| Astronomy | |
This video has an awesome part about finding lifelike patterns in a random tile based massive Checkers or Go system. The trick is that you have to add 3 simple rules of neighbor interaction and sequential turns. On a large scale over time, organic type patterns emerged as eye-opening repeating patterns that not only moved across the field of play, some systems created offspring of different shapes that moved off in different directions. On a super-massive scale and in three dimensions one could anticipate that some truly fascinating expressions of unpredicted natural orders could emerge.
As a hack Cosmologist, I think I have a pretty good picture on how life could emerge from a cooling chaotic chemical soup of a primordial planet somewhere in the vastness of space where there is water or some other solvent that can absorb heat and assist in some kind of chemical reaction. (at least three planets in this solar system have water in one form or the other, and it is now foolish to deny that there likely billions and billions of planet sized objects in space. Some rare gem (planets) amongst the soil (planets) will have demonstrated self organizing, replicating and branching patterns of matter that progress until different chemical formats of self-replicating massively complex molecules (DNA, RNA, hemoglobin, chlorophyll, etc.)
If one could somehow systematically explore (traveling unfathomably long distances and at currently fictional/theoretical speeds) and looking only for similar stars it would surprising NOT to find something. Lifeforms in all of their slow, self-adapting grace have found ways to adapt to hazardous and extreme environments like the hot steam vents of exothermic geological reactions, or on shady underside of a dusty desert rock.
