Reply to Lars Olof Björn’s Comment on our article “Fundamental molecules of life are pigments which arose and co-evolved as a response to the thermodynamic imperative of dissipating the prevailing solar spectrum”

Abstract

Abstract. Lars Björn, in his critique of our article, doubts our assertion that at the origin of life the fundamental molecules of life (those in the three domains) were UVC pigments, dissipatively structured under a thermodynamic imperative to absorb and dissipate this UVC light into heat. Björn bases his critique on the suggestion that non-living material can be more photon absorbing than living material. He gives a number of examples in which he shows that the albedo of material devoid of life is lower than that of biotic material and concludes that these examples counter our assertion. However, Björn makes the erroneous assumption that albedo (reflection) is the only important factor related to photon dissipation (entropy production) occurring in the light-pigment interaction in living systems. He ignores the other contributions to entropy production due to the photon interaction which were listed in our article; 1) the shift towards the infrared of the emitted spectrum, 2) the diffuse emission and reflection of light into a greater outgoing solid angle, 3) the coupling of photon-induced evapotranspiration in the pigmented leaf to further photon dissipating processes such as the water cycle, which further allows dissipating biopigments to flourish over all of Earth’s surface. His assumption is therefore incorrect and his analysis does not provide legitimate reason for doubting our assertion that the fundamental molecules of life arose as pigments as a response to the thermodynamic imperative of dissipating the prevailing solar spectrum. In the following, we respond to each critique using the same section headings of Björn’s Comment.