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#1 2020-11-06 14:09:52
- Calliban
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- From: Northern England, UK
- Registered: 2019-08-18
- Posts: 3,818
First Support for a Physics Theory of Life
First Support for a Physics Theory of Life
Take chemistry, add energy, get life. The first tests of Jeremy England’s provocative origin-of-life hypothesis are in, and they appear to show how order can arise from nothing.
“The biophysicist Jeremy England made waves in 2013 with a new theory that cast the origin of life as an inevitable outcome of thermodynamics. His equations suggested that under certain conditions, groups of atoms will naturally restructure themselves so as to burn more and more energy, facilitating the incessant dispersal of energy and the rise of “entropy” or disorder in the universe. England said this restructuring effect, which he calls dissipation-driven adaptation, fosters the growth of complex structures, including living things. The existence of life is no mystery or lucky break, he told Quanta in 2014, but rather follows from general physical principles and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-su … -20170726/
Is life simply an embodiment of the universe's unending drive towards complexity?
Last edited by Calliban (2020-11-06 14:12:44)
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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#2 2020-11-06 14:23:39
- tahanson43206
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- Registered: 2018-04-27
- Posts: 19,628
Re: First Support for a Physics Theory of Life
For Calliban re #1
Thank you for bringing Jeremy England's work to the forum!
I like the concept. Hopefully this new topic will generate some interest, and perhaps a comment or two.
(th)
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#3 2020-11-06 14:30:05
- Calliban
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- From: Northern England, UK
- Registered: 2019-08-18
- Posts: 3,818
Re: First Support for a Physics Theory of Life
According to England's theory, life evolves spontaneously wherever the requisite elements and conditions exist, because it provides a pathway for growing entropy.
This has profound implications for the existence of life on Mars and elsewhere. It would suggest that in previous times and possibly even today, our solar system should be teeming with primative life.
"Plan and prepare for every possibility, and you will never act. It is nobler to have courage as we stumble into half the things we fear than to analyse every possible obstacle and begin nothing. Great things are achieved by embracing great dangers."
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#4 2020-11-06 17:16:19
- SpaceNut
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- From: New Hampshire
- Registered: 2004-07-22
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Re: First Support for a Physics Theory of Life
From the primordial soup of methane, co2 and other minerals dissolved in the oceans with a source of energy, lightnings strikes and mixing we end up with a variety of proteins to start this process. Single cells would not need to be the first of life to form as we have found that virus along with other RNA chains are pretty close to being alive.
Each time life was growing strong there happened a near total life wipe out.
Night of the living algae
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