Life makes geology. Life is not merely a geological force, it is the geological force. Virtually all geological features at Earth’s surface are bio-influenced, and are thus part of Vernadsky’s biosphere.

physics of living matter.

but one of nine planets, with life as its sole source of geochemical uniqueness.

Whereas Vernadsky’s work emphasized life as a geological force, Lovelock has shown that Earth has a physiology: the temperature, alkalinity, acidity, and reactive gases are modulated by life.

He illuminates the difference between an inanimate, mineralogical view of Earth’s history, and an endlessly dynamic picture of Earth as the domain and product of life,

Just as we are all connected in time through evolution to common ancestors, so we are all—through the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, and these days even the ionosphere—connected in space.

The world’s first scientific monograph on the Biosphere of Earth as a planet, which Vernadsky published in 1926,

Arthur Tansley, the British botanist who in 1935 coined the term “ecosystem.”

Polunin defined the Biosphere as the “integrated living and life-supporting system comprising the peripheral envelope of planet Earth together with its surrounding atmosphere so far down, and up, as any form of life exists naturally.”

(troposphere and stratosphere were introduced by Léon Teisserenc de Bort in 1902), geophysicists (asthenosphere was introduced by Joseph Barrell in 1914), and soil scientists (pedosphere was coined by Svante E. Mattson in 1938).

Both Vernadsky and Teilhard were cosmic prophets of globalization. If Teilhard was a “cosmic mystic,” Vernadsky defined himself as a “cosmic realist.”

As an analytical abstraction for studying the complexity of nature, the functional concept of ecosystem, formally introduced after Vernadsky’s The Biosphere, has no geographical boundary outside the observer’s choice. Its extent is defined by the scale of observation.

While the biota, including microorganisms, constitutes a relatively small biomass compared with the total mass of the lithosphere, the hydrosphere and the atmosphere, the planetary role of living matter in nature’s economy—to recall the classical metaphor at the roots of ecology—is enormous.

Vernadsky’s long neglected discovery that the Biosphere, as the domain of life on Earth, is a biogeochemical evolving system with a cosmic significance, was a scientific novelty unwelcomed by mainstream science.

Thermodynamics connects organisms with their environment, life with Earth, and Earth as a planet with its cosmic environment. The face of Earth, this strange “domain of life” in the cosmos, can be seen as an evolutionary phenomenon, the result of metabolism connecting the living organisms, the energy flow, and the cycling of chemical elements.

When Lynn Margulis and I introduced the Gaia hypothesis in 1972 neither of us was aware of Vernadsky’s work and none of our much learned colleagues drew our attention to the lapse. We retraced his steps and it was not until the 1980s that we discovered him to be our most illustrious predecessor.

the natural system of Earth, named Nature by Humboldt, the Biosphere by Vernadsky, Gaia by Lovelock, and ecosphere by others is a fundamental concept for our religious, philosophical and scientific quest to learn “What Is Life?,”

Vernadsky divided the biosphere into two classes of materials, the actual living matter and natural, bio-inert matter with which it is associated.

The biosphere may be regarded as a region of transformers that convert cosmic radiations into active energy in electrical, chemical, mechanical, thermal, and other forms.

this penetrating cosmic radiation determines the character and mechanism of the biosphere.

The action of solar radiation on earth-processes provides a precise basis for viewing the biosphere as both a terrestrial and a cosmic mechanism. The sun has completely transformed the face of the Earth by penetrating the biosphere, which has changed the history and destiny of our planet by converting rays from the sun into new and varied forms of energy At the same time, the biosphere is largely the product of this radiation.

It has taken thousands of centuries for human thought to discern the outlines of a single and complete mechanism in the apparently chaotic appearance of nature.

Wavelengths of 180–200 nanometers are fatal32 to all forms of life, destroying every organism, though shorter or longer waves do no damage. The stratosphere retains all of these destructive waves, and in so doing protects the lower layers of the Earth’s surface, the region of life. The characteristic absorption of this radiation is related to the presence of ozone (the ozone screen (§ 115), formed from free oxygen—itself a product of life).

The ocean takes up warmth quickly because of its great specific heat, but gives up its accumulated heat slowly because of feeble thermal conductivity. 35 It transforms the heat absorbed from radiation into molecular energy by evaporation, into chemical energy through the living matter which permeates it, and into mechanical energy by waves and ocean currents.

It is living matter—the Earth’s sum total of living organisms—that transforms the radiant energy of the sun into the active chemical energy of the biosphere.

