RE: What is the difference between me and a rock?
June 16, 2012 at 1:06 pm
(This post was last modified: June 16, 2012 at 1:49 pm by Anomalocaris.)
Uhhh, hard coal is a mineral and is a rock, and it's full of large organic molecules. There are plenty of things in the nature that feature complex organic molecules, many in aqueous solutions. These mostly aren't life.
The distinction between life and non life is not complex organics. It is complex replication. It so happens complex replication requires complex organic chemistry.
Complex replication enables evolution, which promotes secondary traits and complexities that enhace the odds of successful replication such as behavior. In the things you care about, not fundamentally what biochemists might care about, it is these secondary traits promoted by evolution upon already existent life that distinguishes you and rock.
I am not sure what is meant by potential energy. Normal physics notion of potential energy is gravitational potential energy and determined solely by mass and height. You have the same potential energy as any rock the same mass as you residing at the same height above mean sea level as you.
If potential energy is being used to refer to stored chemical energy then it is not true that you have more stored chemical energy either. A lump of coal same mass as you stores vastly more energy that could be released in combustion than all parts of you could though either outright combustion or biological equivalent of combustion - respiration.
The distinction between life and non life is not complex organics. It is complex replication. It so happens complex replication requires complex organic chemistry.
Complex replication enables evolution, which promotes secondary traits and complexities that enhace the odds of successful replication such as behavior. In the things you care about, not fundamentally what biochemists might care about, it is these secondary traits promoted by evolution upon already existent life that distinguishes you and rock.
I am not sure what is meant by potential energy. Normal physics notion of potential energy is gravitational potential energy and determined solely by mass and height. You have the same potential energy as any rock the same mass as you residing at the same height above mean sea level as you.
If potential energy is being used to refer to stored chemical energy then it is not true that you have more stored chemical energy either. A lump of coal same mass as you stores vastly more energy that could be released in combustion than all parts of you could though either outright combustion or biological equivalent of combustion - respiration.
