The Big Questions
From COSNet
Contents |
How did life emerge from primordial chaos?
One of the big questions facing science is how living arose from nonliving matter. In biology, the question is what were the first replicators, for example RNA, proteins or clay molecules. In astrophysics, questions arise as to what are the physical preconditions for life, so as to ascertain how common life might be in the universe. Physics concerns relate to what boundary conditions on nonequilibrium dissipative processes are necessary to generate complex structures. A theory of entropy production in far from equilibrium processes is an essential ingredient in understanding what is life. A number of COSNet researchers are interested in entropy in far from equilibrium systems, including named Participants Farquhar, Prokopenko, Robson and Dewar. Complex systems theory has examined autocatalytic sets of chemical reactions. There is an error threshold limiting the complexity of these autocatalytic sets, which is perhaps 34 orders of magnitude simpler than the simplest living organism. This complexity gap is the challenge facing the complex systems community. Part of the answer will presumably lie in understanding the formation of self-organising complex structures such as lipid membranes. Studies in chemistry and artificial chemistry, such as those done by Duraid Madina will shed light on these aspects. Understanding how evolution can produce complexity in an open-ended fashion will also be another key step, a question currently being studied by named Participant Standish and David Newth. Other named Participants who can contribute to a multidisciplinary attack on this problem range from Freeman on astrophysics to Ball, Bradbury, Farquhar and Wilson with expertise in biology.
Can we tame a turbulent, burning fusion plasma to power our civilisation in coming centuries?
The energy released by fusion reactions in the sun not only provides the high-grade radiant energy that drives the self-organising, life-supporting environment of the earth, but also causes more violent events that give rise to “space weather”. There is also a worldwide research and development program for producing power from fusion, a far more benign source than fission. As in the sun, this is complicated by turbulence. Understanding, predicting and controlling these entropy-producing processes is essential to our long-term future on this planet and requires a multi-disciplinary complex systems approach. One of the biggest problems in fusion is turbulence—how to predict it and control it. Fusion plasmas, space environment, Earth’s atmosphere and oceans, and industrial fluid mechanics are real-world systems whose dynamics is turbulent. Named Participants working on theoretical and experimental aspects of turbulence and its applications are Ball, Chong, Denier, Dewar, Finnigan, Frederiksen, Griffiths, Metcalfe, Raupach, Roberts, Robson, Shats, Soria, Vincent and Vladimirov.
Can we design an economic system that works without cyclic booms and busts?
There is a growing realisation (see e.g. Geoff Davies’ new book Economia: New economic systems to empower people and support the living world) that the “business cycle” may be a manifestation of instabilities embedded deeply in the economic system: fairly obviously in financial markets, but also in the monetary system, and that complex systems analysis is required to understand and better control the economy. Ideas for controlling and eliminating these instabilities will need to be tested theoretically within the context of a dynamical system that accounts for strong couplings and feedbacks which generate complex behaviour. Since 1990, physicists have created a new cross-disciplinary field spanning statistical physics, complexity science and economics: Econophysics, linking scientific academia with the finance sector. Among the named Participants, Aste, Batchelor, Batten, Henry, Heyde, Prokopenko and Standish are working on aspects of this field, as well as others in the Register, in particular Tiziana Di Matteo who is organising the international workshop on econophysics “Bonzenfreies Colloquium II” in 2005.
Will machines ever develop intelligence?
The greatest challenge facing artificial intelligence is ironically common sense—the joining together of many disparate pieces of information. With the vast increase of archived data and the major threats to national security and the ever present risk of new pandemics, there is an urgent need for such giant intelligence. This can only come from methods of integrating intelligent, adaptive agents on a huge scale. Key mathematical issues are the optimal connectivity, being addressed in a current Discovery Project by Snyder and Bossomaier and the agent integration and evolution mechanisms, the subject of a DP funding request by Snyder, Bossomaier and Mitchell. Named Participants working in problems of artificial intelligence and brain function are Abbass, Bossomaier, Liley, Prokopenko, Wiles, Robinson and Standish.
