May 14, 2016 05:32 AM
Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology
http://nautil.us/issue/36/aging/physics-...ot-biology
EXCERPT: The inside of every cell in our body is like a crowded city, filled with tracks, transports, libraries, factories, power plants, and garbage disposal units. The city’s workers are protein machines, which metabolize food, take out the garbage, or repair DNA. [...] As these machines go about their business, they are surrounded by thousands of water molecules, which randomly crash into them a trillion times a second. This is what physicists euphemistically call “thermal motion.” Violent thermal chaos would be more apt.
[...] the protein machines of our cells, like tiny ratchets, turn the random energy they receive from water bombardment into the very directed motion that makes cells work. They turn chaos into order. [...] by emphasizing the role of thermal chaos in animating molecular machines, I encouraged aging researchers to think more about it as a driver of aging. Thermal motion may seem beneficial in the short run, animating our molecular machines, but could it be detrimental in the long run? After all, in the absence of external energy input, random thermal motion tends to destroy order.
This tendency is codified in the second law of thermodynamics, which dictates that everything ages and decays: Buildings and roads crumble; ships and rails rust; mountains wash into the sea. Lifeless structures are helpless against the ravages of thermal motion. But life is different: Protein machines constantly heal and renew their cells. In this sense, life pits biology against physics in mortal combat. So why do living things die? Is aging the ultimate triumph of physics over biology? Or is aging part of biology itself?...
Dropping Schrödinger’s Cat Into a Black Hole
http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/211
EXCERPT: Combining gravity with the process that transforms the fuzzy uncertainty of the quantum realm into the definite classical world we see around us could lead to a theory of quantum gravity....
http://nautil.us/issue/36/aging/physics-...ot-biology
EXCERPT: The inside of every cell in our body is like a crowded city, filled with tracks, transports, libraries, factories, power plants, and garbage disposal units. The city’s workers are protein machines, which metabolize food, take out the garbage, or repair DNA. [...] As these machines go about their business, they are surrounded by thousands of water molecules, which randomly crash into them a trillion times a second. This is what physicists euphemistically call “thermal motion.” Violent thermal chaos would be more apt.
[...] the protein machines of our cells, like tiny ratchets, turn the random energy they receive from water bombardment into the very directed motion that makes cells work. They turn chaos into order. [...] by emphasizing the role of thermal chaos in animating molecular machines, I encouraged aging researchers to think more about it as a driver of aging. Thermal motion may seem beneficial in the short run, animating our molecular machines, but could it be detrimental in the long run? After all, in the absence of external energy input, random thermal motion tends to destroy order.
This tendency is codified in the second law of thermodynamics, which dictates that everything ages and decays: Buildings and roads crumble; ships and rails rust; mountains wash into the sea. Lifeless structures are helpless against the ravages of thermal motion. But life is different: Protein machines constantly heal and renew their cells. In this sense, life pits biology against physics in mortal combat. So why do living things die? Is aging the ultimate triumph of physics over biology? Or is aging part of biology itself?...
Dropping Schrödinger’s Cat Into a Black Hole
http://fqxi.org/community/articles/display/211
EXCERPT: Combining gravity with the process that transforms the fuzzy uncertainty of the quantum realm into the definite classical world we see around us could lead to a theory of quantum gravity....