Posted on Sep 17, 2018
Observes MIT biophysicist Jeremy England, who created a huge stir in 2013 with a new theory that cast the origin of life as an inevitable outcome of thermodynamics –suggesting 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.
This restructuring effect, which England 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 Natalie Wolchover
at Quanta magazine in 2014, but rather follows from general physical principles and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.”
England’s research describes a simple, simulated system of chemicals in which it is nonetheless possible for exceptional structure to spontaneously arise — the phenomenon that England sees as the driving force behind the origin of life.
“That doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to acquire that structure,” England explained. The dynamics of the system are too complicated and nonlinear to predict what will happen.
The Daily Galaxy via Quanta and Youtube
Top 10 Space & Science Headlines of 2018
“Spying on Earth’s Most Awesome Creatures” –Scientists Pursue Undiscovered Species of Whales
The Alien Observatory –“When We see Something Unusual, That’s Out of Whack, It Can Be a Sign of Life”
“Point of No Return” –MIT Scientist Predicts the Event Horizon for Earth’s 6th Mass Extinction
Artificial Intelligence Is Already Out There, and It’s Billions of Years Old” (WATCH Video)
‘Ghost Signals’ of Extraterrestrial Civilizations Haunt the Milky Way –Suggests the New Drake Equation (WATCH Video)
“Odds That There has Never Been Another Civilization in the Universe One in Ten Billion Trillion” –A Joe Rogan Interview
The Alien Observatory –“The Mystery of Where Extraterrestrial Life is Hiding Deepens”
“We’re Entering Uncharted Territory” –The Exoplanet Revolution May Reveal that Rise of Civilizations May Not be Unusual
“The Big Rip” –When Matter and Spacetime are Gradually Torn Apart Through Expansion of the Universe
“Humans are the First to Arrive at the Interstellar Stage” –Physicist Answers the Fermi Paradox