How did life begin? Undoubtedly the most fascinating question one could ask as of the present. But a definitive answer any time soon is most unlikely.
Reproduction of life naturally and even artificially is not a big deal, but creating still is! If only we could give life to a lump of inorganic matter, it might at least help imagine how life first appeared on this planet, assuming that we are speaking only of 'life' as we know it only on this planet. We will certainly still not know how the first life, the Eve, came into being. And the creationists will still argue that 'reproduction' is not the same as 'creation'. Best way to engage them would be to leave them alone, for, belief is not amenable to reason.
However popular and persistent the creation myths be, we do have some sophisticated guesses about the origin of life, all of which, incidentally, swim alongside the theory of evolution. Almost all such origin narratives have a common plot - of life springing from a primordial soup after getting struck by a bolt of lightning and a more potent bolt of luck. But, departing from this common line of thinking, a 31-year-old physicist at MIT, Dr. Jeremy England, claims that he has found the underlying physics driving the origin and evolution of life in which luck had no role. He thinks that the origin and subsequent evolution of life followed from the fundamental laws of nature 'as unsurprisingly as rocks roll downhill'!
To quote Natalie Wolchover ('A New Physics Theory of Life', Quanta Magazine, January 22, 2014): "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. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life."
Here is the link to Wolchover article:
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/
To quote Natalie Wolchover ('A New Physics Theory of Life', Quanta Magazine, January 22, 2014): "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. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life."
Here is the link to Wolchover article:
https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/
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