Neurons and Brain - Part 3

 Scaling Limit - Energy.  Neurons take a lot of energy.

Back to our worm, he needs a neuron.  These are cells that go 'ballistic' when agitated.  They have an unstable charge arrangement.  Add just a few electrons, and more are shed, down in a wave that resembles a copper wire, but not the same.  

Neurons and brain cells are almost the same.  A neuron needs a sheath or tube to confine it to be long, and I don't really know what came first.  They also have their little buds or axioms, that can initiate a charge run, or are charged by it.

The worm picks up a neuron that runs its length.  This helps it immensely to know when something is chomping on its butt.  Obviously, evolution provides more.  The worm is generating a current at the head to know which way is which.  All these neurons grow to the head, and then stop.  They are workaholics and have to do something, so all these creatures develop a nerve tangle at the head.  This is our first brain, and it the main reason we exist.

Tied at the top, they develop sensors, and training, so that when a big dark thing hovers overhead, they scoot. (again, another million years)

Just as molybdenum controlled the first life, neurons define the meaning of 'animal'.  And a nerve tangle defines a 'brain'.

How the tangle works now presents other scaling limits.  It all the same with Arties, where the tangle is formed from chips.  Plants can develop reactions, but it is a broader charge cascade, like the Venus fly trap, and not neurons.  

- to be continued - too dang hot.

Cottage Report - Victoria Day

 Really hot.  We are hoping the dragonflies pop out today.  No weather charts today, but it is the same old.  The Arctic has a huge inventory of cold air and it keeps pouring out, with no tropical plumes to fight it.  The tropics temperature chart is diving like a rock.  

'Extreme Weather' is now being hijacked as a clange thing.  Fifa will burn.  All great stuff.

ps this one is the best

Brain and Artie - Part 2

 We talked about how single complex molecules started to form plates, and then a sphere.  The cells had some molybdenum to render other molecules.  Tearing apart hydrogen, nitrogen, bonds, etc, is hard as CellBarbie says.  But as bacteria and cells started to float all over the place, they needed a way to eat and not be eaten.  This is evolution where a million years is a heartbeat.

Plants came first, and were just blobs of organic things.  The key factor here was that they just sat around and didn't move, and they just sucked in stuff that floated by.  They used their quantum atoms to make the trick of turning light energy (photons) into food.  Bacteria had it first, so plants just sucked them in.

Life is boring with just plants.  How about something that moves around and eats things?  That would be animals.  In a million years there was improvement through evolution, which is simply 'eat or be eaten'.  We had two good structures for something that could move, reproduce, and eat.  The first is the spherical blob.  Very nice, and those were the clams.  We went through that.

Next was the tube.  Water could come in one end and out the other.  Perfect!  These became worms.  Remember the big constraint of evolution is that each molecular change must impart an advantage in the 'eat-eaten' department.  For a tube, it would be nice for the head to know what the rear was doing.  This was defined by the water flow.  One end always won, and the other was the ass.

- to be continued