A dynamical systems perspective on the celestial mechanical contribution to the emergence of life

Abstract

Biological activities are often seen entrained onto the day-night and other celestial mechanical cycles (e.g., seasonal and lunar), but studies on the origin of life have largely not accounted for such periodic external environmental variations. We argue that this may be an important omission, because the signature replication behaviour of life represents temporal memory in the dynamics of ecosystems, that signifies the absence of mixing properties (i.e., the dynamics are not fully chaotic), and entrainment onto regular, periodic external perturbative influences has been proven capable of suppressing chaos, and thus may bring otherwise unstable chemical reaction sets into viability, as precursors to abiogenesis. As well, external perturbations may be necessary to prevent an open dissipative (bio)chemical system from collapsing into the opposite extreme -- the point attractor of thermal equilibrium. In short, life may precariously rest on the edge of chaos, and open-loop periodic perturbation rooted in celestial mechanics (and should be simulated in laboratory experiments in origin-of-life studies) may help with the balancing. Such considerations, if pertinent, would also be consequential to exobiology, e.g., in regard to tidal-locking properties of potential host worlds.