My exploration of life and death

Introduction

I was reading a post about an 80-year-old who was worried about his last day. This got me thinking: What is death, and what happens after it? While I was lost in thought, a mosquito landed on me, trying to drink my blood. I didn’t intend to kill it, but the sudden pain made me instinctively slap my hand. Luckily, it escaped.

Pain, Life, and Awareness

That moment of pain sparked a fascinating question: Is the pain in my hand or in my brain? Actually, it’s in my awareness. But where is awareness? It’s invisible. If pain resides in awareness, where does life reside? Is it just the journey between birth and death?

I believe life is an experience. Through this experience, I know about my brain, heart, and other organs. But what is life, truly? Why doesn’t a robot have life?

Life has meaning, even if we consider something as simple as a battery having a “life.” How long does a battery’s life last? As long as it can provide a charge. Are we, like a battery, simply working for something without knowing who or what we’re working for? A battery can power a robot, but the fundamental difference between a robot and us lies in the arrangement of atoms.

At a basic level, we are both complex arrangements. We are made of molecules, cells, fats, and proteins held together by covalent bonds. Robots are arranged similarly with different components like chips, screws, and bolts. The difference is simply the arrangement, but the fundamental particles—whether they form chips, bolts, nuts, or cells, fats, and proteins—are the same.

According to thermodynamics, we consume energy and produce heat. Although we have mass and energy, our biological system doesn't inherently know how to use it, so we eat food to consume chemical energy. This chemical energy is then converted into various other forms, such as kinetic energy for work and the energy needed for cell production. These conversions release heat, which is why our body temperature is higher than room temperature. When we die, our temperature drops to room temperature. This suggests that energy makes us alive. We are made up of mass and energy, and since energy cannot be destroyed, my energy will simply transform into something else—just as we eat food and will eventually become food for something else.

The Mysteries of Existence

Is life hidden in an electron, a proton, a neutron, or in a bond? Or is it simply in the arrangement of all these things?

Consider this: Mass is hidden in gluons, which themselves have no mass. It’s also hidden in the Higgs boson. Gravity doesn’t seem to work in the physical world without a specific arrangement. Without mass, gravity’s potential isn’t realized, and even time seems to be affected. This suggests that arrangement and bonding not only combine things to create different outputs but also add a layer of physics, particularly classical physics, to the mix.

So I conclude Energy exists at all levels and particles exist separately that can’t be treated as life but Life can be seen as an arrangement, and death as the first stage of dis-arrangement. While decomposition is the final stage of dis-arrangement. This idea sparks me why only Earth has living things.

Challenging an Earth-Centric View of Life

Why do we assume other planets can’t have life? We only ask this because Earth has living creatures. Our planet has been designed and modified according to the requirements of life as we know it. This complex arrangement is a result of trial and error tailored specifically to Earth. Why can’t Mars have its own unique arrangement? If Earth has its own, why can’t Mars have its own?

For example, we breathe oxygen because our physical makeup supports it, given its availability. On Mars, where other gases like nitrogen are present, a different form of life might have a physical makeup that supports breathing those gases. Why do we constantly compare Earth’s atmosphere to Mars’s? Every planet should have its own unique arrangement.

It’s not just about the presence of water. Life requires a specific kind of DNA—a particular arrangement of particles. If it took a certain amount of time for life to emerge on Earth, it might take a different amount of time for Mars to develop its own unique DNA. Even on Earth, stones and rocks are unique arrangements of particles. If this unique arrangement of inanimate objects is possible, why isn't a unique living arrangement also possible on Mars or other planets? The arrangement of stones and rocks on Earth may share the same basic particles as those on other planets, but their specific combination is completely different.

We view our arrangement as “normal” because we are conditioned to believe our environment is suitable and others aren’t. However, if we shifted our perspective to that of another planet, our combination of elements might seem incredibly strange. For example, a nitrogen-breather would find an oxygen-breather strange.

On Earth alone, countless creatures exist in extreme cold, extreme heat, and some without light or air. They have all modified themselves to their own specific environments. So, why can’t other planets have life? Perhaps it simply requires more time, or maybe it has already happened and has since been destroyed. Or, if Earth is the only planet with living creatures, then our existence isn't normal or natural.