X-Message-Number: 16918
From: 
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 14:01:26 EDT
Subject: What is life?

Look nearby: If you are not on the Moon, there is a good probability that you 
see some life forms. Physics is very poverful to explain non life systems, 
from particles to far aways galaxies, on the other hand, a tree remain a 
difficult subject. Most scientist would say that life is an effect of 
complexity: we know the fundamental laws, but when billions of elementary 
elements interact using these laws, the result are unpredictable, life is one 
such outcome. To me, it sound not very different of the religious argument, 
wipe out the word God and put in place "physical laws" and you get from one 
to the other.

So here is my idea about life:
Assume you have a nearly closed thermodynamical system, for all practical 
purposes it is in fact closed. Assume that system is at equilibrium, it may 
move from one state to another, but all these states are degenerate. Going 
from one to any other may be done in a reversible way. If you start from 
state A, move to B and then to C, you may return from here to A without 
increasing the disorder content. Doing that you have built a time travel 
machine able to bring you back to a past state.

Thermodynamics equilibrium is often portrayed as dull and without interest, 
it may be on the outside, but not on close scrutiny. Such a system has the 
maximum possible entropy, that is disorder and disorder is information. So 
that this system has the richest possible information content. That such a 
complex world may be able to produce time travel open up some problems, the 
first is that nobody has seen such an effect.

A solution is that when a closed system gets near thermal equilibrium, there 
is a "time travel presure" to expand the system in more dimensions. The new 
room open up new entropic possibilities and disorder may expands anew. That 
is to say, the system get removed from thermal equilibrium.

The simplest possible dimensions are the quantum one in the Schrodinger's 
formulation. The system, even fully classical at start turn out to be quantum 
coupled. I have say before in other messages here that the infinite function 
set may be viewed as the functions: sin(x),..., sin(nx), with n any positive 
integer. I have added the sin(x/n) functions to the picture, so that xn 
functions don't release energy from the vacuum by the Casimir's effect. The 
xn function get smaller and smaller, the x/n get larger and larger. Ordinary 
quantum systems use only n value between 1 and 6 to 10, a far cry from 
infinite. The Planck's length limit anyways the n value near 10^25.

Now "ordinary" quantum systems may be more precisely defined: A quantum 
system is "ordinary" if it don't undergoes a time travel presure, that is, if 
it is not in a closed thermodynamical system near thermal equilibrium.

Many place on Earth may be near the thermodynamical equilibrium, so her is a 
presure to go to higher quantum dimensions. Assume this process push the n 
limit near 100 for example, the x/n functions will now blurr the atom 
boundary to a scale 100 times larger than usual. In that volume, there may be 
up to one million atoms, all of them with overlaping x/n wave functions. If 
these atoms form a big molecule with very many possible energy states, the 
common x/n wave function will directly select the lowest energy one. It is a 
new force field from quantum origin, able to organize matter on a million 
atoms scale.

All the x/n functions mix and the xn ones see a n value in the 100 millions 
range, so here must be a force field for x/n at the centimeter scale....My 
definition is that life is organized by x/n quantum dimensions with n up to 
some tens of billions. Life is not a compexity problem, it is a simple effect 
of near equilibrium thermodynamics on Schrodinger's quantum mechanics.

If some readers have folloved me up to here, they must start to understand 
why I am interested in black magic and its potential to handle many quantum 
dimensions.

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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