The living organism of the biosphere should now be studied empirically, as a particular body that cannot be entirely reduced to known physico-chemical systems.

Organisms are the intermediaries in the regulation of the chemistry of the crust by solar energy.

Because no chemical force on Earth is more constant than living organisms taken in aggregate, none is more powerful in the long run.

Life is, therefore, not an external or accidental phenomenon of the Earth’s crust It is closely bound to the structure of the crust, forms part of its mechanism, and fulfills functions of prime importance to the existence of this mechanism. Without life, the crustal mechanism of the Earth would not exist.

Animals and fungi accumulate nitrogen-rich substances which, as centers of chemical free energy, become even more powerful agents of change. Their energy is also released through decomposition when, after death, they leave the thermodynamic field in which they were stable, and enter the thermodynamic field of the biosphere.

Living matter as a whole—the totality of living organisms (§ 160)—is therefore a unique system, which accumulates chemical free energy in the biosphere by the transformation of solar radiation.

When an element enters an organism, it passes through a long series of states, forming parts of many compounds, before it becomes lost to the organism.

Once atoms become involved in the vital vortices of living matter, they escape only with difficulty into the inert matter of the biosphere, and some perhaps never escape at all.

life is parsimonious in its expenditure of absorbed matter, and parts from it only with difficulty. Life does not easily relinquish the matter of life, and these atoms remain associated with life for long stretches of time.

The gases of the entire atmosphere are in an equilibrium state of dynamic and perpetual exchange with living matter. Gases freed by living matter promptly return to it. They enter into and depart from organisms almost instantaneously. The gaseous current of the biosphere is thus closely connected with photosynthesis, the cosmic energy factor.

Living matter uses its cosmic energy to produce modifications in abiogenic compounds (§ 140 et seq.). Radiant energy, penetrating ever-more-deeply due to the action of living matter on the interior of the planet, has altered the Earth’s crust throughout the whole depth accessible to observation. Biogenic minerals converted into phreatic163 molecular systems have been the instruments of this penetration.

The inert matter of the biosphere is largely the creation of life. 164

agglomerations of vadose minerals,

living organisms have always sprung from living organisms during the whole of geological history; 170 they are all genetically connected; and nowhere can solar radiation be converted into chemical energy independent of a prior, living organism.

We do not know how the extraordinary mechanism of the Earth’s crust could have been formed. This mechanism is, and always has been, saturated with life. Although we do not understand the origin of the matter of the biosphere, it is clear that it has been functioning in the same way for billions of years. 171 It is a mystery, just as life itself is a mystery, and constitutes a gap in the framework of our knowledge.

The planktonic film is the principal source of the free oxygen produced by green organisms. The nitrogen compounds concentrated in it play an enormous role in the terrestrial chemistry of this element. This film is also the central source of the organic compounds created in ocean waters. Several times a year, calcium is collected there in the form of carbonates, and likewise silicon is collected in the form of opal; these compounds end up as part of the benthic film. The geological accumulations of this work can be observed in the thick deposits of sedimentary rocks, 308 in chalky limestones (nanoplankton algae, foraminifera) and in cherts (siliceous deposits of diatoms, sponges, and radiolaria).

The land presents a totally different picture from that of the hydrosphere. 339 It contains only one living film, 340 consisting of the soil and its population of fauna and flora.

Life covers the land in an almost uninterrupted film.

Life does not sink more than a few meters into the soil and subsoil. 342 Aerobic life ranges from 1 to 5 meters, and anaerobic life to tens of meters. 343 The living film thus covers the continents with a layer that extends from several tens of meters above ground to several meters below (areas of grass). Civilized humanity has introduced changes into the structure of the film on land which have no parallel in the hydrosphere. These changes are a new phenomenon in geological history, and have chemical effects yet to be determined. One of the principal changes is the systematic destruction during human history of forests, the most powerful parts of the film. 344

Water on land is constantly moving in a cyclic process driven by the energy of the sun. Cosmic energy influences our planet in this way, as much as by the geochemical work of life. In the whole mechanism of the crust, the action of water is absolutely decisive, and this is most obvious in the biosphere. Not only does water constitute, on average, more than two-thirds of the weight of living matter (§ 109), but its presence is an absolutely necessary condition for the multiplication of living organisms and the manifestation of their geochemical energy. Life becomes a part of the mechanism of the planet only because of water.

life presents an indivisible and indissoluble whole, in which all parts are interconnected both among themselves and with the inert medium of the biosphere.