The top man sees only other top men.

 

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer). A painting by a German Romanticist artist. Caspar David Friedrich's 1818 is one of the most well-known paintings in history. (Wikipedia).

Sometimes this painting is suggested to be a portrait. About the journey to the unknown. The wanderer sees the valley where he has ever been. Fog covers the bottom, and the person knows that he must go down. There is no turning back from that position. Wanderer is free and feeling comfortable, except he is alone. Nobody sees that person, so he can do anything he wants. 

The person sees another hilltop and mountains. Those things are higher than the place where that person stands. If a wanderer wants to climb to those mountains. That requires walking through the valleys. And the person must also get the mountain climber equipment. The composition shows danger. Excitement. And also the moment before stepping into the unknown. If the person wants to change the position, he must go through a rocky, difficult, and unknown route. 

The wanderer traveled for a long time. Now he has a vision of what to do next. The vision is to conquer even higher mountains. He conquered the summit of one hill. Now he wants to conquer more challenging hills and mountains. He wants to be at the top. He faced one challenge and overcame it. Now he wants to overcome more challenges. The mountains on the horizon symbolize challenges. And the hill where the wanderer stands symbolizes the challenge the wanderer has succeeded in overcoming. The first challenge is always toughest. And it trains to beat more difficult challenges. 

The wanderer knows that there is no return. There is no place to go backward. There is a suggestion that this painting symbolizes life. We cannot go back. Into our youth. We can only move forward to a future that is unknown to us. Maybe that portrait symbolizes a person on the edge. Of adulthood. Or maybe that person is a graduate student. The studies are ready. But there is only one thing to make. That is a step to working life. That means the next step. It is a step to adventure. 

It is sometimes suggested that planet Venus’s landscape. Might look like this. Maybe someday in the distant future we will get a photograph. There is an astronaut or a robot. That stands as this wanderer stands in the painting above Venus’s landscape. Those thoughts are interesting. And they bring their own charm to philosophy and imagination. 

But let’s go back to that painting. The person stands above a mystical foggy landscape. The painting is introduced in many philosophical texts, which tell about things. like stoicism. The painting is introduced as a portrait. Of a person. Who stands above fog and is their own master. Or the character portraits person who stands above. And the same way outside the other world. The person stands alone and isolated above the fog. 

People are in the fog. And the person cannot see them. The people in the valleys. Either see that person, and they can communicate by yelling. The person who stands above the fog can hear people below the fog. But that person cannot see them. This is one of the things that can connect this painting to Stoicism. The person stands above and outside society. This means freedom and loneliness. 

But there is another thing this painting tells people. The person who stands on the hill, or hilltop, is the topman. The topman sees other hilltops. This means that the topman sees only other topmen. So, topman sees other topmen, but those topmen might not have a vision of what regular people can do with the same things. Topmen can be ultra-rich people who know many other rich people. Those people often serve as managers.  They work with other managers. And those other managers open doors. To them, more often than regular people. 

Top actors talk with other top people. Top people see only top things. And that is their strength and weakness. Loneliness is the price of being free. Or maybe the top man searches other top men. 

The top scientists and other professionals also talk with other top professionals and other top scientists. They might never think what a regular actor in their sector does. When we think about the top computer specialists. There is always news about the voice files. That can open any computer system to hackers. But can a regular hacker make those things? And can a regular ICT operator even know those people? Is an ICT operator. Some kind of typical worker? 

We can think of that thing as a Formula 1 driver. Those drivers are the most well-known people in the world. But are those Formula 1 drivers typical drivers? Is a Formula 1 driver a typical car racer? And does the Formula 1 driver make the car that he uses? Topmen work with other topmen. But regular actors. It might be invisible to the top men.  And regular actors are not seeing top men. There is fog between the top and the bottom. Regular actors don’t understand the top. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanderer_above_the_Sea_of_Fog

Dwarf planet Ceres could have a habitable past.

  Dwarf planet Ceres could have a habitable past. 

"Dwarf planet Ceres is shown in these enhanced-color renderings that use images from NASA’s Dawn mission. New thermal and chemicals models that rely on the mission’s data indicate Ceres may have long ago had conditions suitable for life. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA" (NASA/ NASA: Ceres May Have Had Long-Standing Energy to Fuel Habitability)

Dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt. And an interesting thing is that.  This dwarf planet consumes water ice. The more interesting detail on this dwarf planet's surface is Mt. Ceres. That cryovolcano tells astronomers. That there has been some kind of geological activity. And if Ceres has an internal thermal source that lasts long enough, that means that. Ceres might have a habitable past. And that causes questions about some kind of bacteria that could live in that frozen world’s oceans. 

