Origin Of Life

A week or so ago, Cornelius Hunter referenced a paper by Christoph Adami titled “Information-theoretic considerations concerning the origin of life” available here. Hunter cites the NewScientist article about Adami’s paper, “Chances of first life improved by weighted dice” and highlights in particular the remarkable statement: “Christoph Adami of Michigan State University in East Lansing decided to study the origin of life purely in terms of information theory, so he could ignore the chemistry involved.” The article continues: “[Adami] assumed that molecules must exceed a certain length in order to have enough information to self-replicate. These long molecules are made from different kinds of short molecules, called monomers.  Adami calculates that if you start with an equal number of each Read More ›

I previously mentioned an upcoming “Emergence of Life” course that folks here might be interested in.  Details here. The course has now been scheduled and starts this Monday, July 14, 2014, at Coursera.  You can find the course here. If you decide to take the course, I encourage professionalism and civility in any forum interactions with other students and staff, in what can potentially be a controversial subject. As I stated before: Will the course have some holes?  No doubt.  Will it answer some of the key issues that have been raised about the cause of the Cambrian Explosion, the infusion of information necessary for the emergence of different forms, how complex functional structures can arise via natural processes?  Unlikely.  Yet Read More ›