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

Thermodynamic equilibrium is not required

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fallacy that entropy always increases ON EARTH, and therefore life is impossible to have evolved naturally, because it violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. That's only true in a closed system, which most definitely the Earth is not. There's this "Sun" bombarding the planet with energy, constantly.

Stop bringing thermodynamics into biochemical or origin of life questions. It's irrelevant.

Unusual in a huge system ...

[gstoddart]

The bottom line is that according to information theory, environments favorable to life are unlikely to be unusual.

Except in a universe with billions and billions of galaxies, each containing billions and billions of stars ... some of us assume that, statistically, the 'unusual' happens all the time.

In the last 30 years our understanding of how many stars have planets has changed entirely. We used to think there would be a small amount with planets and that we were really unique. Now, not so much.

These conditions may well be unusual. But there's a lot of unusual to go around, to the point that it almost seems like it would be happening over and over again.

Re:Empirical Data Trumps Information Theory

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The empirical data can't violate information theory any more than it can violate quantum physics. If the purpose is to establish bounds on the solutions, this approach is perfectly reasonable.

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

[gstoddart]

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

So, we'd be junk food?

Great, that makes me feel much better. :-P

Re:Empirical Data Trumps Information Theory

[gweihir]

This is not information theory or quantum theory, this is Information Theory and Quantum Theory. It is astonishing that there are still people around that do not understand the difference and claim they are "just theories". No. They are not. Apparently the educational system is far worse then generally assumed.