Related papers: Life and Water
Fluid pumping and the generation of electric current by living tissues are required during morphogenetic processes and for maintainance of homeostasis. How these flows emerge from active and passive ion transport in cells has been well…
It is suggested that life originated in a three-step process referred to as the jigsaw model. RNA, proteins, or similar organic molecules polymerized in a dehydrated carbon-rich environment, on surfaces in a carbon-rich environment, or in…
We present a theoretical description of a mechanism for self assembly in binary soft nanoparticle systems of the type which were studied experimentally by Talapin et al [1]. We focus on, in particular, the conditions for formation of…
Life is a complex biological phenomenon represented by numerous chemical, physical and biological processes performed by a biothermodynamic system/cell/organism. Both living organisms and inanimate objects are subject to aging, a biological…
Mars provides a critical analog to once habitable exoplanets that have since lost their surface liquid water. The current atmospheric state of Mars retains the chemical fingerprints of that transition, including isotopic signatures of…
The so-called "Kelvin water dropper" is a simple experiment demonstrating the spontaneous appearance of induced free charge in droplets emitted through a tube. As Lord Kelvin explained, water droplets spontaneously acquire a net charge…
Native membranes of biological cells display melting transitions of their lipids at a temperature of 10-20 degrees below body temperature. Such transitions can be observed in various bacterial cells, in nerves, in cancer cells, but also in…
Phase field theory is widely used to model multi-phase flows. A drop can shrink or grow spontaneously due to the redistribution of interface and bulk energies to minimize the system energy. In this paper, the spontaneous behaviour of a drop…
A general sketch of how the problem of space dimensionality depends on Anthropic arguments is presented. A new argument in favor of a stable scenario for space dimensionality for a time scale longer than that required for the existence of…
Empty liquids represent a wide class of materials whose constituents arrange in a random network through reversible bonds. Many key insights on the physical properties of empty liquids have originated almost independently from the study of…
Surface bubbles are present in many industrial processes and in nature, as well as in CO$_2$ beverage. They have motivated many theoretical, numerical and experimental works. This paper presents the current knowledge on the physics of…
We find that a system of particles interacting through a simple isotropic potential with a softened core is able to exhibit a rich phase behavior including: a liquid-liquid phase transition in the supercooled phase, as has been suggested…
The existence of intelligent, interstellar traveling and colonising life is a key assumption behind the Fermi Paradox. Until recently, detecting signs of life elsewhere has been so technically challenging as to seem almost impossible.…
Chemically active droplets provide simple models for cell-like systems that can grow and divide. Such active droplet systems are driven away from thermodynamic equilibrium and turn over chemically, which corresponds to a simple metabolism.…
Based on a pressure-temperature (P-T) phase diagram model of the Earth, Jones & Lineweaver (2010) described uninhabited terrestrial liquid water. Our model represents the atmosphere, surface, oceans and interior of the Earth - allowing the…
In previous papers we have introduced a natural nonequilibrium free energy by considering the functional describing the large fluctuations of stationary nonequilibrium states. While in equilibrium this functional is always convex, in…
Liquid water is not only of obvious importance but also extremely intriguing, displaying many anomalies that still challenge our understanding of such an a priori simple system. The same is true when looking at nanoconfined water: The…
Rheotaxis is a well-known phenomenon among microbial organisms and artificial active colloids, wherein the swimmers respond to an imposed flow. We report the first experimental evidence of upstream rheotaxis by spherical active droplets. It…
Instances of critical-like characteristics in living systems at each organizational level as well as the spontaneous emergence of computation (Langton), indicate the relevance of self-organized criticality (SOC). But extrapolating complex…
A complex of until now unknown phenomena ongoing in water was discovered in laboratory experiments, where it made impossible gravimetric measurements with the necessarily extreme precision. This behaviour of water, which we call…