Does life develop where entropy is minimum?

[Loren Booda]

Is life most likely to start near greatest statistical mechanical order? For instance, DNA's extended regular structure might relate lowest entropy for its molecular weight.

Is biochemical replication the antithesis of randomness? Does the apparent rarity of life in the universe reflect the rarity of order on the large scale?

Does nascent life have minimum entropy comparable to that of its physical environment? Is more ordered biology more likely to have greater intelligence?

Does the supreme variety of carbon compounds indicate more potential for complex biological order?

 

[Lievo]

Is life most likely to start near greatest statistical mechanical order?

Suppose a static box full of gas. Plenty of energy theorically available, nothing usable in practice. Suppose a box with half the pressure, but with a small hole somewhere: in theory there is less energy, but because there is dissipation the available energy is greater in practice.

So your question should be: is life most likely to start where energy is the most available? A first answer is that we don't know. A second is that it's not likely: I would guess that life most likely appears at an interface between strong and weak energy flux.

Is biochemical replication the antithesis of randomness?

I don't really see what you intended to say, and randomness is a very tricky concept.

Does the apparent rarity of life in the universe reflect the rarity of order on the large scale?

Given the very limited mean we have to test for the presence of life, I'd say no usefull conclusion can be extracted from the apparence we face now.

Does nascent life have minimum entropy comparable to that of its physical environment?

Don't know how to define the entropy of life.

Is more ordered biology more likely to have greater intelligence?

When I was a student in biology, a prof gave me a trick to distinguish vegetal cells from animals ones: if it's squared, octogonal, ordered: vegetal. If it's ugly, bad contours, irregular shape: animals. It works pretty well.

Does the supreme variety of carbon compounds indicate more potential for complex biological order?

In our condition of pressure and temperature, maybe. Hard to say when n=1.

 

[mack_10]

life in general is more ordered than non-life, it requires considerable more information to describe life compared to minerals, gases, solutions etc.

"Does the apparent rarity of life in the universe reflect the rarity of order on the large scale?"
I'm sorry couldn't let this one pass, what is your sample size for this assumption?

Is intelligence a necessary condition for life, by what standard are you measuring the order of life?
It is interesting to compare typical genome sizes with 5 kingdom taxonomy

prokaryotes 10^5 base pairs
single celled Eukaryotes 10^6 base pairs
Fungi 10^7 base pairs
Plants 10^8 base pairs
Animals 10^9 base pairs

with time life evolves to be more complex, but are plants more intelligent then fungi?

Perhaps it would be better to start with simpler question and less complex wording (nascent life? really)

 

[Loren Booda]

life in general is more ordered than non-life, it requires considerable more information to describe life compared to minerals, gases, solutions etc.

"Does the apparent rarity of life in the universe reflect the rarity of order on the large scale?"
I'm sorry couldn't let this one pass, what is your sample size for this assumption?

Is intelligence a necessary condition for life, by what standard are you measuring the order of life?
It is interesting to compare typical genome sizes with 5 kingdom taxonomy

prokaryotes 10^5 base pairs
single celled Eukaryotes 10^6 base pairs
Fungi 10^7 base pairs
Plants 10^8 base pairs
Animals 10^9 base pairs

with time life evolves to be more complex, but are plants more intelligent then fungi?

Perhaps it would be better to start with simpler question and less complex wording (nascent life? really)

Don't some primitive animals have considerably more base pairs than humans?

The rarity of life (biospheres) in the physical universe, as it continues being one, seems to indicate an increasing lack of order with lack of our success finding extraterrestrials. Of course, a sample of one may be statistically insignificant!

 

[Loren Booda]

Suppose a static box full of gas. Plenty of energy theorically available, nothing usable in practice. Suppose a box with half the pressure, but with a small hole somewhere: in theory there is less energy, but because there is dissipation the available energy is greater in practice.

So your question should be: is life most likely to start where energy is the most available? A first answer is that we don't know. A second is that it's not likely: I would guess that life most likely appears at an interface between strong and weak energy flux. I don't really see what you intended to say, and randomness is a very tricky concept. Given the very limited mean we have to test for the presence of life, I'd say no usefull conclusion can be extracted from the apparence we face now. Don't know how to define the entropy of life.When I was a student in biology, a prof gave me a trick to distinguish vegetal cells from animals ones: if it's squared, octogonal, ordered: vegetal. If it's ugly, bad contours, irregular shape: animals. It works pretty well. In our condition of pressure and temperature, maybe. Hard to say when n=1.

From what you say at first, it seems to me that a strong and weak energy flux interface could include turbulence.

Randomness is tricky; the larger the scale (the greater space we explore) does not necessarily indicate an increase or decrease of entropy.

If you were to detect a signal beaming out prime numbers, would you say that its origin was likely purposeful order, i.e., intelligent life?

What information can we gather from an increasing number of failed observations for life, versus n=1?

(A physician I know said that God has a sense of humor, having made us like bags of water propped up by sticks.)

