Intelligent characteristics of potential microbial life during the LHB

In the second round, there comes a point where the last organism will not obtain enough from the amino acid pool from the second last organism to be able to reproduce. Here, there is an intermediate stage between many organisms and only one organism. While cues will eventually arise regarding organisms voluntarily autolyzing when it is best to do so, obtaining as much of the amino acid pool as it can, this intermediate stage may be significant enough for a selection with cues for a more profound cooperation to occur.

Thus, a strategy may evolve where, rather than the second last organism voluntarily autolyzing, it may refrain from giving its amino acid pool to the last organism, even though this may be critical under these circumstances.

Of course, in this situation, it is not meaningful to say who is the second last and who is the last, as they both coexist here and one of them will eventually automatically perish sooner or later in the second round and give its amino acid pool to the last organism. However, here, it is said that a strategy could evolve after several rounds in the third round. If this intermediate stage is reached, the organisms can either continue with the first evolved strategy of providing their amino acid pool, or the stage can be so significant that a transition is made, and an assistance strategy is initiated.

Here, either in the renewed first round or the renewed second round, or both, there can actually be a short period during which an organism actively assists its kin if there is a higher chance of survival for the gene pool this way until a new impact sends them to another location. Here, organisms known for their fast, ruthless and complete reproduction by dividing into two organisms will instead decrease their own fitness to increase that of others and, thus, ensure that their genes will live on in their kin. This could potentially take several forms.

If this is in the renewed first round, they can cooperate to destroy the last member of a competing species, and one organism refrains from taking up the achieved amino acid pool in favour of the needy kin.

If this is in the second round, it may provide a synergetic effect that will allow them to survive longer than otherwise expected under these circumstances.

The opposite of cooperating organisms are `microbe-cheaters', meaning that while the colony can gradually evolve cooperation, where they share the internal amino acid pool among themselves, there can be organisms among them that instead acquire a disproportionate share of group-generated resources while making minor contributions themselves. Such `microbe cheaters' can disrupt cooperative systems (Westerhoff et al., 2014).

Such organisms correspond in that way to the organisms in the initial first round and the second round, where each organism fights for itself and for its own survival. Such an organism can, in the same way as the organisms in the cooperative strategy, be expected to be able to endure until the next impact comes and transport them to a new amino acid pool. The fact that new impacts will occur is clear, but the timing is not possible to know, thus, the organisms in the two strategies are on equal footing in this regard.

However, in the subsequent first and second rounds, where the organisms have repeatedly been through third rounds, it will apply that the organisms with the cooperative strategy will not only utilize the amino acid pool more efficiently than the free exchange strategy; it will also mean that a species isolates itself and keeps other species at a distance. It must be remembered that such organisms will disrupt cooperative systems. Thus, as the advantage of the system breaks down, nothing will be able to protect them from potentially being eaten by another species, thereby losing both their amino acid pool and their gene pool.

Thus, there will be an initial modest difference between the two strategies, which over time can stowly wtn eut in favcnr of ihe aolirborative titr^tegy. Howevhi, the gifferccice iii hose lseg each sWoteoa ttЈte contiiltuteil to the survival ot stgimisino та,. nal miCailg iiavr deen thsit hnge. Thie meatu ttr^i tlOe'o overali aurvtvat strsugh the LHB t^ottid have bern even lewder in that wag, as some ponulationa in гопг ojrutr invariably collepsati in Chai wag, \і^1гі;іє stheao nt^a^ed to lneen `the; Oree k>ntders away from them.

Localized planataty reseodinii

It is clear that even these displays of intelligence in the form of association and anticipation, communication and self-awareness will invariably lead to die downfall of the organisms as the number of organisms for each new generation decreases as the necromass recycling that suitotnr the niolohitst sostem is ussC rig. Thao, living isololcd in a snot is а ilmcthmltcP woy to mruive, saitcri a hem impael sands the опешиата to tec environment with a new emino oeld pool.

Wlen rn impael occurs, an tmpacl hug іііііі прост, totem maltrl sonl away irons Til impsct citr iti all dirhctioilu in theismt of on expending єігсіо. 10 Is is ataumod ttiЈit iCtc impnci rilal wall іоіііі таПки in ten ctiiderdhl directlono1u o subseukerlt import, hill one hhurtion il tswscd on omlno aciei paol, then ilus event easi be shewe0 ur two wans.

