A new theory says the start of life wasn't some lucky break—it was a mathematical certainty.
March 17, 2026
Original Paper
A Formal Physical Framework for the Origin of Life: Dissipation-Driven Selection of Evolving Replicators
arXiv · 2603.15230
The Takeaway
By applying the laws of thermodynamics, this study argues that 'replication' is simply the most efficient way for matter to dissipate energy. The math shows that once a system starts copying itself, it enters a 'super-exponential' growth path that makes the jump from inanimate matter to life a fundamental bias of the universe.
From the abstract
The emergence of life from inanimate matter presents a thermodynamic challenge: the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates a global trend towards disorder, yet life constitutes localized pockets of profound organization. This paper presents a formal physical framework for abiogenesis grounded in the statistical physics of non-equilibrium systems. We transition from the established connection between dissipation and process probability (e.g., Crooks Fluctuation Theorem) to a large-deviation framew