Life changes its surroundings. The atmosphere and the life it supported would form a kind of self-regulating system that could itself be thought of as a living organism-the Gaia hypothesis. Life maximize the fi tness, and adaption.
We have no ETs but we could look at evolution? Biosignatures ought to be present in any system that has evolved, also digital life in Si.
Dorn et co looked in various samples at the distribution of biomolecules, such as amino and carboxylic acids. They compared terrestrial sludge, which is obviously teeming with life, with the outcome of experiments to synthesise amino acids, which have no life. And they even looked at the composition of meteorites.Concentrations of related monomers in abiotic samples tend to exhibit specfii c patterns dominated by small, easily formed, low-formation-energy molecules, governed by reaction kinetics and thermodynamics. Organisms, on the other hand, contain catalysts (e.g., in terrestrial biota, enzymes) and expend energy to synthesize speci fically those molecules they need for survival and competition. In the presence of life, therefore, some speci fic complex and high-formation-energy molecules are synthesized rapidly because they convey a fitness bene fit.Their results are interesting. They found that the distribution of biomolecules in the absence of life generally reflects the thermodynamic cost of making them. So there are far more simple amino acids than complex ones, for example.
However, samples containing life do not follow this pattern. Where complex biomolecules play a role in the processes of life, and therefore confer some kind of advantage, they are much more common than can be explained by thermodynamic arguments.
Artificial 'Life'.
They did a similar analysis on a system of artificial life called Avida. In this world, the building blocks of life are elements of computer code that carry out simple instructions. Connect several instructions together and you have a complex "molecule". If these molecules have a code that allows them to copy, they can reproduce. Environmental factors such as the rate of mutation are controlled externally by computer scientists who also inject a constant stream of code that organisms can consume as they evolve.
The same kind of stamp on their environment was found. Certain bits of code are preferentially selected so that they are far more common in an evolved system - the "monomer abundance distribution biosignature", common in all evolved living systems? A universal biosignature of evolution - an evosignature.
While evolution undoubtedly plays a crucial role in the development of life, it also plays an important role in other processes as computer simulations. The signature should be unique. This discussion highlights is the difficulty in defining life in the first place.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1101.1013: Monomer Abundance Distribution Patterns as a Universal Biosignature: Examples from Terrestrial and Digital Life.
What is competition?
This say that the complexity is advantageous. In what way?
Complexity is seen in high-molecular complexes and use of energy, made easier by enzymes (dipoles?). What does this statement contain?
Complexity means differentation. More molecules mean more information and a more unik 'stamp' or Self. Self is a dissipative structure that can percieve (react on changes) externally and internally. So differentation creates a barrier, or Self, as a signature. This is made against the kinetics and termodynamics, as a self-organization. This needs a feed of external energy.
1. So this is another way to say Life is out of equilibrium systems.
2. Creation of barriers and Selves increase the collection of information and adaption. This is maximation of the negentropy.
3. Adaption = stress reduction. This disturbation of thermodynamics is allowed to cost, but minimally. The least action principle for the Self may be prevalent.
4. Action can be the difference between kinetic and potential energy as some kind of function of mass x time. The principle of Least action, responsible for choosing one of a number of possible solutions. The optimal solution corresponds to minimum variations of its external kinetic energy, translational velocity and time, provides realization of principle of Least action. This is resonance? Variations in the resonance is minimized. These oscillations require virtual or dark matter?
5. Living systems have a reaction, an output, of positive or negative energy, that regulates the energy consumption.
6. The environment is unstable, and it helps creating variations in the complexes. Evolution generates variation as an insurance against unstable conditions. Epigenetic changes that inject an Heisenberg Uncertainty into genetics. Methylational variation. A kind of built-in randomness generator that creates greater phenotypic diversity. Stability = rationals?
At conditions, when q = 1, the external translational velocity of particle is zero (zero-point oscillations). This is optimal.
