![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/astrobiology-artist-concept-early-earth.jpg\")
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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.<\/p>\n
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 framework for the likelihood of system histories. This formalism reveals a probabilistic bias towards histories with greater integrated dissipation.<\/p>\n
We then demonstrate how this bias leads to the selection of heredity. The core of our argument is a rigorous mathematical proposition showing that while simple autocatalysis leads to an exponential increase in dissipation, template-directed replication, via its capacity for mutation and adaptation (a process from which we derive an effective adaptation rate, alpha), unlocks a super-exponential growth pathway.<\/p>\n
This translates to a doubly-exponential amplification in the relative probability of its emergence over time, constituting an asymptotically dominant physical bias for its selection. This framework delineates a hierarchical transition from simple dissipative structures to information-bearing replicators, whose stability is contingent upon exceeding critical thresholds of fidelity, kinetic efficiency, and resource supply.<\/p>\n
We conclude by proposing a refined, quantitative, and falsifiable experiment, defining a precise mathematical signature for identifying the onset of evolutionary processes in synthetic chemical systems.<\/p>\n
Comments: 5 pages Astrobiology<\/p>\n Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager\/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na\u2019Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he\/him) \ud83d\udd96\ud83c\udffb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The emergence of life from inanimate matter presents a thermodynamic challenge: the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[184446,18,6872,19,17,184447,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-409051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-cond-mat-stat-mech","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-genomics","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-orign-of-life","14":"tag-science"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116308912755959047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Subjects: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2603.15230 [cond-mat.stat-mech] (or arXiv:2603.15230v1 [cond-mat.stat-mech] for this version)
https:\/\/doi.org\/10.48550\/arXiv.2603.15230<\/a>
Focus to learn more
Submission history
From: Shlomo Segal
[v1] Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:05:27 UTC (441 KB)
https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2603.15230<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/keith_cowing.jpg\")
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