Re-Thinking Biology—I. Maxwell’s Demon and the Spontaneous Origin of Life

Abstract

A hypothesis is advanced in which life began from a Darwinian selection among a diversification of molecular species containing the phosphate moiety which broke the constraints implicit in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, discussed famously by Schrodinger, by obtaining energy from specific infrared frequencies located in the phosphorus-oxygen vibration at a frequency around 1000 cm-1. We propose the source of this energy was from the internal conversion of solar broadband energy by the phosphate mineral Apatite, present at the bottom of a primitive biogenesis pond. In this scenario, life is re-defined as being hotter than its environment and as using its excess energy, supplied by infra-red conversion, to react with its molecular environment and pump itself up the “entropy slope” thereby; replication is through breakages of increasingly large phosphate containing biopolymers. The idea has implications for modern explanations of living systems.