Here are links to my abiogenesis work:
Possible Origin of Life between the Sheets of Mica - my UCSB website
Granny Says Life Evolved Between the Mica Sheets - a news story
And links to publications on this work:
1. Publications 2009-2017
2. Mechanical Energy before Chemical Energy at the Origins of Life? (Version 1)
3. How Did Life Start? Maybe Like This - a cartoonish Amazon Kindle book but with research that’s published in peer reviewed journals
Abiogenesis is an example of ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’
Think of hydrogen (H2) + oxygen (O2) = water (H2O), which is so incredibly different from hydrogen gas (H2) and oxygen gas (O2).
Think of a functioning car vs the parts that go into it but don’t do anything useful by themselves.
Abiogenesis is a very complex example of a whole [life] that is greater than the sum of its parts.
This is all part of a scientific field called ‘emergent properties’ or ‘chemical emergence.’
Helen Greenwood Hansma, PhD
Research Biophysicist Emeritus and Associate Adjunct Professor Emeritus
Department of Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara
Thank You to the National Science Foundation for supporting the research on Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) that led to this hypothesis about the origins of life! We used mica as the surface for imaging DNA and other biomolecules by AFM.
