Философия и космология (Feb 2024)
Intelligent Characteristics of Potential Microbial Life During the LHB
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.
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