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Thermodynamics trends toward life, a hint of life's origin?

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johnson1010
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Thermodynamics trends toward life, a hint of life's origin?

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A new hypothesis puts forward the idea that life comes to be precisely because it is energetically favorable. A plant is better at turning light energy into heat energy (entropy) than a clump of stone.

Meaning essentially, that life is not a one-off miracle, but a statistically likely destination for any clump of matter over the long haul (with appropriate caveats for conditions).

This hypothesis also places the phenomena of life in a broader catagory of physical events. Interesting stuff!

New ideas, needs lots of testing, but floating ideas is always the start!

A break down and analysis of the paper.

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta ... y-of-life/
From the above link:
Besides self-replication, greater structural organization is another means by which strongly driven systems ramp up their ability to dissipate energy. A plant, for example, is much better at capturing and routing solar energy through itself than an unstructured heap of carbon atoms. Thus, England argues that under certain conditions, matter will spontaneously self-organize. This tendency could account for the internal order of living things and of many inanimate structures as well. “Snowflakes, sand dunes and turbulent vortices all have in common that they are strikingly patterned structures that emerge in many-particle systems driven by some dissipative process,” he said. Condensation, wind and viscous drag are the relevant processes in these particular cases.
I know people are going to get hung up on "spontaneously self-organize". Lets put this another way.

You know those rib patterns that develope in shallow water? The waves produce those patterns by repeatedly subjecting the sand to mechanical energy.

The energy hitting our planet from the sun is what's causing the organization that leads to self-replicating systems and ultimately life. It absolutely doees not "just happen out of nowhere". It is forced into that position the same way a ball is forced to roll down hill.



The actual paper.

http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/jo ... ver=pdfcov

Go here for more discussion on thermodynamics and evolution.

http://www.booktalk.org/evolution-and-t ... 14718.html
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Re: Thermodynamics trends toward life, a hint of life's origin?

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I'm liking this paper so far.

It's pretty dense, but when you unpack it it seems like he's onto something.

He's starting to quantize something that was just intuitive for me. Looks like he's making good strides toward demonstrating that a self-reproducing object like a plant does indeed satisfy the second law of thermodynamics, that is: Entropy always increases.

I look forward to people attacking this hypothesis and seeing what falls out of it!

excellent!
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Re: Thermodynamics trends toward life, a hint of life's origin?

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Hi

Do you understand the math? Can you explain to us how it demonstrates the presented hypothesis?

Also, consider this from the abstract:

"The process of cellular division, even in a creature as ancient and streamlined as a bacterium, is so bewilderingly complex that it may come as some surprise that physics can make any binding pronouncements about how fast it all can happen. The reason this becomes possible is that nonequilibrium processes in constant temperature baths obey general laws that relate forward and reverse transition probabilities to heat production."

The bacterium that existed when life began to replicate: can you direct us to a study that replicates "ancient bacterium" in the environment that existed when said bacterium began to replicate? How has an ancient constant temperature been confirmed?
This has been achieved, correct? How have we replicated these past conditions?

Do the laws of motion have a built in temporal direction? Does this abstract explain why equilibrium states dont happen more often everywhere?
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Re: Thermodynamics trends toward life, a hint of life's origin?

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Hi Ant!

Some of the Math i can follow, and other parts i really cant. But above and below each equation they are setting out the relationships being defined in the equations which helps a lot.

What they are outlining is how reproduction is constrained by thermodynamics, and how it must obey the second law.
The bacterium that existed when life began to replicate: can you direct us to a study that replicates "ancient bacterium" in the environment that existed when said bacterium began to replicate?
No i can't direct you to a study like that. Perhaps it exists, but i am not aware of it. What this paper is outlining is a set of relationships that they are proposing exist for reproductive phenomena like the ones they refer to. Not a specific case of some particular species of bacteria in a particular environment, but the relationship of bacteria and their environments in general.

So by analogy, this paper doesn't say how a ford mustang's engine converts Shell mid-grade Gasoline into work, but how engines can convert fuel into work and what binding conditions thermodynamics applies to that process.

So now it is up to the peer review process for people to test his claims against specific examples to see if what he's proposed has anything to do with reality.

This new paper isn't just The Truth, now. People should be lining up to try to tear it apart with empirical observations.
How has an ancient constant temperature been confirmed?
I don't think so, and i don't think that's what they are talking about now. I may be wrong, but i took it to mean that the thermal bath they refer to is just the environment they are in. So in an idealized example like the one outlined i think they are talking about an environment where they can strictly quantify how much thermal energy is in the bath at the start, and how much is in the organism. Then they measure again after the reproductive process has been completed and there should be a quantifiable increase in the thermal bath's temperature as laid out by their proposition.

