The EvoGrid: Building an Origin of Life Simulator & Its Implications for Life, the

Universe and Everything

Bruce Damer, DigitalSpace and Biota.org

SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA01 20 2010

ETHow many (if any) are out there?

How many are on the move?How did they figure out how to do that?

And can we do the same?

where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;

and

R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.[2]

The Drake Equation (for ETs of the “I Love Lucy” detectable kind)

where: N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy which got up the gumption to boldly go out and find the others (ie: In Real Life);

and fv = the fraction of civilizations who sport “visionary geeks”, wacky individuals or collectives not solely committed to mundane productivity but instead hooked on this “boldly go” escapade f$ = the fraction of those civilizations whose visionary geeks are not only out of the closet but able to get funding support f(t+n) = the fraction of those civilizations who are willing to fund visionary geeks for indeterminately long periods of time fT = the fraction of the above civilizations that are willing to pay for large scale versions of the geeks’ products for a very long time fm = the fraction of the above that are able to remember what it was all about and handle the end results (or lack of them) in a “mature” way (ie: not killing off all the visionary geeks and burning the fleet)

Damer’s extensions to the Drake Equation(for ETs of the “boldly go where no ET has gone before” kind)

So how do these ET visionary geeks accomplish theBoldly Go Thing?

I postulate that it can and must be done in these seven easy steps…

They have to understand the concept of abstraction (math) as all good geeks do and that they have to learn how to adapt their brains and/or build machines to render these abstractions into a simulation (computing conceptual worlds at many scales)

They have to have acquired understanding of their own evolution and that ET civilization and innovation can be vastly advanced over mere tinker-toy fiddling by tapping the power of evolution

They have to then marry the mechanisms of evolution with the tool of simulation and play around with primordial soups for a while, proving they can make this work before their grants run out

They then have to decide to apply this magic combination to the challenge of evolving a viable biota (bio-plasmic or machine or both) to take them or their replacements out into the universe

They obviously have to have a good working knowledge of the bits of the universe where they expect to send their “Bio-Universal-Machine” (BUM) selves

Time to put it all together for our visionary geek ETs: get your BUMs in simulated gear, fabricate them in atoms and dispatch them to boldly go forth and multiply

Some (not small) time later… in a parking orbit above Earth, the ETs honk and wave “yo down there, got anyone crazy enough to be working on what we just did, if so, send em up!”

And our visionary geek ETs will have answered the key question of the Universe:

Are there are other BUMs like us out there?

Now back to SETIwhich is…

=

Now enter… the EvoGrid

Which is kind of like SETI…

…but turned…

…on its head!

In that the EvoGrid first creates the haystack(an origin of life simulation)

then hopes that a needlespontaneously appears in it…

…and that the needle is found!

Roll tape!

But is this realistic?Freeman Dyson: “the simulation should be truly ‘messy’, ie: nature is not clean and neat as you are showing in the movie, cells are more like dirty water surrounded by garbage bags”

-Professor, Institute for Advanced Study

Princeton, NJNJ

Building life… the hard way

Chemically Recreating the Origins of Life: Miller-Urey, 1953

Fundamental Living Technologies LaboratoryOdense, Denmark

University of Southern Denmark, Odense

Protocells from Chemical Soups

Origins of Life the “hard way””

Your chemical origins of life computing equipment

Radically new chemical life cycles

feeding

light (hv)

heating

containerdivision

informationreplication

metabolicconversion

addition of resources

But how easy is this going to be?

Penny Boston: “The simulation must model abstract universes and not attempt a high fidelity chemistry model, all that counts is if you can demonstrate a method for supporting ever increasing levels of emergent complexity”

-Associate Professor of Cave and Karst ScienceDirector, Cave and Karst StudiesDept of Earth & Environmental ScienceNew Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM

Boston: “You need this…. to originate and evolve complex life (and civilization)”

Model for a minimal cell

How do we get…

From here… to here?

Protocells must form on their own through successive “ratchets” of complexity

Ref Pierre-Alain Monnard, FLinT

The Inner Life of the Cell (Harvard)

So how to map this computer onto this one?

The EvoGrid: conceptually a large central artificial chemistry simulation operated upon by analysis clients

What is the ‘Secret Sauce’ of

the EvoGrid?

Answer: Stochastic hill-climbing

algorithm utilizing analysis, feedback

and temporal backtracking

EvoGrid Engine

Test Simulations: Dec 2009-Jan 2010Objective: search for complex “big” molecules formingRun cycles: 1000 iterations of 1000 randomly distributed atoms in heat bath within GROMACS for 1 second

Data produced one day’s runs:

251 simulations producing 5,480MB of history data with 40MB of statisticsFrom 251 simulations we have 196,421 pending branches, so each simulation produces 782 possible branches792MB of metadata produced (input parameters for GROMACS)

Simulation #144,204: Highest Score

2.2303 avg-avg-molecule-size9.355 avg-max-molecule-size17 max-max-molecule-size4.47307 max-avg-molecule-size33.0584 search-evogrid-complexity-1

Based on these numbers, it looks like one large molecule, of 17 atoms "wide", is forming. The term “molecule size” means the maximum link count between any two atoms in the molecule.

But nothing has been visualized yet!

Limitations & Next Steps

Need input from “real chemists”Distribution of EvoGrid onto real Grid (beyond just two computers) @ CALIT2-UC San DiegoDevelopment of EvoGrid@Home running via the BOINC network, modeled after SETI@Home

Future home of the EvoGrid?

Back to Boldly Going Where No Earthy ETHas Gone Before…

Freeman Dyson’s Trees

Roll tape!

The Open Questions

Brewing up aliens in the EvoGrid, but are they alien?EvoGrid as a new kind of SETI telescope: where in the universe might life arise, and what kind?Or… what alternative universes (physics) would be conducive to life (is there a continuum?)Would the EvoGrid be our means to communicate with ET? A signal lock? If we talk to them via adaptive virtual creatures will they spare us the bulldozers building the intergalactic bypass?If we build the EvoGrid out of quantum computers will we be able to control the critters’ spread, turn on the universe?

We will find out the power of (primordial) soups!

EvoGrid inspirer Richard Gordon: “The Artificial Life community should get down to the basics and simulate an Origin of Life.”

-Professor, University of Manitoba, Canada

Acknowledgements

Peter Newman, chief architectRyan Norkus, animation, artworkTom Barbalet: Biota.orgFLinT, U. Southern DenmarkFreeman Dyson, IAS SETI Institute

Thank You!

Visit us at: www.evogrid.org