This should be a good talk and related to Stu's talk last year.
-----------------
SPEAKER: Wim HordjikTITLE: Autocatalytic Sets and the Origin of Life
Today, 12 - 1p
Santa Fe Complex, Commons
632 Agua Fria Street, Santa Fe
ABSTRACT: The origin of life is one of the most fundamental, but also one of the most difficult problems in science. Despite differences between various proposed scenarios, one common element seems to be the emergence of an autocatalytic set or cycle at some stage. However, there is still much disagreement as to how likely it is that such self-sustaining sets could arise ``spontaneously''. This disagreement is largely caused by the lack of mathematical models that can be formally analyzed. In this talk, after a brief introduction of the origin of life problem itself, I will introduce a formal framework of catalytic reaction systems and autocatalytic sets, and then present both theoretical and computational results which indicate that the emergence of autocatalytic sets is highly likely, even for very moderate (and plausible) levels of catalysis.
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org
Locked
