A man with one watch knows the time.
A man with two watches is never sure.

- A version of Murphy’s Law

But this law is much truer in reality. Today my long held conviction was shattered when I realized that the Big Bang theory is not the reality of world. It is merely a hypothesis and other theories do exist.

It is not that I have started rejecting Big Bang as a viable model of our universe. It is the most popular model which has made several predictions which match with the observations. But the key point here is the word popular. Any belief held by 99% of the population does not convert it into a fact.

The other theories, clubbed as Alternative Cosmology Theories, also make predictions which match with observations and are equally interesting. So when I came to know about these theories I really realized that theories are theories after all.

So, when I knew only about the Big Bang model I was happy and satisfied to know about the universe as the theory told me but now, since I know that alternative explanations for the same set of observations do exist, I am unsure of what my universe really is. Please note that I am in now way promoting alternative cosmology theories. It is just the fact that I, now, have realized that no theory should be taken as a fact, no matter what.

By the way, check out the basics of these Alternative Theories at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_cosmology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-steady_state_cosmology

John Horgan argues that the pure science has ended. Full Stop.

I don’t understand how one can call the end of pure science when we have huge gaps in basic knowledge such as the origin of universe and time, origin of life, origin of consciousness, artificial intelligence, dark matter and dark energy, etc.

I don’t believe in his viewpoint. The science is fully flourishing these days. It may be true that the pace of fundamental discoveries and inventions might have been slowed but saying that it has been stopped all together would not be wise.

There is still hope for aspiring Darwins and Einsteins. Don’t lose hope, time will come.

Suppose we have a MxN grid with each cell having a particular (random) number. Also suppose that you are an organism capable of moving one cell left/right/up/down and accessing the number on the cell you are presently standing on. Moving takes away X units of energy/time and accessing the number takes Y units/time. You are assigned the task to search for a particular number NUM in the grid using the least amount of energy/time. You are allowed to choose the location (middle/corner/random) where you want to start searching. What will be your search strategy?

Will you do a systematic search or a clumsy search? Well, this is what I want to find out. I want to find out which is the best search strategy when there is a random chance of hitting upon the goal. Maybe, someone ( me, perhaps! ) should apply genetic programming to evolve agents who do this and then analyze their strategy.

This problem can be very exciting and can have huge applications.

Do these things have anything in common? If you think no, then think again because the genius lies in connecting unconnected concepts in a meaningful manner. Robert Axelrod, a political scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, has applied the Game Theory to cancer phenomena and found that the tumor cells get more benefits (in terms of their growth) if they cooperate. If this is proved true, it could have major implications in terms of potential cancer therapies.

I feel it is quite a genius to see connections between two seemingly distinct fields. There are so many fields in which we have narrowed down our thinking thus excluding potential solutions. Is anyone there to see the connections?

Anyhow, here is the original news on the cancer and game theory.

I had a wild thought yesterday. The Theory of Evolution can be analogous to the Theory of Quantum Mechanics. I know this might seem ridiculous, but I may try to explain it a little bit. See, the states of a particle (position, momentum, spin, etc.) may be compared with the genepool of a species (or all life). Given the current state of a particle, we can never precisely tell the future state of the same particle. This happens due to inherent randomness in quantum reality.

The same can said for the genepool also. Given the genepool at a particular time, you cannot predict the genepool in the future. This is because you cannot predict the course of evolution. There is inherent randomness in the evolutionary path.

Keeping these fundamental points in minds, we can compare this two (seemingly) unrelated fields. How about using Schrodinger’s equation for evolution? This would mean that each type of genepool has a probability value attached to it. Some genepools are more probable and some are less probable.

We may also use some of the principles of evolution such as Natural Selection for describing the quantum phenomena. Why is it that a few states of a particle are more probable than others? This may be due to the selection of those states by the environment. This means that environment which comprises of (competition from) other particles affects the state of the particle.

I think this analogy should be given more thought than I have given to it. The above argument may be scientifically wrong in many ways, but I hope I have conveyed the spirit which I wanted to.

Is the Grand Unified Theory really elusive? No, I don’t mean combining General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics. I mean some theory which thousand times more subtle and has equal importance as the grand unified theory of physics which would explain everything.

Here I talk about the theory of everything for biology. The theory which would account for each and everything we observe in biology and would explain the cause of experimental data obtained from biology experiments. The first question which pops into the mind is that: is a unified theory for biology even possible? Well, the term surely looks like an oxymoron and that is because biologists, traditionally, have relied hugely upon experimental data (and that is because it was far easier to obtain data and explain it than to make theories, hypothesis and then test the predictions). The end result of this data-driven madness was that biology is now so complex that even two biologists (working in not too-distant fields) are not able to comprehend fully what the other person is working on. The Science’s (or biology’s) ultimate aim is to make natural phenomena comprehensible to the man.

Now, look what has happened. Give a popular science (or biology) journal or even a magazine to a layman, and he won’t understand a word in it. Why? Was this the aim of biologists? Why can’t we compress whole of the biology into one equation and then let it unleash its power? The simplicity of the equation E=MC2 has made it the most famous equation world over. Why can’t we do in the biology what Einstein did to physics?

A majority of you would say that it hasn’t been done because it is not possible. I say, prove that it is not possible. I often wonder why it has not been tried yet. Or maybe I am ill informed about that. But the mere thought of biology not having a common framework is little terrifying. Today, what is needed is a mathematical framework from where we can start the quest for this theory.

