# Time as it could Be measured in Artificial Living Systems

## TL;DR

This paper explores the fundamental properties of minimal abstract clocks in artificial living systems, analyzing their behaviors and configurations to understand how they can measure time effectively.

## Contribution

It introduces a formal analysis of minimal pure clocks, including oscillatory, decay-based, and composite configurations, revealing their diverse dynamic regimes.

## Key findings

- Identifies fundamental diametral clock behaviors like oscillation and decay.
- Analyzes cascades and composite clocks with different dependency structures.
- Shows various dynamic regimes in clock configurations.

## Abstract

Being able to measure time, whether directly or indirectly, is a significant advantage for an organism. It permits it to predict regular events, and prepare for them on time. Thus, clocks are ubiquitous in biology. In the present paper, we consider the most minimal abstract pure clocks and investigate their characteristics with respect to their ability to measure time. Amongst other, we find fundamentally diametral clock characteristics, such as oscillatory behaviour for local time measurement or decay-based clocks measuring time periods in scales global to the problem. We include also cascades of independent clocks ("clock bags") and composite clocks with controlled dependency; the latter show various regimes of markedly different dynamics.