Re:Constructor Theory Solves the Riddle of Life
by Nevermark on Thursday July 16, 2015 @05:44PM
(#9900058)
Another route starts with chemistry near deep sea vents where energy loaded compounds are continually spewing from hot water into cold water.
There will be a continual cascade of chemical changes at the vent, and if some random chemicals appear that increase the chances that each other are formed in that cascade, a self-reinforcing metabolic loop could occur.
The metabolic loop could optimize itself as it occasionally produced slightly more efficient self-reinforcing chemistry. Eventually this optimization might take advantage of self-organizing membranes to compress the metabolism into individual units, i.e. the first cells. At that point we would have "life".
Maybe that happened. Maybe not. But it is an alternate way for life to start in which distributed replication occurs before single replicators.
There will be a continual cascade of chemical changes at the vent, and if some random chemicals appear that increase the chances that each other are formed in that cascade, a self-reinforcing metabolic loop could occur.
The metabolic loop could optimize itself as it occasionally produced slightly more efficient self-reinforcing chemistry. Eventually this optimization might take advantage of self-organizing membranes to compress the metabolism into individual units, i.e. the first cells. At that point we would have "life".
Maybe that happened. Maybe not. But it is an alternate way for life to start in which distributed replication occurs before single replicators.