The first way is that il" there are >10 oaganisms and they are sent in different directions, at least one organism will arrive.

The other wa° is liltl^i. іг tiieae wat ot00 one asganirm kft and it nan ge sens ut ten different: dicecriona, hhe protiabdhy of it arriving at an amino acid pool is:

if tin organiom renchcc the omino tnici root, lt Uelangi) nt lot speak. to the riattrlioWly 'hhkh past, whene iii ionpacMt doer not octuoliy mean the oraansams' lt:.otЈil^ Oieskwetioo, but ratUer thclr ceicue Oram rlaiglnk m a spot Weit g1aceg htdic new eotaiaial omine arid pool, the aegnoism can ЫиИ ug die oumbcr lfforgdeisms agom.

U'ilui, Ше uupartrin0 is goth a destroyer, an initiator of adaptations, and the renewer of the orgmiami' gorsibiUty iff ounrive1 by movrng them to a new ^see.

Howc/ct even m did manned, отесаИ. there wip kn eoullnueue e^fecr^as^ in the poosdrihties oe aumvoL Became оШющПі duo oogomrm o'111 qmckfy lle ab.e ho ЬшИ up the %um%or o;f o^anisms ogam, hfehio only paWemiy been able torefyon geutg send toodierelherc were ri^ott \оіі0і ammo aekl goois, an iitere was ashy a 10% naodoUdityoaisnOino ramewUree withou etiitno ecici r^ool. e'er тоиПотас!, llffs aho inciugei Dhi Pact thce come oogemsmr nod siro і^єіГгііі botkwhen ifie impact hits and when theyland in a newplace.

There has thus been an alternating increase and decrease in the number of organisms during this localized planetary reseeding, and although there are many variables, the tendency must have been leading toward an overall decrease in the number of organisms.

In addition, life in many such spots has probably not survived, as the time before a new impact sends one or more of them off can be longer than their resources and the number of generations can be stretched. As mentioned, it could be expected that an impactor hits a location on Earth every 525.94 minutes, i.e., every 8.76 hours. There are several studies on how long a colony of microbial organisms can survive without the addition of nutrients. A study showed that E. coli can be maintained in batch culture at densities of ~10been selected for altruism and cooperation may give some advantage to the new organisms. CFU per ml for more than 5 years, although it was necessary to regularly provide sterile distilled water to maintain the volume and osmolarity (Finkel et al., 2000). However, even with these values in mind, it is uncertain whether an impact would occur before the last organism had disappeared.

In addition, at the impact centre, all material is destroyed, including the cellular detritus, while in the adjacent rings, part of the materials and organisms will be destroyed.

Initially, many areas were untouched by the impacting, and these sterilized impact centres belonged to the minority; however, as the impactors hit an increasing number of areas, their number gradually increased and affected most locations on the planet. Therefore, the number of such spots with amino acid pools has gradually decreased. Thus, the scale of environmental severity has increased and may eventually pose an issue even for life that survives by reuse of the collective amino acid pool.

However, evolutionary strategies occur in an ecological setting. Thus, if the organisms can endure long enough on the internal resources, further ecological scenarios will also come into play, resulting in the possible occurrence of one of the following 3 situations briefly described in Section 4.

In the first situation, it applies that even if the organisms have been placed in an environment where there is no amino acid pool, they may survive long enough on internal resources that individual organisms gradually move out of that environment to potentially fertile marginal areas with amino acid pools.

If such marginal areas exist, life can gradually move to them, as this is how life in well- known ecological settings can spread. Evolution is adaptation to changing local environments, where organisms gradually adapt to changed environments in peripheral areas. This occurs through reproduction, variation and selection, the key mechanisms of Darwinian evolution. However, the situation is initially different from the well-known gradual adaptation in peripheral areas today, as the organisms cannot draw on external resources but must draw on internal ones, at least until they have moved out of the centre.

This situation can also apply to the impact dynamics itself. Thus, the arriving impactors could have different sizes, densities and velocities, meaning that the rings could have different distances, and the impact ring could, e.g., launch the organisms back in the direction they came from, but not the entire distance. If they land at the edge of an amino acid pool, they must move there.

