Graduate student Cole Mathis to give seminar at Santa Fe Institute

Emergence@ASU graduate student Cole Mathis heads to the Santa Fe Institute Jan. 13th to give a seminar on his recent paper titled "The Emergence of Life as a 1st Order Phase Transition".  More details are here, abstract below. 



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​Abstract.  Life is a state of matter characterized by a stable pattern of non-equilibrium behavior.  Replication, central to maintenance of pattern, is thought to play an important role in driving the transition from non-living to living matter. Using a kinetic Monte-Carlo simulation of an artificial chemistry, we demonstrate the existence of a phase transition from non-life to life (defined as non-replicating and replicating systems respectively). The transition is first order and occurs spontaneously in the absence of external tuning and has features which differ from those described previously.

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