The second law of thermodynamics also means decreasing of kinetic energy, and diminish the energy difference. That's why Nature works against it and creates negentropy, but at the same time increase its effects too. The second law doesn't rule biology at every time scale.
Consequently, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, as well as Principle of Least Action, can be a consequence of minimized variations in resonance. Forced resonance creates a regulating force that do the synchronization.
In TGD (I quote) one must distinguish between two kinds of self organizations corresponding to the entropic bound state entanglement and negentropic entanglement. Biological self-organization could be therefore fundamentally di erent from the non-biological one. The succes of the p-adic mass calculations suggest that even elementary particles live in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds so that one should be very cautious in making strong conclusions. Certainly the intentional, goal-directed behavior of the system in some time scale is a signature of negentropic self-organization.
p-Adic length scale hypothesis could be understood as a resonance in frequency domain - most naturally for massless particles like photons. The secondary p-adic time scale for favored p-adic primes must be as near as possible to the proper time distance between the tips of CD (self and subselves). Mersenne primes satisfy this condition. Also log(p) is in this case as near as possible to log(2n) and in the sense that the unit of negentropy is maximized. This argument might work also for Gaussian Mersennes if one restricts the consideration to Gaussian primes.
This would give windows of action or interference with the quantum world. These windows are determined by rational/algebraic constraints. The fundamental biorhytm as p-adic/algebraic oscillation (incl. Golden Mean) means a direct connection between life and death, = interference/stability.
Evolution is present already at elementary particle level? This is the case if elementary particles reside in the intersection of real and p-adic worlds (dissipation and resonance?). The success of p-adic mass calculations and the identi fication of p-adic physics as physics of cognition indeed forces this interpretation. In particular, one can understand p-adic length scale hypothesis as reflecting the survival of the cognitively fittest p-adic topologies (= windows).
Kaivarainen has his window in the energy gap created in bivacuum between virtual and real world. Pitkänen has the Zero Energy Ontology as a similar creation. In both the important signal comes from the virtual/dark side.
Antimatter as the muon antineutrino is the predominant mass- quite counterintuitively. Could it be so?
Wonderful world!
http://arxiv.org/find/q-bio/1/au:+Adami_C/0/1/0/all/0/1
SvaraRaderahttp://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0005/0005074v1.pdf
Evolution of Biological Complexity, 2000
Conclusions
Trends in the evolution of complexity are difficult to argue for or against if there is no agreement on how to measure complexity. We have proposed here to identify the complexity of genomes by the amount of information they encode about the world in which they have evolved, a quantity known as physical complexity that, while it can be measured only approximately, allows quantitative statements to be made about the evolution of genomic complexity. In particular, we show that in fixed environments, for organisms whose fitness depends only on their own sequence information, physical complexity must always increase. That a genome’s physical complexity must be reflected in the structural complexity of the organism that harbors it seems to us inevitable, as the purpose of a physically complex genome is complex information processing, which can only be achieved by the computer which it (the genome) creates.
That the mechanism of the Maxwell Demon lies at the heart of the complexity of living forms today is rendered even more plausible by the many circumstances which may cause it to fail. First, simple environments spawn only simple genomes. Second, changing environments can cause a drop in physical complexity, with a commensurate loss in (computational) function of the organism, as now meaningless genes are shed. Third, sexual reproduction can lead to an accumulation of deleterious mutations (strictly forbidden in asexual populations) that can also render the Demon powerless. All such exceptions are observed in nature.
Notwithstanding these vagaries, we are able to observe the Demon’s operation directly in the digital world, giving rise to complex genomes that, though poor compared to their biochemical brethren, still stupefy us with their intricacy and an uncanny amalgam of elegant solutions and clumsy remnants of historical contingency. It is in no small measure an awe before these complex programs, direct descendants of the simplest self-replicators we ourselves wrote, that leads us to assert that even in this view of life, spawned by and in our digital age, there is grandeur.