Random chemical reactions and natural processes do not seem to be enough to explain how life arose. Yet here we are.
Life on Earth and its spontaneous appearance may have been much less likely than previously thought, according to a new study that crosses mathematics and information theory to develop a new framework that quantifies the difficulty of life emerging from non-living matter.
The work of Robert G. Endresfrom Imperial College London, focuses on the extraordinary complexity required for organized biological information to form under plausible prebiotic conditions. The researcher compares this challenge to trying to write a coherent article for a scientific website by throwing letters at random onto a page: as the complexity increases, the probability of success quickly approaches zero, he explains to .
To investigate the phenomenon, Endres applied principles of information theory and algorithmic complexity to estimate what it would take for the first simple cell — a protocell — to organize itself from basic chemical ingredients. The results show that the chances of such a process occurring naturally are surprisingly low.
The findings suggest that Random chemical reactions and natural processes may not be enough to explain how life arose within the short period of time available on early Earth. Because systems naturally tend toward disorder, building the complex molecular organization necessary for life would have been an enormous challenge. Endres emphasizes that this does not make the origin of life impossible, but in fact indicates that current scientific models may be omitting crucial elements.
The July study on ArXiv also considers (loosely) the hypothesis of directedproposed by Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel, which suggests that life could have been intentionally introduced to Earth by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. Although he recognizes the logical possibility of the idea, Endres notes that it goes against Occam’s razor, a principle that favors simpler explanations.
