greatly restricts thinking to cellular forms terrestrial life of
life but this mayinclude the planet surface within an extended
definition. If, however, we start from the premise thatthe earth is
also a living organism we may require to abandon the idea that life
is something to directlydo in its most basic form with DNA and RNA.
(The opposite may be the case). Life could to havestarted with pure
chemistry. Water chemistry ( cf. WAP Luck). However not pure water
but rather water with dissolved electrolytes organic polymers (at
the start perhaps something like formose) anddispersed silica sols
and other supra-molecular- structure-inducing nano-bubbles. It is
of course acommonly held believed that life centrally involves the
presence of liquid water. It should be noted thatthis substance has
a complex poorly understood intermolecular aggregate structure
which resemblessilicate random assemblages. Clearly the surface of
the earth, being largely covered with water in theseas and in biota
and soil etc . and water absorbed and adsorbed on humic matter on
land qualifies as
part of this kind of definition of life.[Extracellular
poly-(inorganic)-phosphates occur throughout biota and organic
(associated inorganic)
polysaccharides occur in bacteria plants and animals. These
different chemical polyelectrolyte systems show arange of
similarities in their physical chemical behavior in regard to their
potential for anti free-radical ( e.g. ex -ionizing radiation)
multi metal ion binding (some less abundant metals being strongly
sequestered by theseligands) and water activity homeostasis
(buffering) potential which includes the ability to support a
system of supersaturation of such salts of CaCO 3 which feed back
into e.g . atmospheric chemistry in the seas for whichsystem there
are parallel actions of e.g. anionic poly-inorganic phosphates and
heparan sulfates in animals poly-inorganic phosphates and pectin in
plants. Another possible, but less understood, possibility is the
manner inwhich polymers elect overt or subtle micro paramagnetic
and magnetic particle assemblages at the surfaces of cellsfrom
species as far apart as homing pigeons to bacteria which can
interact with the earth magnetic field; cf. alsohumic polymers
similarly avidly bind paramagnetic ions].The role of such a
chemically simple system of water soluble or water layer binding
inorganic
polymers containing only phosphate groups in living organisms,
is currently obscure but has beensuggested by Kornberg to have been
involved in the first stages of the evolution of living
organisms.
The role of phosphate as in ATP with universal biota
triphosphate - diphosphate energy flow roles,seems to have been a
major part of the background of this hypothesis. This ATP dependent
energysystem has recently been demonstrated (Wiggins) to centrally
involve (high density / low density)water structure chemistry as
its main engine and such systems can further be suggested in
principle notto be restricted to the polyphosphates. They may also
occur with polysulfated molecules (similar tothose which are
employed as commercial proton conductors) as well as silicates,
especially theamorphous silicates. Such systems may be part of the
mechanism of how interactions between water and inorganic moieties
including solid surfaces in general can provide energy flow control
switches.Such activities, it might be suggested also constitute
what allows for a primitive logic function. Thissuggests that such
primitive logic processor systems to that which biota is subject
can occur at thesurfaces of bodies such as planets which also have
a water coating or subsurface layer.
b E.g. by controlling carbonate ion fluxes in the sea. It can be
argued thatanthropogenic influences might achieve alteration of
global climate bythis mechanism.
