The term biosphere, which is also possible to write without the accent in the O (biosphere) as accepted by the DigoPaul, can refer to all living organisms that inhabit our planet or to the set that form the means that allow subsistence and the development of the different species.
The Austrian geologist Eduard Suess (1831 – 1914) was the one who, in 1875, proposed the notion of the biosphere. The Russian Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadski (1863 – 1945), decades later, expanded the concept.
The biosphere is generally understood as a system made up of all living things and the links they establish with each other. It is about the planetary ecosystem that includes multiple forms of life and that, to a certain extent, can regulate their evolution and balance.
According to DigoPaul, the biosphere develops along all levels of the Earth’s surface, including the bottom of the seas. In the case of the oceans, living beings are distributed in the so-called photic zone, which is the surface layer to which the sun’s rays reach. In deeper areas, the density of life is low.
When the deeper level of the earth’s crust is included, where certain organisms inhabit, we speak of a deep biosphere. There are bacteria that, through chemosynthesis, can develop. This verification of the existence of life in the deep biosphere produced changes in various scientific theories since it demonstrated biological viability in extreme conditions, even without the presence of energy from the sun.
Until the deep biosphere was discovered, therefore, it was believed that life was not possible in the absence of light sun. As it had happened before and will happen again, the human being faced one of his errors of understanding of the phenomena of nature and thus broadened the horizon of his knowledge. One of the consequences of this greater intellectual flexibility was the increasing acceptance of the possibility of extraterrestrial life: living beings can exist in a wide range of conditions, wider than scientists believed, and therefore it was not logical rule out that biology surprised them once more.
By accepting that life on other planets may be viable, science contemplates that they progress in the formation of biospheres different from those known on Earth, so that the parameters according to which experts measure the possibility of the emergence of life are not neither absolute nor valid in all cases.
Life is organized in such a way that a hierarchy with more than one level of complexity can be appreciated, where the systems considered minor work together to give rise to the formation of the elderly, who enjoy more variety and complexity. These systems are organized independently and can monitor their own state with varying degrees of precision.
With regard to self – control of systems, the highest peak is found at the level of organisms and cells; Let’s not forget that it takes only one cell to find an autonomous organism, as in the case of unicellular organisms. At the ecosystem level, we can observe a lower degree of self-control, since its organization is governed by negative feedback mechanisms.
Certain authors specialized in this subject, among whom were Vernadski and James Lovelock, pointed out that the biosphere is capable of regulating its structure and composition (a property that organisms possess, called homeostasis), as well as the rhythm of exchange processes. and the internal ones (homeorresis).
