Modern physics can explain everything from the spin of the tiniest particle to the behaviour of entire galaxy clusters. But it can’t explain life. There’s simply no formula to explain the difference ...

Chemist Lee Cronin challenges AI doom and explains assembly theory, showing how complexity signals life, so you can judge ...

There’s a theory that’s in vogue in astrochemistry called “Assembly Theory.” It posits that highly complex molecules—many acids, for example—could only come from living beings. The molecules are ...

Selection in Assembly Space. (A) Pictorial representation of the assembly space represents the formation of combinatorial object space from building blocks and physical constraints. (B) Observed copy ...

Inspired by biological systems, materials scientists have long sought to harness self-assembly to build nanomaterials. The ...

A Second New Paper Shows How Assembly Theory Fails to Define Life’s Complexity and Cannot Be Easily Fixed This new paper corroborates the many concerns demonstrating that AT’s assembly ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Life on other worlds—if it exists—might be so alien as to be unrecognizable. There’s no guarantee that alien biology would use the same ...

An international team of researchers has developed a new theoretical framework that bridges physics and biology to provide a unified approach for understanding how complexity and evolution emerge in ...