In the second situation with an inverse proportionality between life and environment, it was true that even if an amino acid pool was present where the organisms landed, it could be in a form they are not adapted to use, and they may not have evolved a metabolic pathway to it. However, microbial life can adapt relatively quickly to the use of new amino acid pools. However, the issue is that they change environments abruptly and have no influence over where they land. This is the issue faced by chemostrophs.

They can adapt relatively quickly, however, and the organisms could have adapted to be able to use the amino acid pool present before reaching the last generation and running out of the amino acid pool they reuses. Then, as in the first situation, they will gradually be able to move out into the peripheral areas, gradually adapting to the new conditions here, still drawing on what they are adapted to, but adapting to new conditions. Such an adaptation can be spread in a clonal colony by the fact that when some of the organisms have adapted and some of these organisms subsequently autolyse, their kin, rather than letting their DNA be used up and reused, can incorporate part of it into their own DNA. This ability is quickly spread and fixed in the gene pool. This can be considered decision-making, a characteristic of intelligence.

In the third situation, organisms that land in an environment with virtually the same amino acid pool as the one they came from will of cource survive. There are 3 subtle but important subscenarios in this latter scenario.

The first subscenario is that they can land in a completely new place with a new suitable amino acid pool.

The second subscenario is that an impact ring, as mentioned, will send matter away from the impact site in all directions in the form of an expanding circle, which was assumed to be in ten different directions. One direction must be back to where the progenitor of the organisms came from. As mentioned in Section 3, some organisms will remain in the primary ring, while some organisms are launched into the secondary ring. Thus, there could potentially still be an adequate amino acid pool that the organisms can live of.

The third subscenario is that, in retrospect, life must have arisen where there was plenty of the amino acid pool. Thus, if an organism is sent back to the starting point, back to where life originated, a suitable amino acid pool is present there.

Thus, the organisms will potentially be able to survive for a very long time in these 3 scenarios, longer than by relying on internal resources. However, even if the organisms can endure in the 3 situations and thus go beyond the evolutionary strategies described, it applies that the organisms will still be in the same situation as before they were sent away. Thus, under the conditions the LHB offered, sooner or later, the organisms will be sent off again by a new impact. In this manner, the organisms in all 3 situations are in the same overall situation over time. The 3 scenarios therefore do not provide a long-term solution for the organisms.

Thus, there has been an alternating increase and decrease in the number of organisms during this localized planetary reseeding, leading toward an overall decrease in number. hypothesis single-celled life

However, life has endured by drawing on internal resources and locally increasing its numbers again and again after landing in places where there were external resources. However, it has also potentially been able to live a long time and be distributed widely according to the 3 scenarios described. Thus, even as there are fewer spots, and the infrequent impact has sent them from place to place, these two general scenarios combined make it possible for life to have survived until the bombardments were over. Thus, bombardment is a double-edged sword. Although it has wreaked havoc by bombarding the planet and the environments in which life exists, it may have also preserved life by moving the organisms around in a localized planetary reseeding. It may actually have contributed to spreading life around the planet from the point where life must have necessarily arisen.

Conclusions

In this work, it has been described how intelligent characteristics can make a difference in a world, some of which have been concretely reviewed to show how life could have survived through the LHB, meaning that the LHB did not delay the emergence of intelligent life on the Earth, as intelligent life may have been there all along during this period.

There are other intelligent characteristics than these, and other scenarios could probably also have been used as an illustration. However, it has been sufficient here to demonstrate that the view that microbial life can be common in the galaxy, but that intelligent life is rare, is a misnomer in that macromolecular networks can confer intelligent characteristics.

If a world inhabited by analogous bacteria, archaea and protists is located elsewhere in the galaxy, this does not exclude the existence of intelligent life there; when life on Earth reverts back to consisting solely of bacterial life (due to the sun's changes toward the red giant stage), this does not exclude that intelligent life will still be on the planet. Thus, the conceptual distinction between microbial life and intelligent life should be abandoned, as the very statement hampers the search for intelligent life elsewhere.

While the conceptual distinction between microbial life and intelligent life is not valid, the distinction between intelligent life per se and intelligent life able to harness the insight and power of science and philosophy, expressed as, e.g., the ability to send out interstellar communication through technology (which is a premise at institutions such as SETI), seems to be sound.

