Re: Paper on Thermosynthesis

On Feb 25, 1:13 pm, "Perplexed in Peoria" Unlike your ideas, which
assume a cycle once a day or so, Muller thinks that
the relevant cycles were more like once a minute or
so. You get a thermal cycle this fast if you are a molecule
which is circulating in a convection cell.
Or a molecule in subject to waves and turbulence in the ocean.
The wind causes surface waves of high coherence on the top of the
ocean. The waves cycle the water up and down at about the rate he is
talking about.Waves are highly periodic (cycles?). The temperature
goes down with depth, slightly. So there is your thermal cycling.
Incidently, the wave cycle also varies the uv and visible light from
the sun. So there is Tom's uv cycle, but on a much faster rate than a
24 hour day.
Turbulence cycles chaotically. No, not like a meteorite. Real
chaos. The Richardson number is rather low in the top layers of the
ocean, so the energy decoheres quickly.. The surface waves shed vortex
eddies of shorter diameter and higher frequency. These eddies create
"cycling" at an even faster rate than the original surface waves
themselves. However, the eddies are out of phase. So these
quasiperiodic motions are not easily characterized by one narrow band
of frequencies. Yet, they come close enough together that a chemical
would have to "adapt", in Tom's nomenclature, to their motion.
Tom may argue that both process derive indirectly from the sun.
However, the periodicities and quasiperiodicities have no correlation
to the astronomical cycles of the sun. They have more to do with the
fluid mechanical properties of water. They also don't have to have any
coherency. They just need to repeat according to a random distribution
(or chaotically, which is sort of like a random distribution).
The same type of turbulence on the same approximate period
(minutes and seconds) could easily be produced by hot magma in contact
with liquid water on the bottom of the sea.
Note that the energy from the sun comes to us through convection
in the solar interior. The inside of the sun is hot, and the hot gas
floats to the surface. I forgot the exact names of the layers
involved.
What I am trying to say is that the concept of "cycle" by itself
to be either useful or intellectually satisfying. I know round is
better (or whatever Plato said).

My own opinion is that this is would be an interesting
possible source of phosphorylation energy for a simple
protean organism, but it cannot explain the origin of that
organism. The kinds of enzyme-like molecules that would
be capable of tapping this kind of energy source could
only arise by natural selection - they could not preceed
natural selection.
Now that I don't know. Why have an enzyme when you have large
scale physical motion? You have temperature gradients, and
concentration gradients of different chemicals.
An enzyme lowers energy barriers between molecules, yes. However,
if the molecule is moving up and down a significant difference then
there is another option. The molecule simply moves up to an area where
the extra energy is available. A few degrees may be all that is
necessary.
The best example that I can think of is electrolytic reactions. If
two different solutions are brough together they release electricity.
Even solutions of different concentration of the same electrolyte.
Which could be salt water.
In fact, the best example is the process of rusting in the
presence of salt water. A piece of iron in air, with no water vapor,
will take on the order of hundreds of years to rust. You add water,
you add salt, it rusts. Salt water is a catalyst for iron oxidation.
Is there a complicated enzyme? No. There are macroscopic electric
currents. All the salt water did was provide electrical contact
between two parts of the iron.
There is no organic enzyme capable of getting energy from
oxidizing pure iron. (Err, Maybe none that I know of) The simplest
catalyst of all, salt water, can beat all the organic enzymes ever
evolved in oxidizing a metal. All with an electrolytic cycle. And an
electrolytic cycle when you look close is just a thermal cycle. The
temperature isn't changing, but the entropy is.


The postulated molecular heat engines
produced the same ATP as contemporary ATP syn-
thase, but with much less power (energy produced per
unit time) because the enzyme turnover time equaled
the long thermal cycle time of a convection cell...

Yep. Notice, by the way, that modern ATP synthase
doesn't require any kind of environmental cycle - all
it needs is a concentration, voltage, or pH gradient.
And it sure seems to me that such things are a lot
easier to find than cycles. And just as easy to use.
Life can arise in a steady-state situation - it just doesn't
need cycles.


.

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