"Jo Schaper" wrote in message
...
Peter Fairbrother wrote:
jonathan wrote:


So Nature is saying ...from the rocks....comes soil.

Gee...all this time I grew up believing that soil forms into rocks~


It does.

They results are usually called sedimentary rocks.



Only one problem with the 'revelation' the Earth has blueberries like
Mars....OLD NEWS...and last I saw Utah it is covered with those
sedimentary rocks, not a whole lot of volcanism. I heard the
'concretion' story on the radio, too, and they made a big deal like
someone had just discovered concretions for the first time.

I am still bemused by scientists and reporters being utterly amazed that
geological principles work the same throughout the universe and the
concept that water is not unique to earth. Perhaps because of early
interest in astronomy, off-earth water is a ho-hum to me.



On NRP, the discussion of that Nature article finished with the
talking head saying the following. "Some believe they're
bacterial concretions, but it's far too early to say that, as of
yet".

What boggles me is the preference of geology for an explanation
over life. The idea that life is something completely separate from
geology seems carved in stone. As if something magical has to
happen to make the transition. That is just not the case, evolution
is a seamless process from geology to life.

Darwinian evolution is a special case of the processes that
drive everything in the universe towards increasing order
and organization. The mathematics for the evolution of
geology and life are the same. Either simply needs the
extremes in possibility space to persistently
communicate.

The idea of complex adaptive systems applies to the
non-living, living, market and even spiritual systems
with the same ease.




DYNAMICS OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS
Textbook for seminar/course on complex systems
Full online text

"For many years, professional specialization has led science to progressive
isolation of individual disciplines. How is it possible that well-separated
fields such as molecular biology and economics can suddenly
become unified in a single discipline?"
http://www.necsi.org/publications/dcs/



It's possible! Every week I'm day-trading using the same
concepts I use to look at the rover pics. I'm averaging
20% a month return trading with my cell phone while busy
at work. Look up the ten day chart of nmgc for a typical
thunderstorm/emotion I played today. When all the primary
variables of a system are 'complex' at the same time, the system
organizes, volatility and predictability converge
to simultaneous maximums. It springs to life and
behaves in a universal way. Which is great for stock
trading since that means no system specific info is
needed to play the stock. I can move between any
stock, any industry, without knowing a whit about
either.



Far from equilibrium is where it's at....self organization, life
and ~predictability.


Jonathan

s








We need to move on to something of interest.

Jo