It is interesting to note here that the presence of technology indicates the existence of intelligence, while the absence of technology does not indicate the absence of intelligence, just as, in light of the discussed scenarios, it is interesting to note that consciousness requires intelligence, while intelligence does not require consciousness, as microbial life do not appear to possess consciousness. However, this is a complex subject that falls outside the scope of the present work. It is sufficient to note that a more precise terminology regarding talking about intelligent life in the search for life elsewhere is needed.

It is debatable whether the LHB was severe enough to drive the evolutionary responses discussed, even with the assumption of impacts occurring at intervals of hours. However, the discussed impact dynamics and the evolutionary strategy are still relevant, as similar scenarios could potentially also occur on other worlds in the galaxy and beyond; for example, LHB-like conditions around Eta Corvi, an F-type main-sequence star, may be present (Lisse et al. 2011).

The emergence of life and the appearance of the LHB appeared to have been unrelated events in this solar system, and it is debatable whether life actually existed during the period when the impacting took place. However, the presented scenario is still relevant for astrobiology, as LHB-like scenarios can not only exist in other solar systems but can also potentially occur later in a world's history than it did for Earth, giving a greater possibility for life to exist when the bombardment starts.

It also applies that although the impact dynamics will mechanically occur in the same way in every world with the same conditions, altruism is only one intelligent response among several. Although environmental pressures push evolution down a certain path in this scenario, contingency still plays a role. Thus, other intelligent responses could potentially be selected for on a world. In fact, there could be competition between strategies of different populations that met, meaning that the very strategies evolve.

The strategies discussed may also be relevant in other situations applicable to space science. The ecological setting has been suggested to be taken into account in the unintentional but potential transport of organisms by spacecraft (von Hegner, 2021). Thus, the inclusive fitness strategy could also potentially arise from spaceship-mediated transport; here, the external amino acid pool is cut off, but the internal amino acid pool can be used for a long time and thus contribute to the organisms reaching another world in the solar system.

Did these strategies occur? It is not certain that life has survived through this period in that way, and it may not be possible to show that this was the case due to the Earth having had much of its early history erased. Science proceeds in two ways: one is, as in the physical sciences, to test predictions despite issues with potential auxiliary assumptions, and the other is, as in the historical sciences, to look for a smoking gun that distinguishes between two or more hypotheses, albeit there is overlap between both of these paths (Cleland, 2001; 2013). The Earth has had much of its early history erased, making it difficult to find clues regarding whether these responses have occurred; however, it can be shown to be theoretically plausible, as has been done here.

Thus, it is fruitful to bring together fields that are otherwise so different, i.e., evolutionary theory and physical dynamics, in a common framework to understand what could have been going on at a time in the history of the Earth, and possibly life, in which little was known. This is obviously more of a retrodiction than it is a prediction.

However, evolutionary responses can be described and predicted, as can impact dynamics. Natural selection is the differential survival of genes in gene pools. It acts on the available variants and is driven in certain directions both by selective pressure between organisms and pressure from the environment. There were certain environmental conditions here in the form of impacts and reimpacts and between spots with limited amino acid pools. The impacting dynamics themselves act as selectors of organisms.

Evolution is fundamentally variation. It starts as a lump of variation that spreads outward in all directions. There is no specific direction and no measure for the spread of the variation, and most of the variants disappear again in competition with each other and against the pressure of the environment. However, a few survive, and become a point from which variation spreads outward in all directions. In that sense, the LHB is an extension of this. The impactors act as initiators for certain evolutionary strategies that can allow life to react even to such celestial onslaughts.

The Copernican and Darwinian revolutions belong to the great thresholds in history that adjusted humanity's understanding of the cosmos.

The Copernican revolution removed the Earth from the centre of the universe, indeed, the entire solar system from the centre of the universe, opening up the possibility of the existence of other worlds and, ultimately, for life on other worlds.

The Darwinian revolution removed any particular species from the centre of nature; indeed, it removed any inherent direction from the centre of nature, ultimately revealing that special characteristics are not monopolized by single species on any world.

That macromolecular networks in microbial life confer intelligent characteristics and may even be a precursor to the intelligence seen in many multicellular organisms, simultaneously their descendants and cousins, should not be surprising. Thus, perhaps it is time to embrace both revolutions equally fully and not view intelligence as seen from the human perspective, or even view intelligence as flowing from a particular organ.

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