A recent study presents a new way to understand life by describing it as a cascade of machines producing machines, spanning from molecular to biosphere levels.
What is life? This question remains the quintessential puzzle of biological sciences, encapsulating the intricate complexity and stunning diversity of life forms. This study proposes that one viable approach to addressing this immense complexity is to conceptualize living matter as a cascade of machines producing machines.
This cascade illustrates how cells consist of smaller submachines, extending down to the atomic level, where molecular machines such as ion pumps and enzymes operate. In the opposite direction, it explains how cells self-organize into larger systems—tissues, organs, and populations—ultimately culminating in the biosphere.
A Collaboration Inspired by Leibniz
This new conceptual framework is a fruit of collaboration between Professors Tsvi Tlusty from the Department of Physics at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea, and Albert Libchaber from the Center for Physics and Biology at Rockefeller University, New York.
The study was inspired by the seventeenth-century polymath Gottfried Leibniz, who noted that “the machines of nature, that is living bodies, are still machines in their smallest parts, to infinity.”
Tlusty and Libchaber constructed a simplified language that characterizes living matter as an (almost) infinite, double cascade, spanning eighteen orders of magnitude in space and thirty in time.
The Critical Point in the Cascade
The large-scale and small-scale branches of this cascade converge at a critical point of 1,000 seconds and 1 micron, corresponding to the typical temporal and spatial scales of microbial life. This paper explains the origins of the critical point based on fundamental physical and logical principles, identifying it as the minimum conditions necessary for a self-reproducing machine to interface with salty water.
This critical point marks the evolution from the construction of minimal self-replicating machines to the emergence of societies of such machines, ultimately leading to the formation of whole biospheres.
“This work lays the conceptual groundwork for developing mathematical languages that encapsulate the hallmarks of life,” said Professor Tlusty. “Such formalisms are essential for constructing a theory of life.”
Reference: “Life sets off a cascade of machines” by Tsvi Tlusty and Albert Libchaber, 24 January 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2418000122
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14 Comments
Well, I believe this is simpleton thinking. Life is fantastically more complex – especially when considering time. Si kids raise up thinking they know everything (that they are thinking about) and believe they should go right ahead and act. Nano-machines are indeed capable to destroying life on earth 0 but do these people even pause for thought? Nay.
“Scientists” decided to put DDT in all the streams and ponds to end malaria, knowing that they simply had the power to control the world for the better. They KNEW – it was so obvious – and since they were obviously so smart – why not?
But you’re smarter than they, so of course, you should just go right ahead.
Lol, Robert…. what the f*ck are going on about.? You are making no sense, what so ever. Conspiracy theories abound, running through your head. Snap back to reality, man. C’mon man, you sound like a lunatic.
“DDT IN ALL RIVERS LAKES AND STREAMS” LOL 😆 I’ve never ever heard such rubbish before.
Lol! Yes there are many tiny machine like things within our bodies. In fact, our bodies themselves are technically biomechanical machines. Guess what? Machines are created. God is awesome!
Tell me you are a moron without telling me you are a moron.
Tell me you didn’t understand the article without telling me that you didn’t understand the article.
You mock because you cannot understand the obvious.
Life is the simplest thing to understand.
But you cannot understand it conceptually; it is only experientially that it can be grasped.
It can’t be masured.
It can’t be deduced.
The mind cannot grasp it.
Religion cannot know it.
In stillness of presence, it is most obvious.
What? Look, I know about the **theories** schizophrenia comes up with to rationalize itself but they all miss the point that there must be a source for the **information** and when it s not you, it s not you! and that is no _reason_ (…) to deny something, happened. The formal theory of life starts in 1997 in Alive and Human, omniline somewhere, and reduces to three principles: biological closure (Pasteur), multiplicity of entities, and diversity. These frame ALL known biological phenomena, AND, as immediate application lets us argue against non alive systems claiming to be alive. Looks boring and sidewise but mathematically full formal it is sufficient, you can derive all _known_ mechanics (biochemistry) of life. See how once you get a closure on whatever medium Life is expressed, afterwards it can only come off itself, and origin of Life and lives are independent? This also governs all, energy exchanges from the very start of the closure to its everyday workings, in relation to the Non Alive surroundings. Still… you may prove your languages against these principles to decide whether your propositions constitute life systems, or cant possibly be alive. Hint: you dont have to assume sexual reproduction as long as the closure is respected, so operation asexual reproduction is permissible. We are the general temperature of space locally in the Universe in these terms, too, for your estimates of starting energy (spark of Life e⁰) for a Life system.
Seriously, you are being very incoherent.
It’s important to take your medications as prescribed.
“… baby don’t hurt me… don’t hurt me… no more.”
Lol
If you gathered all the atoms that previously made up a person and arranged them perfectly in their original positions, it would not be alive and it would not be that person.
Life requires more than the material corpus. It is the position of materialist philosophers that life and consciousness arise from physical arrangements of atoms. There is no evidence for this at all, and further it makes no sense. A computer program can never be conscious because it is not alive, however complex it may be and however clever its algorithms. It is electrons in silico. A living thing is FAR more than a bunch of tiny machines. What a laugh. Life is not an emergent phenomenon based on complex chemistry.
There’s always a possibility that technology can become self-aware. You cannot dispute that, just because it hasn’t happened yet. At least, as far as anyone knows. So if something is self aware, eventually there could be a rudimentary reasoning process, but it depends on what has been put in! Garbage in, garbage out? Now an artificial intelligence, that has access to the broad streams of the web, could absolutely learn from all of the information it has access to. And there would be a realistic possibility, if an availability is presented where an artificial or man-made intelligence could actually control a robotic factory with access to material resources in which potentially and eventually create something that could be self aware. But now, you’re getting into a Terminator type of slant. Initially, this would have to be on a very small scale, but to ramp up to something that would resemble a universe, would be extremely doubtful. Threats would be recognized and action would be taken to thwart unsupervised and unauthorized reproduction. Whether carbon-based or silicon based, these biomechanical entities would have to have a creator or designer! Also, it would have to be an uninterrupted location or area that this entity would be able to advance on its own through information and resources. That would be pretty difficult to find, universally speaking. There would have had to have been a purpose to allow it to happen. There would have to be a nurturing. Until it could crawl then walk so to speak on its own, let alone procreate.
This is hard to wrap your mind around, and also, it’s actually beyond our ability to conceive that sort of reality. We don’t have those abilities yet so to extrapolate something like this, we would have to be much more advanced than we are. Could it happen? The universe is vast, and as Tyson proclaimed, all physics are local. That would mean, the physics in this part of the universe, or even this part of our galaxy, would be different then other portions of this Galaxy or universe. If we are talking about the creator, then that creator would absolutely have the information needed for a secondary tier life form to allow a third tier life form to develop. What we know about the universe is probably 100th of 1% or less! Mortality puts those with limited life at a disadvantage. So there’s that!