Life as Physics

Questions about life and its purpose concern all of us. There are recurring debates on this by Scientists, Philosophers and Religious thinkers.

What is life is a question that does not fetch unique and unambiguous answer. We can only describe the essential features common to all living organisms. All living organisms form out of a few elements. Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Phosphorus are fundamental to all living matter on this planet.

A second feature is structural organization. All living organisms are embedded in a very definite structure called a cell. The composition and complexity of these cells can vary among organisms; they range from single-celled bacteria to humans who have trillions of cells.

A third feature is the capacity of all living organisms to maintain this structure very efficiently. They achieve this by self-replication. Living cells continuously synthesize their specific molecules to grow and divide.

The living things capture energy from the environment and dissipate it as heat, which is another way of saying they want to stay away from equilibrium. Finally, a unique property of life is that it undergoes evolution. Trace the characteristics of any present form of plant or animal life back in time, and we see them converging to one or a few primitive organisms, which first appeared 3.5 billion years ago…