A recent study reopened one of the oldest debates in history, the origin of life on Earth.Robert G. Endres, from the Imperial College London, has decided to look deeper into this theory with mathematics.
From theory information to algorithmic complexity to find out something that suggests protocells (the primitive cells) mixing together from simple chemical compounds. According to him, life existing just by chance, the spontaneous generation of life, would be practically impossible.
Let’s say you’re making a dish, and you just start adding random things, in random quantities. The more ingredients you add, the more likely your dish is not going to be coherent. For Endres, something similar would happen with life.
The study doesn’t invalidate the possibility of hazards creating life, but the numbers don’t add up if it all resumes to accidental chemical collisions. The work also brings back some other ideas to the table, like panspermia, that theory that life has been brought from space in comets or meteorites. But they’re too speculative.
What the study says: Maths in the biological world
The team didn’t look for new molecules in a laboratory, they looked for patterns. And of course, strong tools like information theory and algorithmic complexity were also part of this team. One of the first questions was, how likely is it that protocell components join together and “couple” by themselves, only with simple chemistry and time? The mathematical response was that probability is extremely low, and if the process is left in the hands of hazardous.
Applying this to the origin of life, it suggests the complexity for something “alive,” even if it’s very primitive, exceeds what time and early Earth conditions, just by themselves and by chance, could have offered at the time.
The study mostly highlights the way we do numbers today; it’s not enough. That some additional mechanisms or physical principles are missing in the picture.
What the study doesn’t say
Endres’ work is not a final answer for the origin of life on Earth. It doesn’t confirm that life is impossible “just by chemistry” or that it definitely arrived through panspermia, comets, or meteorites. The work from the Imperial College London asks for more information since the spontaneous generation theory seems to them, somehow, difficult to justify. And since panspermia is still very speculative as well, we still don’t have a verdict.
Here comes a second question: What’s missing? The authors suggest looking for “something more”: physical mechanisms? Some principles that make early life more possible than what older models suggest? That “something” could be some kind of spontaneous organization that has not yet been captured by the actual equations, maybe some environmental conditions that guided it, or a process that divides the complexity of the problem into sections. The study exposes that if we want a convincing story, we have to show more evidence.
It doesn’t have to be “all or nothing”
Science improves every time a “what if?” It is on the table. The work of Robert G. Endre does exactly that with the origin of life. And challenge is the motive that makes life still exist today. To find mechanisms and principles that create bridges between what’s plausible and what’s real. Hasn’t life (since the beginning of it all) been a huge question we are constantly trying to answer?
The next round of investigations will have to show how that spark became functional protocols that magically became life. If those pieces start matching, we might actually learn a lot, not only about the past but also about how life can be created. Yes, our lives and others.