 

[Lievo]

If you were to detect a signal beaming out prime numbers, would you say that its origin was likely purposeful order, i.e., intelligent life?

Interesting question. I don't know how I would interpret this.

What information can we gather from an increasing number of failed observations for life, versus n=1?

For a failed observation you have to have an experiment that can actually test for life, and we don't really have that. There have been some attempts, for example the three experiments made by the Viking sond. The fun is that one of these experiments have been positive... as few accept to say life on Mars is proven (me neither), this is a way to see neither negative nor positive results from these experiments could be raisonnably trusted.

Look, imagine you have no idea that oxygene is a sign of life. Pick up a distant observation of Earth at random in it's history. Most of the time you'll see no sign of life that you can interpret, even when life is actually present. It's the same now for Venus, Mars, Titan, and in fact any other planet in our solar system: there is no sign of life obvious to us, but life can be there despite we cannot recognize its signature given our limited knowledge. In fact, for each of these three planets we have some indirect evidence, but nothing we can interpret with any reasonable level of confidence.

 

[GeorgeRaetz]

Is biochemical replication the antithesis of randomness?

No. Overall randomness (=~entropy) increases during replication.
At first, replication might seem to violate the law of increasing entropy since it requires a chemical reaction to go both ways at the same temperature. For example, DNA bases tend to combine with their complements at a certain temperature but they won't spontaeously separate at that temperature. However, as you know, the cell has machinery ultimately driven by sources of low entropy which separates them.

Does the apparent rarity of life in the universe reflect the rarity of order on the large scale?

Actually, on a large scale visible matter in the Universe is uniformly distributed. That means low entropy and plenty of order. (note that a uniform distribution is not the same as a uniform random distribution--that would be high entropy).
The rarity of life is simply a consequence of the Goldilocks principle.

 

[Loren Booda]

http://www.thelivingcosmos.com/TheEvolutionofLife/TheGaiaHypothesis_12May06.html"

"How could Lovelock have been so confident about the prospects for life on the red planet? A simple comparison of Earth’s atmosphere to Venus and Mars reveals a stark difference between Earth and its neighbors. While the atmospheres of Venus and Mars are comprised primarily of carbon dioxide with small amounts of oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases, Earth’s atmosphere is over 3/4 nitrogen and almost a full quarter oxygen. The atmospheres of Venus and Mars, as noted by Lovelock and other scientists, are in equilibrium… a dead equilibrium. Earth, on the other hand, has an atmosphere that is far from equilibrium. And what is keeping it out of equilibrium? Simply stated – life."

 

[Lievo]

A simple comparison of Earth’s atmosphere to Venus and Mars reveals a stark difference between Earth and its neighbors.

1) At least half of the time, life on Earth has been without strong amount of oxygen in the atmospher... see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event" . Lovelock would have been confident that life does not exist most of the time for which we know life was present.
2) Titan and Venusian atmospheres are very far from equilibrum. I don't believe Lovelock ('and other scientists' ) have actually pretend otherwise.
3) It's not true that Viking experiments did not find evidences for life. See http://spiedl.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=PSISDG003111000001000146000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes&ref=no" for the more common belief that it was not.

1+2+3 => don't trust this link in anyway

 

[Lievo]

If you were to detect a signal beaming out prime numbers, would you say that its origin was likely purposeful order, i.e., intelligent life?

Interesting question. I don't know how I would interpret this.

I'm stupid. Copeland–Erdős constant is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_number" , meaning that you'll find any 'signal' you want.

 

[thorium1010]

http://www.thelivingcosmos.com/TheEvolutionofLife/TheGaiaHypothesis_12May06.html"

"How could Lovelock have been so confident about the prospects for life on the red planet? A simple comparison of Earth’s atmosphere to Venus and Mars reveals a stark difference between Earth and its neighbors. While the atmospheres of Venus and Mars are comprised primarily of carbon dioxide with small amounts of oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases, Earth’s atmosphere is over 3/4 nitrogen and almost a full quarter oxygen. The atmospheres of Venus and Mars, as noted by Lovelock and other scientists, are in equilibrium… a dead equilibrium. Earth, on the other hand, has an atmosphere that is far from equilibrium. And what is keeping it out of equilibrium? Simply stated – life."

Probably life was possible in the early part of Mars history. once tectonics stopped life may have stopped.

 

[Pythagorean]

Does life develop where entropy is minimum?

I think Lievo's first answer: we don't know is the most appropriate.

Given the the nature of the complexity of life, I wouldn't be surprised if we could construct practical examples of each extreme (entropy max or entropy min) and I assume you mean local minimum and maximums.

But we'd probably be doing so in ignorance. If I were to speculate, I'd say that it was a transient: a large transition in an ordered state induced by a jolt of energy. Which means entropy jumped from a minimum to a maximum in the region, but the smaller spatiotemporal structure of entropy was probably more complicated (not being a constant value over space or time in the region of abiogenesis).