Publications (17)
Challenge-Based Funding to Spark Origins Breakthroughs
Cole Mathis, Harrison B. Smith
Origins of life research is marred by ambiguous questions and goals, creating uncertainty about when research objectives have been achieved. Because of numerous unknowns and disagr…
A Firefly-inspired Model for Deciphering the Alien
Cameron Brooks, Estelle Janin, Gage Siebert +3
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI) is, historically, a search for aliens like us, inspired by human centric ideas of intelligence and technology. However, humans ar…
Determining Molecular Complexity using Assembly Theory and Spectroscopy
Michael Jirasek, Abhishek Sharma, Jessica R. Bame +9
Determining the complexity of molecules has important applications from molecular design to understanding the history of the process that led to the formation of the molecule. Curr…
Community Report from the Biosignatures Standards of Evidence Workshop
Victoria Meadows, Heather Graham, Victor Abrahamsson +72
The search for life beyond the Earth is the overarching goal of the NASA Astrobiology Program, and it underpins the science of missions that explore the environments of Solar Syste…
Individual perception dynamics in drunk games
Alberto Antonioni, Luis A. Martinez-Vaquero, Cole Mathis +2
We study the effects of individual perceptions of payoffs in two-player games. In particular we consider the setting in which individuals' perceptions of the game are influenced by…
Open, Reproducible Calculation of Assembly Indices
Devansh Vimal, Garrett Parzych, Olivia M. Smith +4
We present assembly-theory, a Rust package for computing assembly indices of covalently bonded molecular structures. This is a key complexity measure of assembly theory, a recent t…
The Emergence of Chirality from Metabolism
John F. Malloy, Camerian Millsaps, Kamesh Narasimhan +4
Molecular chirality is critical to biochemical function, but it is unknown when chiral selectivity first became important in the evolutionary transition from geochemistry to bioche…
Elemental Stoichiometry as an Ecological Biosignature with Applications to Life Detection
Pilar C. Vergeli, Cole Mathis, John F. Malloy +5
The vast chemical space of possible small molecules, estimated at 10^60 compounds for molecules composed of just C, N, O, and S, is only sparsely occupied by biology. We propose th…
Self-Organization in Computation & Chemistry: Return to AlChemy
Cole Mathis, Devansh Patel, Westley Weimer +1
How do complex adaptive systems, such as life, emerge from simple constituent parts? In the 1990s Walter Fontana and Leo Buss proposed a novel modeling approach to this question, b…
What it takes to solve the Origin(s) of Life: An integrated review of techniques
OoLEN, Silke Asche, Carla Bautista +35
Understanding the origin(s) of life (OoL) is a fundamental challenge for science in the 21st century. Research on OoL spans many disciplines, including chemistry, physics, biology,…
False positives and the challenge of testing the alien hypothesis
Searra Foote, Pritvik Sinhadc, Cole Mathis +1
The origin of life and the detection of alien life have historically been treated as separate scientific research problems. However, they are not strictly independent. Here, we dis…
Experimental Measurement of Assembly Indices are Required to Determine The Threshold for Life
Sara I. Walker, Cole Mathis, Stuart Marshall +1
Assembly Theory (AT) was developed to help distinguish living from non-living systems. The theory is simple as it posits that the amount of selection or Assembly is a function of t…
The Futility of Exoplanet Biosignatures
Harrison B. Smith, Cole Mathis
The ultimate goal of astrobiology is to determine the distribution and diversity of life in the universe. But as the word "biosignature" suggests, what will be detected is not life…
Spatial Patterning and Selection: How the Environment Shapes Molecular Complexity
Alexandre Champagne-Ruel, Christopher P. Kempes, Cole Mathis
Assembly theory predicts that a distinguishing signature of life is its ability to produce complex molecules in abundance, opening new possibilities for life detection. Experimenta…
Prebiotic Functional Programs: Endogenous Selection in an Artificial Chemistry
Devansh Vimal, Cole Mathis, Westley Weimer +1
Artificial chemistry simulations produce many intriguing emergent behaviors, but they are often difficult to steer or control. This paper proposes a method for steering the dynamic…
Historical Contingencies Steer the Topology of Randomly Assembled Graphs
Cole Mathis, Harrison B. Smith
Graphs are used to represent and analyze data in domains as diverse as physics, biology, chemistry, planetary science, and the social sciences. Across domains, random graph models…
The Emergence of Life as a First Order Phase Transition
Cole Mathis, Tanmoy Bhattacharya, Sara Imari Walker
It is well known that life on Earth alters its environment over evolutionary and geological timescales. An important open question is whether this is a result of evolutionary optim…