When Does Life Start?

Respected Sir(S), I respect your job & regularly follow your answers on’ and also surf on web too to find answers about our (Human) History & Future; I pay my full respect to Science and try to see many Mythological Events of History (from all cultures) thru the Eyes of Science; because Science is the explanation of anything with Proofs/ Some of my queries put me into big question mark & won’t allow me to come on any conclusion, I request you to put your possible answer on my below & enlighten me; Why till date Science cannot explain that which Force or Energy works behind starting Heartbeats in an Embryo of 21 days to 23 days, any time? Is start of Heartbeat in an Embryo; is the starting point of a ‘Life’?? Does a Sperm have intelligence/ sense (if your answer is not, then how in just 23 Chromosomes it (or say he/she) caries all information including my hair/eyes color too)?? Why Scientists cannot create BLOOD in laboratory, while have developed nearly all other human organisms in laboratories? We all know ‘Energy neither be created nor destroyed - Energy can be converted from one form to another’ We all know Universe has it’s own Mass and it’s Energy as is Fixed in total; all Masses within the Universe Changes from one form to another; We all know that all leaving things/organism has Energy & same when dead don’t; So my question is - Can we consider that after/during death of any leaving body, Energy gets converted into any other form of Energy, and be present in the Universe? And some possible combination of Energy(s) is responsible for to start Heartbeats in an Embryo of 21days to 23days?? Thanks in advice for your explanations / Vishal Sharma (India)
- Vishal Sharma (age 42)
Indore, MP, INDIA

"Why till date Science cannot explain that which Force or Energy works behind starting Heartbeats in an Embryo of 21 days to 23 days, any time? " The force is certainly described by quantum electrodynamics, the only major force in all sorts of routine processes. The difficulty is that living systems are extremely complicated, so that understanding cell differentiation, exact timing of developments, and so forth is as hard as for any other biological problem.

"Is start of Heartbeat in an Embryo; is the starting point of a ‘Life’??" Here we can definitely not answer the question, not because it is too hard but because it has no scientific meaning. At what stage of development you choose to apply the word "life" is a question of word choice, not of scientific fact.

"Does a Sperm have intelligence/ sense"? So far as we can tell, they have very little sense.

"how in just 23 Chromosomes it (or say he/she) caries all information"? 23 chromosomes is a very long sequence of nucleotide base-pairs, over 3 billion of them. That can store an enormous amount of information, about 1000 times more than the words in a long novel like War and Peace.

"Why Scientists cannot create BLOOD in laboratory, while have developed nearly all other human organisms in laboratories? " I'm not sure what you mean by that. There are no artifical versions of most organs. Red blood cells can't directly dupicated in cell culture, because they don't have nuclear DNA, so that's perhaps what you mean.

"We all know that all leaving things/organism has Energy & same when dead don’t; " There are no particular changes in energy (in the physics sense of the word) when a living thing dies. If it's warm-blooded, a bit of heat probably gradually flows out to the surriounding materal.

Mike W.

(published on 12/07/2013)