Field-control, phase-transitions, and life's emergence

TL;DR

This paper explores how field-controlled mineral structures could have facilitated life's emergence through phase-transitions and self-organized criticality, bridging inorganic and organic systems in early evolution.

Contribution

It proposes a novel mechanism where magnetic scaffold structures enable bottom-up assembly and control, linking reversible physical laws to irreversible biological dynamics.

Findings

Field-controlled structures can induce phase-transitions relevant to life's origins.

Mutual coupling between inorganic scaffolds and organic networks may generate SOC-like mechanisms.

Controlled mineral systems could have driven organic functional selection through energy dissipation.

Abstract

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 bio-systems to life's origins, brings up a paradox: how could simple organics--lacking the 'soft matter' response properties of today's bio-molecules--have dissipated energy from primordial reactions in a controlled manner for their 'ordering'? Nevertheless, a causal link of life's macroscopic irreversible dynamics to the microscopic reversible laws of statistical mechanics is indicated via the 'functional-takeover' of a soft magnetic scaffold by organics (c.f. Cairns-Smith's 'crystal-scaffold'). A field-controlled structure offers a mechanism for bootstrapping--bottom-up assembly with top-down control: its super-paramagnetic components obey reversible dynamics, but its dissipation of H-field energy for aggregation breaks time-reversal symmetry. The responsive adjustments of the controlled (host) mineral system to environmental changes would bring about mutual coupling between random organic sets supported by it; here the generation of long-range correlations within organic (guest) networks could include SOC-like mechanisms. And, such cooperative adjustments enable the selection of the functional configuration by altering the inorganic network's capacity to assist a spontaneous process. A non-equilibrium dynamics could now drive the kinetically-oriented system towards a series of phase-transitions with appropriate organic replacements 'taking-over' its functions.