A Formal Physical Framework for the Origin of Life: Dissipation-Driven Selection of Evolving Replicators

The emergence of life from inanimate matter presents a thermodynamic challenge: the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates a global trend towards disorder, yet life constitutes localized pockets of profound organization.

This paper presents a formal physical framework for abiogenesis grounded in the statistical physics of non-equilibrium systems. We transition from the established connection between dissipation and process probability (e.g., Crooks Fluctuation Theorem) to a large-deviation framework for the likelihood of system histories. This formalism reveals a probabilistic bias towards histories with greater integrated dissipation.

We then demonstrate how this bias leads to the selection of heredity. The core of our argument is a rigorous mathematical proposition showing that while simple autocatalysis leads to an exponential increase in dissipation, template-directed replication, via its capacity for mutation and adaptation (a process from which we derive an effective adaptation rate, alpha), unlocks a super-exponential growth pathway.

This translates to a doubly-exponential amplification in the relative probability of its emergence over time, constituting an asymptotically dominant physical bias for its selection. This framework delineates a hierarchical transition from simple dissipative structures to information-bearing replicators, whose stability is contingent upon exceeding critical thresholds of fidelity, kinetic efficiency, and resource supply.

We conclude by proposing a refined, quantitative, and falsifiable experiment, defining a precise mathematical signature for identifying the onset of evolutionary processes in synthetic chemical systems.

Comments: 5 pages
Subjects: Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph)
Cite as: arXiv:2603.15230 [cond-mat.stat-mech] (or arXiv:2603.15230v1 [cond-mat.stat-mech] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.15230
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Submission history
From: Shlomo Segal
[v1] Mon, 16 Mar 2026 13:05:27 UTC (441 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.15230

Astrobiology