Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life

Abstract

Modern developments in nonequilibrium thermodynamics have significant implications for the origins of life. The reasons for this are closely related to a generalized version of the second law of thermodynamics recently found for entropy production during irreversible evolution of a given system such as self-replicating RNA. This paper is intended to serve as an introduction to these developments.

To appear in the Canadian Journal of Physics: 20 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• The Entropy Production Fluctuation Theorem and the Nonequilibrium Work Relation for Free Energy Differences
• Statistical Physics of Self-Replication
• Thermodynamic Origin of Life
• A Dissipative Photochemical Origin of Life: The UVC Abiogenisis of Adenine
• Generalized Boltzmann Distribution for Systems out of Equilibrium