Related papers: Metastability of life
It is argued that the occurrence of disproportionately ("un-natural") large (or small) numbers, as well as deep cancellations, are comparatively natural traits of the way Nature is geared to operate in most complex systems. The idea is…
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 semiclassical Euclidean path integral method is applied to compute the low temperature quantum decay rate for a particle placed in the metastable minimum of a cubic potential in a {\it finite} time theory. The classical path, which…
There are numerous stochastic models for cancer risk for a given tissue. Many rely on the following two hypotheses. 1. There is a fixed probability that a given cell division will eventually lead to a cancerous cell. 2. Cell divisions are…
A plausible physical interpretation of the renormalizability condition is given. It is shown that renormalizable quantum field theories describe such systems wherein the tendency to collapse associated with vacuum fluctuations of attractive…
The kinetics of the multicomponent condensation after the instantaneous creation of the metastable state is described analytically. Manydimensional problem is reduced to the one-dimensional case. All the main characteristics of the process…
The molecular biology revolution of the last seventy five years has transformed our view of living systems. Scientific explanations of biological phenomena are now synonymous with the identification of the genes, proteins, and signaling…
Due to recent advances in synthetic biology and artificial life, the origin of life is currently a hot topic of research. We review the literature and argue that the two traditionally competing "replicator-first" and "metabolism-first"…
We present a general theory of classical metastability in open quantum systems. Metastability is a consequence of a large separation in timescales in the dynamics, leading to the existence of a regime when states of the system appear…
A macroscopic quantum state that is characterized by an energy gap in the electronic spectrum and occurs in organic structural components of the cell is hypothesized to provide a basis for the phenomenon of life. The width of the band gap…
The evolutionary biology of aging is fundamental to understanding the mechanisms of aging and how to develop anti-aging treatments. Thus far most evolutionary theory concerns the genetics of aging with limited physiological integration.…
Current theoretical physics suggests the flow of time is an illusion: the entire universe just is, with no special meaning attached to the present time. This paper points out that this view, in essence represented by usual space-time…
The claim that life is an emergent phenomenon exhibiting novel properties and principles is often criticized for being in conflict with causal closure at the microscopic level. I argue that advances in cosmological theory suggesting an…
Statically indeterminate systems are experimentally demonstrated to be in fact dynamical at the microscopic scale. Take the classic ladder-wall problem, for instance. Depending on the Young's modulus of the wall, it may take up to twenty…
A prototype statistical model for the etching of a random solid is investigated in order to assess the influence of disorder and temperature on the dissolution kinetics. At low temperature, the kinetics is dominated by percolation…
In this paper we summarize the main parts of the first exit time theory developed in connection to the life table data and the resulting theoretical and applied issues. Several new tools arise from the development of this theory and…
If the initial quantum state of the universe is a multiverse superposition over many different sets of values of the effective coupling "constants" of physics, and if this quantum state collapses to an eigenstate of the set of coupling…
Biological approximations, which are universal for diverse species, are well known. With no other experimental data, their invariance to transformations from one species to another yields exact conservation (with respect to biological…
A single mechanism, endemic to the standard model of physics, is proposed to explain wavefunction collapse, classical motion, dissipation, equilibration, and the transition from pure quantum mechanics through open system decoherence to the…
The Penna model is a strategy to simulate the genetic dynamics of age-structured populations, in which the individuals genomes are represented by bit-strings. It provides a simple metaphor for the evolutionary process in terms of the…