This doesn't point to an eternally unchanging constant temperature, but instead points to an un-disturbed thermal bath, or pitri dish, or pond or something which is not getting interference from outside of the reproductive process. So, while this event takes place lava isn't bubbling up to the surface from underneath to skew the results or obscure the contribution they should see from the reproductive event. That doesn't mean the temperature remains unchanged forever. Just that when making comparisons from before and after the environment should be controlled to prevent outside influences.

Sound right to you?
This has been achieved, correct? How have we replicated these past conditions?
This should be sorted from my previous answer, but i'll also point out that this involves a generalization to the past and is consistent with the process of making predictions about things you haven't seen for yourself based on the things that you HAVE seen for yourself.
Do the laws of motion have a built in temporal direction?
Sean Carroll keeps it short and sweet.


Feynman lays it out at length!


both good videos on this topic, i recommend them!

For my part:
The laws of motion don't have a directionality to them. a close up of a billiard ball smacking into another can be run forward and backward and look right. The emergence of time depends on the irreversible nature of energy diffusion.

So things that have high energy are moving fast. That means they don't stay in the same place. Two objects of high energy both are moving fast and the number of possible directions they could travel in is infinite, while the only way for them to stay close is one particular path.

If they start close together, every move they could make moves them further apart. The next moment they can move any direction at all. All of those directions, except one, bring them further apart. Getting close together again represents the past. It can happen. But of the zillions of paths they could take, that one path is very unlikely. In fact any path they could take is unlikely, but if you pick just the one path out of zillions the odds are heavily stacked that one of the other paths are what's going to happen.

Compound that for each particle in existence, and you see why even though going backward in time is possible, it isn't going to happen.

This is the origin of the arrow of time.

its a bit like the monty hall problem. But instead of looking for one path of three, it's one path in... what, infinity?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njqrSvGz8Ps
Does this abstract explain why equilibrium states dont happen more often everywhere?
No, but that isn't what the paper is about. Depending on what boundary conditions you set, they do happen everywhere. But the ultimate equilibrium state won't happen until the heat death of the universe. But thermal equilibrium states can be defined all over the place, you just have to set your rulers.

The same thing i was talking about with the constant temperature comment. They were referring to constant temperature for the duration of the event. Well, when you say thermal equilibrium, do you mean for one particular area? That can happen. at least for a while. It could even happen for a very long time. Eventually outside influences must be taken into account and things will change, and you find out it wasn't ultimate thermal equilibrium, but relative equilibrium.

It's like "a diamond is forever". Well, that needs an asterisk, doesn't it?
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Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: Thermodynamics trends toward life, a hint of life's origin?

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I might give it a shot when I have more time. A few things that stick out for me just reading some of what you've posted though:

I thought thermodynamics (is it the second law?) break things down over time. In other words, time, and the effects of nature working, leads to disorder and disarray, not order and life. A neat little stack of blocks, arranged to look like Washington's face, given time will crumble, fall apart, and scatter. But the converse is not true. Time and nature will not take a stack of blocks and form them into Washington's face.

The other thing that makes me wary is that theories of this sort seem to mostly be "just-so" theories to me, most of the time. That is, no evidence, no reason to think that they're actually true, other than somebody just used their imagination to conjure it up and it sounds good, so people give it credibility.

A plant may be "better" at converting energy than a lump of stone, but doesn't the plant actually have to exist before you can compare it to anything? How does nature 'favor' the plant before the plant exists? See what I mean. We can compare plants and stone NOW, because they're both here. But imagine if the universe consisted entirely of stones? Is the author saying the universe would create plants because they are better at converting energy than the stones are? How does an unintelligent universe even begin to make these kinds of decisions?
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Re: Thermodynamics trends toward life, a hint of life's origin?

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gesler0811 wrote:imagine if the universe consisted entirely of stones? Is the author saying the universe would create plants because they are better at converting energy than the stones are?
Hi gesler, welcome, thanks. I haven't read the paper, but would like to. Perhaps the point is that once something planty accidentally happens in a rocky world, the proto-organism has a permanent toehold because of its greater complexity? That seems to be the basic evolutionary logic of cumulative adaptation, building on the precedent of whatever proves most durable, stable and fecund.

I also think that life is counter-entropic, so will be interested to read discussion on that.

Overall, the philosophical issue here is how did our universe evolve in ways that make sense. For the sake of elegance, we should assume a purely scientifically driven and pitiless process.
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Re: Thermodynamics trends toward life, a hint of life's origin?

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Hey Gesler!

Welcome to the forums.

Here's another thread i started a while back discussing the second law of thermodynamics and evolution. It also delves into how complex things can exist in a world that trends toward chaos.

http://www.booktalk.org/evolution-and-t ... 14718.html

The key is that "chaos" doesn't have to fit with our every day use of the word.

Check it out, i think it is a pretty good thread!
In the absence of God, I found Man.
-Guillermo Del Torro

Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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