Information Theory Places New Limits On Origin of Life

KentuckyFC writes: Most research into the origin of life focuses on the messy business of chemistry, on the nature of self-replicating molecules and on the behavior of autocatalytic reactions. Now one theorist says the properties of information also place important limits on how life must have evolved, without getting bogged down in the biochemical details. The new approach uses information theory to highlight a key property that distinguishes living from non-living systems: their ability to store information and replicate it almost indefinitely. A measure of this how much these systems differ from a state of maximum entropy or thermodynamic equilibrium. The new approach is to create a mathematical model of these informational differences and use it to make predictions about how likely it is to find self-replicating molecules in an artificial life system called Avida. And interestingly, the predictions closely match what researchers have found in practice. The bottom line is that according to information theory, environments favorable to life are unlikely to be unusual.

Comments

First

[Anonymous Coward]

First God created the Heavens and the Earth. Then he created life. Ten thousand years ago. That is the only information theory you need.

What?

[Grizzley9]

environments favorable to life are unlikely to be unusual.

How can you not argue against not having that be untrue?

Re:Life may be common, but not always as we know i

[John_Sauter]

....if we were to find a planet filled with plants made up of D amino acids and left-handed DNA we may find ourselves unable to consume those plants for nutritional value.

More importantly, they would not be able to consume us for nutritional value.