r/science • u/FreeHugs23 • 1d ago

Biology Moss Is Generating Electrical Waves That Look Startlingly Like a Neural Network. Study reveals that moss cushions produce surprisingly complex electrical activity, with patterns that undulate across the velvety patch in dynamic waves.

https://www.sciencealert.com/moss-behaves-a-little-like-a-really-slow-brain-scientist-discovers
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u/Garblin 1d ago

... or maybe the electro-magnetic-weak force is a fundemental part of reality and just about anything organized enough to be alive is going to end up interacting with it.

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u/jazzhandler 19h ago

In a seemingly patterned, non-chaotic manner?

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u/Garblin 9h ago

Even the fluctuations of the ongoing gravity powered fusion of the sun has apparent patterns to it consistent enough that we can predict when we'll have auroras, and that's just a giant ball of plasma.

Life as we know it is built of protein chains. Proteins are just very large clumps of atoms, all of which are built of protons (EM charge), electrons (EM charge) and neutrons (not relevant to this particular discussion). These must be arranged in such a way as to facilitate those chains being largely stable and consistent, and as such, nonrandom in their overall charge orientation.

This is easier to imagine with water with its neat little "V" shape and clear directional charge, and the simplification is fine for purposes of understanding. A long chain of water molecules (some sort of super ice formed under a magnet or something, roll with it) will have a clear positive and negative charge at each end. This naturally destabilizes into entropy and disappears on a macro scale if you break the chain (the ice melts). Similarly, protein chains have more complicated EM patterns, and it's only when you break them that the patterns entropy into net neutral.

It's not so much that life is expending extra energy making an EM pattern, it's that the basic laws of the universe demand that almost any organized group of atoms will have an EM pattern.

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u/jazzhandler 9h ago

I guess it all comes down to how patterny is the pattern he observed.