33 research outputs found
Beyond prebiotic chemistry
Summary: How can matter transition from the nonliving to the living state? The answer is essential for understanding the origin of life on Earth and for identifying promising targets in the search for life on other planets. Most studies have focused on the likely chemistry of RNA (1), protein (2), lipid, or metabolic “worlds” (3) and autocatalytic sets (4), including attempts to make life in the lab. But these efforts may be too narrowly focused on the biochemistry of life as we know it today. A radical rethink is necessary, one that explores not just plausible chemical scenarios but also new physical processes and driving forces. Such investigations could lead to a physical understanding not only of the origin of life but also of life itself, as well as to new tools for designing artificial biology
Quantum Non-Barking Dogs
Quantum weak measurements with states both pre- and postselected offer a
window into a hitherto neglected sector of quantum mechanics. A class of such
systems involves time dependent evolution with transitions possible. In this
paper we explore two very simple systems in this class. The first is a toy
model representing the decay of an excited atom. The second is the tunneling of
a particle through a barrier. The postselection criteria are chosen as follows:
at the final time, the "atom" remains in its initial excited state for the
first example and the particle remains behind the barrier for the second. We
then ask what weak values are predicted in the physical environment of the
"atom" (to which no net energy has been transferred) and in the region beyond
the barrier (to which the particle has not tunneled). Previous work suggests
that very large weak values might arise in these regions for long durations
between pre- and postselection times. Our calculations reveal some distinct
differences between the two model systems.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure
Evolutionary Transitions and Top-Down Causation
Top-down causation has been suggested to occur at all scales of biological
organization as a mechanism for explaining the hierarchy of structure and
causation in living systems. Here we propose that a transition from bottom-up
to top-down causation -- mediated by a reversal in the flow of information from
lower to higher levels of organization, to that from higher to lower levels of
organization -- is a driving force for most major evolutionary transitions. We
suggest that many major evolutionary transitions might therefore be marked by a
transition in causal structure. We use logistic growth as a toy model for
demonstrating how such a transition can drive the emergence of collective
behavior in replicative systems. We then outline how this scenario may have
played out in those major evolutionary transitions in which new, higher levels
of organization emerged, and propose possible methods via which our hypothesis
might be tested.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
The Algorithmic Origins of Life
Although it has been notoriously difficult to pin down precisely what it is
that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that
its informational aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property. The
unique informational narrative of living systems suggests that life may be
characterized by context-dependent causal influences, and in particular, that
top-down (or downward) causation -- where higher-levels influence and constrain
the dynamics of lower-levels in organizational hierarchies -- may be a major
contributor to the hierarchal structure of living systems. Here we propose that
the origin of life may correspond to a physical transition associated with a
shift in causal structure, where information gains direct, and
context-dependent causal efficacy over the matter it is instantiated in. Such a
transition may be akin to more traditional physical transitions (e.g.
thermodynamic phase transitions), with the crucial distinction that determining
which phase (non-life or life) a given system is in requires dynamical
information and therefore can only be inferred by identifying causal
architecture. We discuss some potential novel research directions based on this
hypothesis, including potential measures of such a transition that may be
amenable to laboratory study, and how the proposed mechanism corresponds to the
onset of the unique mode of (algorithmic) information processing characteristic
of living systems.Comment: 13 pages, 1 tabl