STATISTICAL PHYSICS: *** Dissipation-Driven Adaptive Organization *** (A new hypothesis for “the origin and subsequent evolution of life”.) businessinsider/groundbreaking-idea-of-lifes-origin-2014-12 Maybe yes. Maybe no. Time to put it through the scientific wringer… The article is a bit long, so I have summarized it below using selected quotations. For those interested in a deeper understanding, read the entire article, plus check out the related scientific paper, and lecture (links in subsequent comments). OK, here are the basics… - “Why does life exist? Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning, and a colossal stroke of luck.” - According to a new hypothesis, “the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature”: “From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat.” - “Jeremy England,…, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity [dissipation-driven adaptive organization].” - “England’s theory is meant to underlie, rather than replace, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection,” - “His idea,…, has sparked controversy among his colleagues, who see it as either tenuous or a potential breakthrough, or both.” - “At the heart of England’s idea is the second law of thermodynamics, also known as the law of increasing entropy” - “Life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics, but until recently, physicists were unable to use thermodynamics to explain why it should arise in the first place.” - “England, who is trained in both biochemistry and physics, started his own lab at MIT two years ago and decided to apply the new knowledge of statistical physics to biology.” - “he [England] derived a generalization of the second law of thermodynamics that holds for systems of particles with certain characteristics: The systems are strongly driven by an external energy source such as an electromagnetic wave, and they can dump heat into a surrounding bath. This class of systems includes all living things. England then determined how such systems tend to evolve over time as they increase their irreversibility. “We can show very simply from the formula that the more likely evolutionary outcomes are going to be the ones that absorbed and dissipated more energy from the environment’s external drives on the way to getting there,” he said.” - “Self-replication (or reproduction, in biological terms), the process that drives the evolution of life on Earth, is one such mechanism by which a system might dissipate an increasing amount of energy over time.” (Clayton Louis Ferrara: Thought of you!:)) - “The chemistry of the primordial soup, random mutations, geography, catastrophic events and countless other factors have contributed to the fine details of Earth’s diverse flora and fauna. But according to England’s theory, the underlying principle driving the whole process is dissipation-driven adaptation of matter.” - “England’s bold idea will likely face close scrutiny in the coming years.” - “He is currently running computer simulations to test his theory that systems of particles adapt their structures to become better at dissipating energy. The next step will be to run experiments on living systems.” - “Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and function in living things, many of the researchers said.”
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 14:58:42 +0000
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