Related papers: Life originated during accelerating expansion in t…
We propose a novel definition of life in terms of which its emergence in the universe is expected, and its ever-creative open-ended evolution is entailed by no law. Living organisms are Kantian Wholes that achieve Catalytic Closure,…
A physical theory of the world is presented under the unifying principle that all of nature is laid out before us and experienced through the passage of time. The one-dimensional progression in time is opened out into a multi-dimensional…
The aim of this essay is to analyze the role of quantum mechanics as an inherent characteristic of life. During the last ten years the problem of the origin of life has become an innovative research subject approached by many authors. The…
The physical processes that determine the properties of our everyday world, and of the wider cosmos, are determined by some key numbers: the 'constants' of micro-physics and the parameters that describe the expanding universe in which we…
The origins of life stands among the great open scientific questions of our time. While a number of proposals exist for possible starting points in the pathway from non-living to living matter, these have so far not achieved states of…
The possibility that the multiverse corresponds to physical reality deserves serious investigation. Having three different important theories,(quantum mechanics, string theory and inflation), predict the existence of the multiverse is…
A quantum theory of the universe consists of a theory of its quantum dynamics and a theory of its quantum state The theory predicts quantum multiverses in the form of decoherent sets of alternative histories describing the evolution of the…
This book is a philosopher's introduction to the idea that our universe is just one of many universes. I present and assess three versions of the idea: one version from philosophy, and two from physics. In short, they are: all the logically…
The cosmic inflation hypothesis, its relation to fundamental theory on the beginning of the universe, and the light that both shed on how the various elements and their relative amounts came into existence. The fundamental factors…
The phenomenon of life is discussed within a framework of its origin as defined by four hypotheses. The 1. hypothesis says: Life, as we know, is (H-C-N-O) based and relies on the number of bulk (Na-Mg-P-S-Cl-K-Ca) and trace elements…
The theory of the inflationary multiverse changes the way we think about our place in the world. According to its most popular version, our world may consist of infinitely many exponentially large parts, exhibiting different sets of…
The fact that life has evolved in our universe constrains the laws of physics. The anthropic principle proposes that these constraints are sometimes very tight and can be used to explain in a sense the corresponding laws. Recently a…
Wheeler proposed that repeated acts of observation give rise to the reality that we observe, but offered no detailed mechanism for this. Here this creative process is accounted for on the basis of the idea that nature has a deep…
Evolution needs long times and large numbers of samples or species. Our finely tuned physics can therefore not have evolved during the fast changes of a single Big-Bang universe, but the cosmological scales for time and for the number of…
Terrestrial and extraterrestrial theories of the origin of life are discussed in the light of latest observations. The available data suggest a dual mode of origin, some of the ingredients, including possibly sugars, were brought to earth…
In the {\em Many Worlds Interpretation} of quantum mechanics, the range of possible worlds (or histories) provides variation, and the Anthropic Principle is a selective principle analogous to natural selection. When looked on in this way,…
If we look from a quantum perspective, the most natural way in which the universe can be created is in entangled pairs whose time flow is oppositely related. This suggests the idea of the creation of a universe-antiuniverse pair. Assuming…
Life can be viewed as a localized chemical system that sits on, or in the basin of attraction of, a metastable dynamical attractor state that remains out of equilibrium with the environment. Such a view of life allows that new living states…
The existence of life is one of the most fundamental problems of astrophysics. The intriguing existence of progressively complex and apparently improbable living beings should be a general tendency of life in the Universe. We are looking…
How did it all begin? Although this question has undoubtedly lingered for as long as humans have walked the Earth, the answer still eludes us. Yet since my grandparents were born, scientists have been able to refine this question to a…