Could Life and Matter Be an Infinite Nesting of Bacterial Films?
title: "Could Life and Matter Be an Infinite Nesting of Bacterial Films?" slug: "fanchunping-life-bacteria-membrane-2017.en" date: "2017-12-29" category: "frontier" author: "Fan Chunping" excerpt: "If we call our own scale of life the macroscopic, then how many additional levels of life exist in the microscopic and cosmic directions? Our solar system may be nothing more than a single bacterium, and the Milky Way a bacterial film."
Could Life and Matter Be an Infinite Nesting of Bacterial Films?
Author: Fan Chunping (Senior Editor, Academic Journal Office, Beijing Institute of Technology)
Originally published in Science Popularization Times, December 29, 2017, Page 2
On December 21, the WeChat public account "Neureality" published an article titled "Bacteria Can Communicate Like Neurons—and Through Communication, Influence Other Organisms?", translating research from Quanta Magazine: bacteria in nature form enormously large "social communities"—biofilms.
A biofilm is composed of millions upon millions of bacteria connected by organic matter they themselves secrete. They exist on tooth surfaces, pipe walls, rocks, and even in the ocean. Within these biofilm communities, bacteria have differentiated roles: those on the periphery defend against external threats, while those in the center produce food. Much like humans, bacteria thrive through this extensive cooperation.
These single-celled organisms, typically beneath our notice, can communicate not only through chemical signals but also through electrical signals—and through such communication, coordinate resource allocation between different biofilms.
Equally astonishing: the BBC science documentary The Body's Secret War, which explores the division of labor among organelles within human cells, as well as the survival competition and cooperative defense between cells—behavior virtually identical to that of individuals and organizations within human society.
And then there's Liu Cixin's science fiction story The Thinker, with its conception of higher-order cosmic life forms.
This is remarkable—the more you dwell on it, the more terrifying and the more wonderful it becomes: humanity may indeed be just one level within a hierarchy of life forms.
If we take our own scale of life as the macroscopic, then how many additional levels of life exist in both the microscopic and cosmic directions?
From the perspective of the next level up, our solar system may be nothing more than a single bacterium, and the Milky Way a biofilm. One level further still, the Milky Way may be a single bacterium, and our universe a biofilm.
One wonders: might the cosmic life forms at upper and upper-upper levels have any interest in classifying their "little bacteria"? Could large-scale cosmic phenomena such as black hole collisions be the medical procedures of "macro-bacteria" using "antibiotics" to eliminate "micro-bacteria"?
This is simply too fascinating!
The cosmic world as currently understood by humanity may represent only a few superficial layers within the hierarchy of matter—and the hierarchy of matter itself may be merely a material sub-layer within the hierarchy of life. The levels of life, in scale, may be orders of magnitude beyond the levels of matter.
Life is sustained by matter, yet matter, at different levels, evolves into life. Could they be nested one within another? At what level does the life beneath bacteria reside—might there be life forms at the level of elementary particles?
If our universe is merely a sub-layer, a single membrane, it is genuinely difficult, for the moment, to find a fitting term to denote what lies above it.
A mind-stretching exercise: if bacteria, humans, and the cosmos constitute three levels of life, is our body the universe for our cells and bacteria? Are bacteria exploring their own universe? Have they discovered dark matter and dark energy within it?
Humanity must not lose its imagination. The universe is more wondrous than anything we could possibly imagine. The limits of our understanding of higher-level life systems become clear the moment we try to imagine how the bacteria in the biofilm on your teeth would struggle to comprehend our society's parliaments, financial systems, myths, pyramids, and spaceships.
May humanity not destroy itself. May we continue exploring, and one day achieve communication with microscopic bacteria and with life forms at different levels of the cosmic scale.
Dreams are necessary. Fantasy is necessary. Imagination is an enduring and precious human faculty.
Originally published in Science Popularization Times, December 29, 2017, Page 2