Life-like Properties Observed in a Very Simple System (Part I)

Abstract

The physicists working in Emory University have made very interesting discovery. The very simple system studied exhibits what authors call self-organized bi-stability making phase transitions between crystal-like and gas-like phases. The expectation was that only single stable state would appear. Neuron groups can also have collective bi-stability (periodic synchronous firing). Neurons are however themselves bi-stable systems: now the particles are plastic balls and are not bi-stable. One could say that the system exhibits life-like properties. The most remarkable life-like property is metabolism required by the sequence of phase transitions involving dissipation. Where does the metabolic energy come from? The proposal of experimenters is that stochastic resonance feeds the needed metabolic energy leaves open its source. The resemblance with living cells suggests that the attempt to interpret the findings solely in terms of non-equilibrium thermodynamics might miss something essential - the metabolism.

One can develop a model for the system based on TGD inpired quantum biology. The source of metabolic energy would come from dark nucleosynthesis explaining nuclear transmutations occurring in living matter and "cold fusion" and serving as source of metabolic energy in prebiotic stage when the chemical energy storage had not yet emerged. Dark analogs of DNA, RNA, tRNA, and amino-acids are dark protons sequences realizing degeneracies of vertebrate genetic code are dark nuclei and can transform to ordinary nuclei and liberate nuclear binding energy so that the hen-egg question about which came first: metabolism or genetic code, is resolved: hen= egg.