"These are the cries of the carrots! You see reverend Maynard tomorrow is harvest season and to them it is the holocaust. DAMN YOU! LET THE RABBITS WEAR GLASSES!..." etc.
Basically, the energy of the sun powers the production of chemicals that contain some of it as potential energy and it gets passed down the line. Makes sense in its own way…
Continuing Hank's point of "one long continuous chemical process" the "Eating" you're referring to is just one part of the system delivering intermediate processed components to another part.
Not all life. Much of life survives w/o life consumption. Animals are parasites on the living. Fungus are parasites on the dead. Plants are parasites on the sun.
Companies will merge & eat up smaller ones to grow & evolve,
Planet must eat other celestial bodies to grow & evolve,
Galaxies will merge & eat up smaller ones to grow & evolve,
So would higher existing life forms feed instead on ambient energy and completely step outside of the food chain? That kinda would make us almost like marvels galactus… I will settle for the burger.
interesting that we are on the edge of possibly creating robotic intelligence that would just consume energy.. and potential supersede humans.. so basically would robots be considered a cousin to plants in that they would likely consume sunlight :)
Most chemicals, especially complex ones, are important because they're chock full of chemical energy. My point stands, and we're arguing semantics at this point.
Well, we know the goop at the bottom of the ocean has to be either Cancer, Scorpio, or Pisces. Some would say Aquarius, but nay, Aquarius is an air sign. 🧐
I love how most people think mushrooms are just decomposing the dead matter around them when they are really actively managing an entire ecosystem using their own body to move nutrients from one botanical to a different botanical deficient in that nutrient even if they're different species.
I think humans will be highly advanced one we can synthesize all of our needs directly from rocks and sunlight etc yes move beyond reliance on the rest of the biosphere or whatever!?-obviously our gut microbes etc highly connected to it whoa bla bla bla🤪
Wait a minute! What alternatives to plants and animals are we talking about here? If you tell me there’s an edible rock my mind might just explode… you’re talking about milk and/or honey aren’t you?
Rock is highly insoluble, even in stomach acids. It has virtually no calorific value except for trace organics. Microbes may be alive but they don't mind being eaten. It's better than torturing the animals
Sigh*. I guess that counts but I still feel disappointed by the answer. To be clear, I wasn’t expecting there to be a naturally occurring rock that could satisfy all your nutritional needs but it would have been cool if there was.
Look at our parents, giving and sacrificing so that we can continue on,as we do for our kids.
Plants rise, die back and their seedlings rise again.
Mountains, once formed, are mercilessly ground away forever....
I like to think that while the Universe leans conservative, life leans progressive. We consume each other to sustain ourselves; that's not our fault but it's on us to rectify. That's our legacy, not even as humans, but as one of many witnesses to this existence. Life cares, the Universe does not.
When you think of life as emergent based on a set of criteria it feels less weird. The criteria we need to sustain our existing life exists within other life. There must be some sort of chemical or particle that we require which is unique to living things. or maybe not. Idk. I'm not a scientist.
Comments
Companies will merge & eat up smaller ones to grow & evolve,
Planet must eat other celestial bodies to grow & evolve,
Galaxies will merge & eat up smaller ones to grow & evolve,
sometimes you just gotta live with your typos
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithotroph
some of the oldest life on earth gets its energy from volcanoes
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide_chemosynthesis
Soil has decayed organic matter in it. So, many things have died for that soil to exist and be fertile. Sorry if I’m splitting hairs here 😬
Plants rise, die back and their seedlings rise again.
Mountains, once formed, are mercilessly ground away forever....
And some already have that.