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REPRODUCTIVE DISSIPATION. "Self-replication (or reproduction, in biological terms), the process that drives the evolution of life on Earth, is one such mechanism by which a system might dissipate an increasing amount of energy over time....A great way of dissipating more is to make more copies of yourself." https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ View in LinkedIn

GENES AND FUSION. "Boundary formation gene regulatory network (GRN) and fusion of floral organs. (a) A floral diagram with four concentric whorls showing different planes along which fusion (or lack of separation) of floral organs typically occurs." (See Fig 2). https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn

CLUMPS IN THE WARMING BATH. "This means clumps of atoms surrounded by a bath at some temperature, like the atmosphere or the ocean, should tend over time to arrange themselves to resonate better and better with the sources of mechanical, electromagnetic or chemical work in their environments." https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ View in LinkedIn

EXTERNAL ENERGY SOURCE. "We can show very simply from the formula that the more likely evolutionary outcomes are going to be the ones that absorbed and dissipated more energy from the environment’s external drives on the way to getting there." https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ View in LinkedIn

HEATING BATHS. "Life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics, but until recently, physicists were unable to use thermodynamics to explain why it should arise in the first place. The systems are strongly driven by an external energy source such as an electromagnetic wave, and they can dump heat into a surrounding bath. This class of systems includes all living things." https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ View in LinkedIn

OPEN SYSTEMS. "Although entropy must increase over time in an isolated or “closed” system, an “open” system can keep its entropy low — that is, divide energy unevenly among its atoms — by greatly increasing the entropy of its surroundings. In his influential 1944 monograph “What Is Life?” the eminent quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger argued that this is what living things must do." https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ View in LinkedIn

FORMULA OF LIFE. "The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life." https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ View in LinkedIn

ENERGY CAPTURE. "From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat." https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/ View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this dalliance into flower structure, which will conclude next weekend. Flowers are complex both developmentally and from an evolutionary viewpoint. But a small set of parts, by virtue of fusion and non-fusion, can generate a wide range of floral complexity. That simplicity can beget complexity is true across nature, from amino acids and proteins, the limited pallet of the elements, to crystal types. In all cases, a small starting set generates remarkable diversity of form. View in LinkedIn

NEW STRUCTURES. "Finally, fusion events within the canonical perianth whorls may result in the formation of novel boundary regions, resulting in additional floral whorls; the corona, a novel organ that forms between the perianth and the androecium, is prominent in several monocot and core eudicot lineages as a result of novel boundary generation between the petal and stamen whorls." https://lnkd.in/dD4GcAS View in LinkedIn