Hello earthlings!
Last month of 2018 is upon us. Today, I would like to discuss "what life is" in terms of physics. In physics, a rock is not different than a kitten. The closest we got is nonlinear statistical mechanical theories of life. Prof. ilya prigogine was the frontier in this area. He got nobel prise in non equilibrium statistical mechanics. His work mainly consist of trying to show ordered structure can happen even if no equilibrium achived. Life itself is a non equilibrium phenomena, so there is some connection. Nowaday people are excited to do work in this area and try to describe life. As a matter of fact, I just started working in this area. you may check my old blogs about my preliminary work. It is also my privillage to do my phd in the ilya prigogine center of complex system while I was in UT austin. I attended Ilya prigogine's and coworkers seminars. I was asking so many questions in these seminars, one day he called me in his office and told me like my questions and I seem to be a clever guy with his words: ) Towords the end of his years, he was kinda obsessed with time reversal. The last paper they publish was about analogy between special relativity theory twin paradox and statistical mechanical time reversal. (They pubIish this posthumously with Gonzalo Ordonez, he was postdoc at the time.) I remember he was saying "I am not trying to get the second noble this is correct" . He has books about time arrow. Time reversal is a big question in physics
If you google (what is life) you'll see Scroidinger wrote a book with this title. After he started Quantum Mechanics with his famous eqn, he turned into this question in later years. It's nice very short book if you want to check it out. Recently, hotshot group in this area is prof Jeremy England from MIT. Also Mehran Kartar from MIT works in this area. Accidentally,Phd advisor of Mehran Kardar was Prof Nihat Berker, now prof. in Turkey. I remember we had a drink with prof Kardar long time ago when he was visiting Istanbul.
Enough chitchat! So what seperate life from not life? Prof England says, we deal trajectories in non equilibrium statistical mechanics, not states like in equilibrium. So a series of states describes nature. And the reason for time reversal breaking seems to be system adds heat to surroundings increasing of entropy of it. We need to t alk a bot entropy for this statement to be understood Ill talk about entropy in another blog. I think this is understandable considering every life beings convert some heat to work. This way increase entropy. So we are in ordered state as life being and we aim to increase entropy around us this way we function. There are other aspect of life Iike reproducibility. There is a common necessity for the S theories, to be able to test them. Computer si mu lations are needed. I want to demonstrate those in microsystems. that is why I started doing simulations In micro particles in water, where the life started.
Last month of 2018 is upon us. Today, I would like to discuss "what life is" in terms of physics. In physics, a rock is not different than a kitten. The closest we got is nonlinear statistical mechanical theories of life. Prof. ilya prigogine was the frontier in this area. He got nobel prise in non equilibrium statistical mechanics. His work mainly consist of trying to show ordered structure can happen even if no equilibrium achived. Life itself is a non equilibrium phenomena, so there is some connection. Nowaday people are excited to do work in this area and try to describe life. As a matter of fact, I just started working in this area. you may check my old blogs about my preliminary work. It is also my privillage to do my phd in the ilya prigogine center of complex system while I was in UT austin. I attended Ilya prigogine's and coworkers seminars. I was asking so many questions in these seminars, one day he called me in his office and told me like my questions and I seem to be a clever guy with his words: ) Towords the end of his years, he was kinda obsessed with time reversal. The last paper they publish was about analogy between special relativity theory twin paradox and statistical mechanical time reversal. (They pubIish this posthumously with Gonzalo Ordonez, he was postdoc at the time.) I remember he was saying "I am not trying to get the second noble this is correct" . He has books about time arrow. Time reversal is a big question in physics
If you google (what is life) you'll see Scroidinger wrote a book with this title. After he started Quantum Mechanics with his famous eqn, he turned into this question in later years. It's nice very short book if you want to check it out. Recently, hotshot group in this area is prof Jeremy England from MIT. Also Mehran Kartar from MIT works in this area. Accidentally,Phd advisor of Mehran Kardar was Prof Nihat Berker, now prof. in Turkey. I remember we had a drink with prof Kardar long time ago when he was visiting Istanbul.
Enough chitchat! So what seperate life from not life? Prof England says, we deal trajectories in non equilibrium statistical mechanics, not states like in equilibrium. So a series of states describes nature. And the reason for time reversal breaking seems to be system adds heat to surroundings increasing of entropy of it. We need to t alk a bot entropy for this statement to be understood Ill talk about entropy in another blog. I think this is understandable considering every life beings convert some heat to work. This way increase entropy. So we are in ordered state as life being and we aim to increase entropy around us this way we function. There are other aspect of life Iike reproducibility. There is a common necessity for the S theories, to be able to test them. Computer si mu lations are needed. I want to demonstrate those in microsystems. that is why I started doing simulations In micro particles in water, where the life started.
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