Education has no meaning unless it helps us to understand the vast expanse of life with all its subtitlities. – Krishnamurti. What is tru for the [the bacterium] E. Coli is true for the elephant. – François Jacob, 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine Part of our knowledge we obtain direct; and part by argument. – John Maynard Kaynes

After all, the ancient worshipers of the Sun have their reasons, they had a theory of life that sees life as a result of the sun light, and for them plant life and human life are closely related to each other. Nowadays, science gives some reason to their not completely satisfying concept of the natural world. Scientist already discovered that life comes from the sun. Chlorophyll contains oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and magnesium, whilst haemoglobin from the blood contains iron at the place of magnesium, see figure above. Both iron and magnesium are metallic atoms.



Organisms spend a lot of time acquiring energy (capacity to do work) and nutrients (substance that an organism needs for growth and survival, but cannot make of itself). Despite the close similarity between blood and chlorophyl, plants are producers (they make their own food using energy and materials from their environment) and animals are consumers (cannot make their own food). As stressed by Jeremy Rifkin {*2} “the first economy of the world is photosynthesis”.

Hemacyanin is another molecule which is responsible to convey oxygen in haemalymph, the blood of arthropods. An arthropod are members of the phylum Arthropoda (invertebrate animal with an exoskeleton, segmented body, and jointed appendages). Insects, arachnids, crustaceans are among this group. Hemacyanin has copper at his center. It is the metallic element at the center of these molecules that give their characteristic color.

Chlorophyll, hemoglobin and hemacyanin are three fundamental molecules of life as we know in our planet. Their chemical formulas are: C 55 H 72O5 N 4 Mg, for chlorophyll, and for hemoglobin is C 2952 H 4664 N 812 O 832 S 8 Fe 4 . It is therefore clear our parentage…

These molecules are needed since diffusion or plasma solubility in delivering oxygen is very ineffective, and higher organisms needed to evolve in building specific proteins to transport dioxygen in the blood. These substances are able to transport oxygen in the blood through acceptance of dioxygen from a surface in contact with air (lung) or water (gill), circulate to the tissues, delivering their needed oxygen. Of course, the carrier molecule must not be irreversibly oxidized by dioxygen, and transition metals, characterized by lower oxidation states were chosen by nature to accomplish this task. Otherwise, they would be lost for further purpose. However, these metallic elements are carried, involved in a structural protein casing that protect them against irreversible oxidation (in a way not entirely known) [3].

Oxygen may be seen as the elixir of life…and death. The name “oxygen” was bequeathed by Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), the revolutionary scientist and political conservative beheaded in May 1794 during the French Revolution. The great mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) regreted the decision of the Revolutionary Tribunal and said: “it took but a moment to cut off that head, though a hundred years perhaps will be required to produce another like it”.

Life on Earth start with anaerobic metabolism that still nowadays persist in the form of bacteria living in oxygen-poor environments. In the early earth, nearly all oxygen was bound in compounds, like water and silicate rocks. But nearly 3 billions years ago the “invention” in nature of plant photosynthesis turned anaerobic world into our present type of environment with aerobic life. It is clear that the introduction of oxygen into the anaerobic world obliged the organisms existing at that time to adapt, since a lot of the by-products from oxygen metabolism are toxic compounds. Oxygen was essential to retain on Earth much of the hydrogen, since our planet has a relatively small mass, and can easily lose free hydrogen to the cosmic space. Without binding to oxygen, nearly all hydrogen would be lost forever.

The atomic structure dictates what an element can do, what compounds it can form, and what properties it possess. The nucleus of the comoomn isotope of oxygen contains eight protons and eight neutrons, and is designated by 16O. Quamtum mechanics tells us that electrons are not located around the nucleus as “orbitals”, but as a “cloud”, a region of space where electrons are most likely to be.

The following video shows how oxygen is transported through our bodies.



According to the bible and the Quran, Israelites were nourished about 40 years (while wondering in the Sinai desert) from the heavens with manna, apparently a member of lichen family [4].

Algae can be a source of food and energy {3*} in a world where a multitude of people don’t take due attention to the quality of their eating habits, see site below (and I am thankful to Molly Brooks, who called my attention to her infographic)



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REFERENCES:

[1] Nobel Prize presentation, Chemistry, 1915

[2] Chlorophyll and hæmoglobin regeneration after hæmorrhage, by J. Howell Hughes and A. L. Latner

[3] Oxygen and the Evolution of Life, by Heinz Decker,Kensal E. Van Holde

[4] Charles Berlitz’s World of the Odd and Awesome, by Charles Berlitz

SITES:

{*1} Alternative treatment for cancer

{*2} Jeremy Rifkin, Lecture at Ross’ Institute in 2010, entitled “The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis”.

{3*} Shearable:Science and Tech