Sunday, July 20, 2008

 

Life, does it have a magnetic personality?

Was bored one day and going through some random stuff on YouTube. Then there was some neat links on magnetism and magnetic fluids that I followed links on, and in observing them - an interesting idea struck me. It turns out that in some cases, ferrofluids in a magnetic field take on chaotic structures that are strongly resemble organic ones. What if the blueprint for organic structures has a magnetic origin?

It's already been proven that various amino acids, some basic protien forms, and lipid structures can be formed via natural inorganic chemical processes. But they typically don't have too much organization. But what if somewhere in the primordial chemical soup way back when, there was a vein of hematite poking through the goo. In this case it's not just any particular sort of hematite, but magnetite. And at a microscopic level, the field structures interact with diamagnetic and/or polar molecules to imprint the same chaotic pattern of its field on the amino acid filled lipid bubbles that wash over it. And what if some of the magnetically imprinted lipid structures suddenly exhibit peculiar ion-instabilities over its surface that the more simple lipid bubbles didn't have? Then throw those back out into the chemical soup thanks to tidal flows or other natural fluid processes and take it from there...

Just a thought.

Side note: someone might say that the magnetic complex structures only occur at certain frequncies of magnetic oscillation. So how would that be replicated in nature? I'd say it's still possible. Put the chemical soup above a vein of magnetite that's below a ledge. Then have a waterfall or dripping water come from the ledge above. Guess how the chemical soup interacts with the magnetic field when agitated from above by the falling water? It's not a static magnetic field relative to the stuff floating around, is it?

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