Metabolic cascades of energy

TL;DR

This paper uses dimensional analysis of metabolic laws to uncover deep connections between biological energy processes and physical phenomena like turbulence, revealing new interdisciplinary insights.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dimensional analysis approach to relate biological metabolism to physical energy cascades, bridging biology and physics.

Findings

Reveals a link between metabolism and energy cascades in turbulence.

Provides a new perspective on the relationship between microscopic chemistry and macroscopic physics.

Suggests universal principles underlying energy distribution across different scales.

Abstract

Life has a special status, it even has its own science: biology. In many ways, the logic of life seems to differ from that of atoms, molecules, planets, or any other `inanimate object'. However, life is increasingly measured using quantities shared by all sciences, like mass, force, energy or power. An analysis of the dimensions of these quantities provides powerful ways to infer the relationships they might have with one another. Here we show that a dimensional analysis of the metabolic laws connecting the characteristic powers and masses of living organisms offers new ways to understand the deep connections between the chemistry of microscopic molecules and the physics of macroscopic objects bound by gravity. This analysis reveals a link between metabolism and the cascades of energy observed in turbulent flows, opening new perspectives for both fields.