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Wonderfest 2009

Can We Create Life?

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Mishka1 Avatar
Mishka1
Posts: 9
Posted: 08.15.10, 06:52 PM
There is a TED video that shows a demonstration of 2 metronomes set off at different times but beating at the same BPM on the same table. It takes them only a few seconds to synchronize. (If someone can find it, please post it.)

I believe that is an observational experience of self-assembly.

I don't think anyone yet understands why this happens, but we don't even understand gravity on the micro scale yet. Thankfully, we have many generations of learning to go.
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Periergeia Avatar
Periergeia
Posts: 142
Posted: 05.22.10, 10:38 AM
This "life force", i.e. the ability to self-assemble is nothing more (and nothing less) than thermodynamics. Molecules (just like atoms) attract each other due to electrostatic (and quantum mechanical) interaction. The average force of this attraction is expressed in an energy functional which is a function of distance and orientation of the molecules. The fundamental laws of physics are such that systems always "strive" to minimize these energy terms. Just like two magnets, left to their own devices, will attach to each other at their magnetic poles to form a larger magnet of smaller total magnetic energy, two proteins will attach to each other to form a larger molecule of smaller electrostatic (etc.) energy. Thermal movements in the water solution help to shake things up so that (after finite, albeit sometimes very long time), this energy minimum can be approximately found. The result is self organization. It's a beautiful phenomenon that can be observed in many inorganic as well as organic systems.

It is a stunning mechanism, but, after all, it is only a mechanism that follows immediately from the fundamentally conservative laws of physics. It can't be any other way in a universe in which all dynamic equations are based on least action principles.

I don't believe the observational experience that self-assembly and complex behavior appear naturally in seemingly mechanistic systems takes anything away from the stunning beauty that we can find in our universe as a result of something as fundamentally abstract as a action integral.

That, of course, is just my opinion. I like the thought of living in a universe where what you see is what you get. There is no need to shout "Don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain!" because the machine is proudly showing all its parts to us. The only thing between us and full understanding is the effort it takes to analyze the machinery. And that effort has, so far, filled hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives with joy and it will be many, many more.
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ResearcherTony Avatar
ResearcherTony
Posts: 4
Posted: 02.18.10, 07:28 AM
Viruses have already been made. Just create the DNA and have a cell do the making. As for cells, I would think this is already being done to greater degrees right now.
I would bet your speaker is way out of date.
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diavel Avatar
diavel
Posts: 9
Posted: 01.30.10, 08:56 AM
"We can make life by cheating a little bit"

Inspiring talk.
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mjacobso Avatar
mjacobso
Posts: 1
Posted: 12.16.09, 11:25 AM
I agree insofar as you describe a cell as complex, but the "vitalism" that you are invoking as a necessary prerequisite for life is an archaic notion when the chemistry of life was not as well understood as today. While I am not trying to convey a sense of complete understanding of these interactions, I am suggesting that there is a threshold of knowledge that can be crossed, potentially imminently, that can account for an order in the synthesis of life. Using rhetorical devices of examples of present ignorance does not support your original thesis of a "force" guiding these processes any more than ignorance disproves the concept. However, it is meaningless speculation. I am not meaning to insult your idea, but to state that it is unsupported by current evidence and particularly by the evidence you cited.
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swamy_g Avatar
swamy_g
Posts: 1
Posted: 12.15.09, 02:42 AM
Great lecture. Inspiring. What really bothers me is attributing self-assembly and self-organisation of the cells as mere virtue. Like as if it is built into them. I wonder if my disbelief is due my being a complex organism, who doesn't see this kind of assembly in my everyday life. It is very temping to attribute a eternal "force", if I may use a star wars lingo, to this drive for simple molecules to arrange themselves. I think sufficient consideration should also be given to the notion that there may be indeed be an ever present order, or "spirit" (not in any theological sense) that drives these cells to self-assemble. We must dive deeper than the cellular level to atomic and even quantum level to find what really is causing this drive to assemble. Sometimes things that we just take for granted, like gravity, can be really "magical" when we think of it at deeper levels. Have you really ever asked yourself how and why two objects are attracted to each other? Answering it with use of abstruse concepts such as gravitons will only take the question to the next round, what then is the graviton. We as humans have so much to learn.
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