1 Field-control, phase-transitions, and life’s emergence 2 3 4 Gargi Mitra-Delmotte 1* and A.N. Mitra 2* 5 6 7 139 Cite de l’Ocean, Montgaillard, St.Denis 97400, REUNION. 8 e.mail :
[email protected] 9 10 2Emeritius Professor, Department of Physics, Delhi University, INDIA; 244 Tagore Park, 11 Delhi 110009, INDIA; 12 e.mail :
[email protected] 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 *Correspondence: 20 Gargi Mitra-Delmotte 1 21 e.mail :
[email protected] 22 23 A.N. Mitra 2 24 e.mail :
[email protected] 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Number of words: ~11748 (without Abstract, references, tables, and figure legends) 36 7 figures (plus two figures in supplementary information files). 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 Abstract 48 49 Critical-like characteristics in open living systems at each organizational level (from bio- 50 molecules to ecosystems) indicate that non-equilibrium phase-transitions into absorbing 51 states lead to self-organized states comprising autonomous components. Also Langton’s 52 hypothesis of the spontaneous emergence of computation in the vicinity of a critical 53 phase-transition, points to the importance of conservative redistribution rules, threshold, 54 meta-stability, and so on. But extrapolating these features to the origins of life, brings up 55 a paradox: how could simple organics-- lacking the ‘soft matter’ response properties of 56 today’s complex bio-molecules--have dissipated energy from primordial reactions 57 (eventually reducing CO 2) in a controlled manner for their ‘ordering’? Nevertheless, a 58 causal link of life’s macroscopic irreversible dynamics to the microscopic reversible laws 59 of statistical mechanics is indicated via the ‘functional-takeover’ of a soft magnetic 60 scaffold by organics (c.f.