UniVerses

Respiration

Cicadas thrum a metronome of heat
when summer tips earth towards the solar rays.
Debris that fusing nuclei excrete
engenders august’s dessicating haze.
All life is fueled by briefly trapped photons
that nudge electron orbits slightly higher
which plants cajole to forming carbon bonds
converting light to fuel we then respire.
Thus sunlight bottled: carbohydrate food
empowers life’s slow chemical burn
as oxidation‘s energy renewed
complex sugars to CO2 return.
Our lives are cycles fueled by sunlight caught
byproduct of the process: food for thought.

The fuel for life is sunlight transformed into chemical energy. The basic chemistry is the transfer of electrons. Iron is a crucial component of the dance of the electrons, yet another hint that life stole its chemistry from minerals.

Harnessing chemical energy is amazing, but it is not, of itself, life. The macromolecules can, improbably, form and assemble into structures that interact and cooperate with each other, but these will fall apart, in time.

Only when these assemblies developed the ability to replicate themselves did Life evolve.

The apparatus for recreating macromolecules is highly intricate. The interdependence of proteins and nucleic acids is breathtaking, and is truly the miracle of life.

Once assembled, the force of life consumed the planet. There are few surfaces on earth that don't contain some cells drinking in the sun's cast off rays, or gobbling the reaction products in deep ocean trenches.

The power of Life has reshaped our planet, creating and maintaining the atmosphere, disintegrating rocks and buffering the entire ecosystem.

Life's existence, in itself, is proof that there are complex dynamics at work that drive the intricate coordination.

The living units of life, cells, became more complex, allowing multicellular beings to form and the diversity of life became richer still.

With the evolution of nucleated cells the power and diversity of Life became far more complex.

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