How does cooperation work in the creation of the first cell? We go into the molecules of water itself to find a place where this process may have begun. In the traditional view, molecules of water can be tightly organized in ice, loosely collected in liquid water or largely unconnected in steam or water vapor. The shape of the water molecule creates a positive side and a negative side. The difference in the state of water depends on the speed of the individual water molecules and the degree to which their motion allows them to stick together.
There are surfaces of materials, like quartz, the proteins of life, or even air itself, that induce a layering of hexagonal sheets of water molecules. While still “liquid” these organized areas are semi- crystalline. This state of water has unusual properties: it rejects other particles, including ions, and has a net negative charge of its own. Therefore there is an electrical charge at its surface. The creation of these semi- crystalline arrays is “pumped” by infrared energy re-emitted from sunlit surfaces. These areas of water therefore supply a constant, gentle energy to the surrounding liquid water.
On the quantum level, the laser creates a form of cooperation when one photon emitted causes another photon to emit in lockstep with it. These two cause yet more atoms to emit in the same way, and a cascade of “coherent” photons is created, all moving in the same direction and in the same phase. It is proposed that a layer of semi-crystalline water provided a similar coherent source of energy somewhere on the early Earth, either at the rock boundary in shallow water, or at the surface of a puddle. From a large array of organic molecules in this environment, a few would have resonated with this coherent energy source in the water. They would therefore have taken in energy, which would have enabled changes in their chemistry. A self-generating system of reactions arising in this environment could have created the first metabolism.
A wide range of the active proteins of life, like hemoglobin and chlorophyl, have resonant peaks in the visible or infrared range that are characteristic for each of their functions. These functional chemicals of life would have been the molecules that could receive energy from semi-crystalline water, and therefore would have composed the very selective “choir” of singing molecules that created the first metabolism. Cooperation caused a self- generating process similar to ones that were shown in the laboratory in the last chapter.
If the unique properties of water cooperate with the unique properties of chains of carbon atoms to create this specific set of cooperating molecules, the question is asked if this might indicate that life would develop in a similar way anywhere in the Galaxy.
Water, specifically semi-crystalline water, may have been the cooperative “host” of the first metabolism of life. The process of a host setting the stage for the next cooperative entity had occurred before, when the solar system itself arose from a larger molecular cloud. The host relationship will happen several more times in the refinement of life on the planet. Fields of photosynthetic bacteria created the oxygen environment that has allowed life to evolve on land. Fields of cooperative living beings allow for the cooperative arising of ecosystems, which are entities on a yet higher level of scale. This vision of life as a set of cooperatively generated levels is shown as a diagram of the ladder of life.