The fact about those kinds of questions is this: Ceres should have an internal thermal source, or something outside affects. That effect must keep Ceres’s oceans liquid as long as those bacteria could form. There are many great secrets in our universe and in our solar system. Ceres is covered in grey dust, but there are white spots on that dwarf planet’s shell. Those spots might be impact craters that open the dwarf planet's inner structures for researchers. There are organic compounds on Ceres. 

(https://www.sciencealert.com/asteroid-belts-largest-object-could-have-once-supported-life)

But that doesn’t mean that there was life. Organic compounds mean complicated carbon-based molecules. Those things tell that. There is a possibility. That some kind of lifeforms could form on, or in, Ceres. But those organic compounds can form for other reasons. That means there is no need to be bacteria. That those chemical compounds are formed. In some models, Ceres could be near some gas giants like Jupiter. 

The water ice layer on that dwarf planet hides its internal structures and chemical fingerprints from researchers. If researchers could compile those chemical fingerprints. With the other three large asteroids, Vesta, Juno, and Pallas. That uncovers many interesting things about those asteroids' origins. And maybe that chemical comparison can prove one very interesting theory right or wrong. There is a theory that those four large asteroids were someday part of a large planet. 

Collisions in the young solar system smashed some planets into pieces. An interesting thing could prove the question: what if those four asteroids Ceres, Vesta, Juno, and Pallas could have their origin in the same mass? There have been many planets in the young solar system that the cosmic collisions wiped away. Planets like Mars lost their outer shell many more times than once.  There is a theory that a cosmic impact formed the Moon to orbit Earth. The Moon’s formation is unknown, but there are two major versions of that process.

One is that centrifugal forces pull the Moon away from Earth. Another one is about a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia. Impacted Earth. And that separated the Moon. There is also the possibility that Theia. And the centrifugal effect formed the moon. There are remnants of impacts in Earth's mantle. But that doesn’t mean that those impacts formed the Moon. But in some models, in the very beginning of the solar system. 

Earth was far bigger than it is now. The cosmic impacts threw the lava droplets into space. While the Earth was not solidified. When the young Earth is impacted by larger objects, the liquid planet’s elasticity saves Earth. If Earth were solidified, the shockwaves would break its shell and break the entire planet into pieces. Remnants of those impactors can be seen in Earth's mantle as bubbles with a different density from other magma. 

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/dawn/nasa-ceres-may-have-had-long-standing-energy-to-fuel-habitability/

https://www.sciencealert.com/asteroid-belts-largest-object-could-have-once-supported-life

https://scitechdaily.com/dawn-reveals-surprisingly-high-concentrations-organic-material-on-ceres/

https://scitechdaily.com/hidden-organic-reservoirs-found-on-ceres-igniting-hopes-for-alien-life/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theia_(hypothetical_planet)

What is life?

    What is life? 

What is life? That's the thing that the cosmobiologists and philosophers are thinking. We have an old description that life means the thing that is organic and can create descendants. That means the robot that can build a copy of itself acts like a living organism. The organism means a creature. That can create descendants. Defend itself. And react to stimuli.  So, if volcanoes erupt, the robot can run away. 

So the living organisms can make a copy of themselves. However, when we consider concepts like Von Neumann machines or self-replicating machines, we encounter issues that warrant reflection, such as robot factories being viewed as "living organisms." The fact is that the robot factory can create copies of robots that operate inside those factories. And the robot factory can create a copy of itself. The problem with the Von Neumann machines is that. Those machines operate as a whole. Whenever. The robot creates an identical copy of itself, which doubles the network-based solution calculating capacity. 

If it has orders on how to make the needed equipment. These kinds of things, like AI-controlled, self-replicating robots, are tools. That requires the re-estimation of life. In the same way. Things like self-replicating molecules can cause a new way to see life. Von Neumann machines are tools that can act like living organisms. They can strike back if something attacks them. And that makes those machines more complicated things than we ever imagined.

The primary question is: does life need some physical form? Or what is the physical form? Computer viruses and artificial intelligence are programs that can make everything more complicated than ever before. The complicated AI algorithms can generate a twin of themselves. The AI that can develop itself and jump between servers is the thing that can make descendants. In the same way, computer viruses can make descendants. 

Is a self-replicating computer program some kind of living organism? That thing is a group or series of electromagnetic impulses. Stored in the computer's mass memory. That thing is like a living organism, but the problem is that it has no physical form as we know it. Another thing is this: is an artificial cell a living organism? Researchers made that cell in a laboratory. The thing is that the cell eats nutrients from its environment. But that artificial cell can't decay. 

So, even if something can drink orange juice, it will not necessarily create descendants. And another thing is that. Every biological creature doesn't think. But otherwise, the primitive creature can make many complicated things if they are programmed into its DNA. The intelligence doesn't make a creature living or not living. Biorobots or artificial cells are things. That causes a need to re-estimate the line between living organisms and robots.