#OriginsOfLife

A New Idea for How to Assemble Life

If we want to understand #complex #constructions, such as ourselves, #AssemblyTheory says we must account for the entire #history of how such entities came to be.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-theory-for-the-assembly-of-life-in-the-universe-20230504/

#Podcast #PlanetaryRadio

Finding Life by Looking for #Complexity

#AssemblyTheory

https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/lee-cronin-assembly-theory

#LeeCronin on life, assembly theory, #evolution, #entropy, time | #ThingInItself

https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=VcIWDZXTLWk

“Cronin and Walker figured that if a molecule is abundant enough to be detectable at all, its assembly index can indicate whether it was produced by an organized, lifelike process. The appeal of this approach is that it doesn’t assume anything about the detailed chemistry of the molecule itself, or that of the lifelike entity that made it. It’s chemically agnostic.”

— Philip Ball, A New Idea for How to Assemble Life

🔗 https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-gut-microbiome-helps-social-skills-develop-in-the-brain-20221115/

#AssemblyTheory #Evolution #OriginsOfLife #Biosignatures

& a nice opportunity to revisit pieces related to assembly theory.

“While that’s an exciting prospect for forthcoming missions to worlds like Titan and Europa, Cronin and Walker have bigger goals in mind. For example, the theory implies a temporal directionality that has nothing to do with thermodynamics but derives simply from combinatorics: there is a natural order in which objects can appear. Assembly, Cronin says, is a fundamental quantity on a par with energy and entropy. And assembly theory can be applied widely: to technology, linguistics, evolution. Did the sponge have to precede the fish? Did Tristram Shandy have to precede Finnegan’s Wake? I await answers.”

— Philip Ball, All in order

🔗 https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/is-there-a-natural-order-in-which-complex-objects-appear/4015703.article

📄 Stuart M. Marshall et al. Identifying molecules as biosignatures with assembly theory and mass spectrometry
🔗 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23258-x (🔓 open access)

#AssemblyTheory #Evolution #OriginsOfLife #Biosignatures

Interesting piece by Thomas Moynihan
▫️ on the evolution of our views on how species originate, evolve, disappear;
▫️ which made me realize that finding dinosaurs cool is not an invariant;
▫️ part of which nicely echoes assembly theory (see quote below).

“But then there are historical things. In order to possibly exist, they require specific events in the past to have happened. You will never encounter them beyond the region within which this history, with all its piecemeal stages, has unfolded. The more complex and sophisticated something is, the more history — that is, the more steps required for its assembly — it tends to require in order to emerge. For this reason, things that depend upon histories tend to be remarkable, even unique. Unlike kangaroos, cities or satellites, hydrogen atoms aren’t the product of long-winding histories. This is why hydrogen is cosmically abundant, but kangaroos aren’t.”

— Thomas Moynihan, Don’t Denigrate the Dinosaurs, in Noema Magazine

🔗 https://www.noemamag.com/dont-denigrate-the-dinosaurs/

🦖 #HistoryOScience #AssemblyTheory #Evolution #Extinction #Dinosaurs #ClimateCrisis

Interesting piece by Thomas Moynihan
▫️ on the evolution of our views on how species originate, evolve, disappear;
▫️ in which I realized that finding dinosaurs cool is not an invariant;
▫️ part of which nicely echoes assembly theory (see quote below).

“But then there are historical things. In order to possibly exist, they require specific events in the past to have happened. You will never encounter them beyond the region within which this history, with all its piecemeal stages, has unfolded. The more complex and sophisticated something is, the more history — that is, the more steps required for its assembly — it tends to require in order to emerge. For this reason, things that depend upon histories tend to be remarkable, even unique. Unlike kangaroos, cities or satellites, hydrogen atoms aren’t the product of long-winding histories. This is why hydrogen is cosmically abundant, but kangaroos aren’t.”

— Thomas Moynihan, Don’t Denigrate the Dinosaurs, in Noema Magazine

🔗 https://www.noemamag.com/dont-denigrate-the-dinosaurs/

🦖 #HistoryOScience #AssemblyTheory #Evolution #Extinction #Dinosaurs #ClimateCrisis

“Time is an object.” Walker 2023. Aeon Essays. https://aeon.co/essays/time-is-not-an-illusion-its-an-object-with-physical-size

#Time #AssemblyTheory #Spacetime #Physics #Biology #Chemistry #Evolution #Selection #Science #Philosophy