Discovering the Origin of Life through reverse-time physics simulation.

[kmarinas86]

If we understand the possible origin of life very well, we could model it on a supercomputer using known physical laws. Physical laws can be used to trace a pathway forwards and backwards in time as astronomers do when predicting the motions of the planets, or tracing back previous postions. So imagine that we could create a virtual environment, one in a computer where the motions of the particles depends on known physical laws and natural events only. Nothing artifically-made would be simulated here. How would we virtually position the atoms, molecules, etc. such that when the simulator runs the physical laws in reverse time that we eventually return to a primordial soup of basic building blocks?

This, I think, would be a good oppurtunity for scientists to discover the orgin of life without the physical constrains imposed by our insufficent dexterity of the tiny, swift, and hard-to-get particles that make life.

A few years from now, I think this will be possible.

 

[Borek]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Simon_Laplace

(read section on Laplace's demon plus next paragraph)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

(read section entitled Determinism, quantum mechanics and classical physics)

 

[Gokul43201]

A few years from now, I think this will be possible.

Far from it. How, for instance, do you propose to include in the model the "present day" positions and momenta of some 10⁶⁰ atoms (forget about the problem of actually knowing these numbers or having to model complex many-body interactions) ?