I suspect ‘Evolution‘ could be one of the candidates for such theory. But, again, as I said we (biologists) are lacking a sound mathematical (or logical) basis upon which to base the theory. Once we agree on a common platform, then we can try developing evolution as THE ULTIMATE THEORY OF BIOLOGY.

I, myself, am hunting for one such idea which can cause paradigm shift in biological sciences. I imagine one day when biologists will prefer theory and mathematics more than the instruments and patience.

I don’t say that biologists are doing wrong when they do wet experiments. If it were, we would never have any vaccines, dolly sheep, Nature journal, etc. All I am saying that efforts should be devoted to make biology less complex and more compact. And the tool for that could only be mathematics.

It is an excellent article which discusses that evolution is inherent in the universe (as demonstrated by “hyperreal” universes). It discusses Tierra, Biomorphs, Genetic Programming, SimEarth, Game of Life, etc. Read it if you care about evolution.

Click here to read that article.

We have a perfect example of life on earth. This life, made up of DNA, has a physical existence due to molecules and structures which compose it. But, is physical existence a prerequisite of life? Can life exist as information only with no physical basis?

The answer to the question lies in our viewpoint. If we take life as an exclusive property of earth, then yes of course, life must have physical existence. But, if we consider to be a universal property (as much as gravity), then we can have interesting life forms (majority of which we may never detect).

The article TESTING DARWIN rekindled my interest in digital life. It is a form of life in which entities live solely as information. This kind of life can easily be implemented on a computer and an excellent example of this implementation is Avida. The basic premise is that the principles of evolution/life are universal and are not necessarily be restricted to earth-based life.

Avida is a system in which digital organisms (computer programs) compete with each other for computer resources. This is similar to competition between organisms for limited resources available in the environment. All the properties of life: adaptation, species, natural selection, etc. can be observed in Avida. I guess, it is a perfect tool for one to observe life’s struggle easily at home.

In the article I mentioned, the author draws parallel between the DNA based life and the digital organisms of Avida. Since, Avida can provide huge amounts of data in no time, we may easily study various aspects of life without having to wait for ages. He tries to answer few of the mysteries of life such as: Evolution of sex, co-operation, irreducible complexity, extra-terrestial life, etc.

The article is a must read and the software is a must download.

P.S: My personal opinion is that life is what you describe and there is no reason why we should not consider strings of bit (which evolve) as entities of life.

Cryptic huh? It does not matter if the title is comprehensible to you or not, you cannot escape the reality. And the reality is that the bridge between living and non-living is blurring with the coming age of nanobiotechnology. You might say “I have heard of Biotechnology and I have heard of Nanotechnology, but what the hell is Nanobiotechnology?”. Well, if it is the case, read the excellent article titled I, Nanobot.

The article is extremely thought-provoking and presents a radical different view of the coming reality. We do not face horrors from Extra-Terristial beings attacking earth or AI becoming self-aware and enslaving humans, however we face threats from entities which the author of the articles calls animats. Animats are non-living living materials. It means soon life can get free from chains of carbon and be based on non-carbon compounds.

Nanobiotechnology is increasingly making hybrids between biological entities and non-biological nano-sized machines. Author proposes that one day, due to random mutations, these hybrids can evolve to perform functions which they are not supposed to. His animats are “replicating nanobiobot capable of living inside the human body powered by our own metabolic energy”. If these come into existance then life as we know it will change. This is because our 100% knowledge of life is based on carbon-based life and then we would be dealing with life based on elements other than carbon.

The author give three rules for nanobiotechnology:

First Law of Nanobotics: The fusion of nanotechnology and biotechnology, now called nanobiotechnology, will result in the complete elimination of the barrier between living and nonliving materials.

The Second Law of Nanobotics: It is not possible to ensure that devices created using the techniques of nanobiotechnology will only transmit molecular information to the target system.[/I]

Third Law of Nanobotics: The carbon barrier will be eliminated when humans create the first synthetic molecular device capable of changing the state of a living system via direct, intentional transfer of specific chemical information from one to the other.

The article is a must read for anyone who cares about his future because [I]they (nanobots) are coming soon…. what else, we might even not recognize them coming..

Click here to read the article.

P.S: One interesting line which caught my eye, “Nanofabricated animats may be infinitesimally tiny, but their electrons will be exactly the same size as ours.”

The article correctly describes the current flaws in biology research. Today, it is more of observation-based.. Like, you collect tons of data and then infer something (most of the times, unamusing). Rather, our approach should be hypothesis-based. The fields like physics, economics make use of mathematics to abstract the details.. Physics has laws, mathematics has laws.. But biology has only observations.. How can we expect to make huge intellectual leaps in biology without any laws or abstraction.. Why can’t we predict things in biology rather we just describe the observed phenomena..

Today, biologists need a heavy dose of courage and guts to leave the usual and make bold predictions about future. That’s how the field will progress. They are describing every phenomena in detail-and-detail-and-detail.. Can you ever use the knowledge from two distinct field of biology and then combine them to provide some meaningful sentences.. But, we can do that in physics… Combine any field with any other and then invent/predict/innovate…

We, biologists, need to build on existing knowledge and abstract information. And must not probe further and further because the detail will never end.. And further, by doing so, we can never expect to unify biology..

Click here to see the article.