Quantum as a heat engine—the physics of intensities unique to the origins of life

Retrocausal regulation for the onset of a reaction cycle

The emergence of a reaction cycle in a mixture of reacting molecules may require naturalized regulation of the constituent material elements. One source of naturalized regulation could be sought in updating the constituent elements through exchanging with those available from the outside under the conditions of unidirectional heat flow. One physical vehicle for implementing constant material exchange could be a durable reaction cycle serving as a necessary precursor to the phenomenon called life. Each constituent element circulating around a durable reaction cycle moves causally until it comes to eventually leave the cycle. At the same time, the circulation is also retrocausal in letting the reaction flow in the downstream pull in and being cohesive to those reactants in the immediate upstream. The onset of a reaction cycle as a precursor to the origins of life must have corresponded to a unique historical event taking advantage of the likelihood of retrocausal cohesion propagating backward along the reaction sequence. Physical underpinning of biology may be found in the operation of retrocausal cohesion.

Temporality Naturalized

The Schrödinger equation for quantum mechanics, which is approachable in third-person description, takes for granted tenseless time that does not distinguish between different tenses such as past, present, and future. The time-reversal symmetry grounded upon tenseless time globally may, however, be broken once measurement in the form of exchanging indivisible quantum particles between the measured and the measuring intervenes. Measurement breaks tenseless time locally and distinguishes different tenses. Since measurement is about the material process of feeding and acting upon the quantum resources already available from any material bodies to be measured internally, the agency of measurement is sought within the environment in the broadest sense. Most indicative of internal measurement of the environmental origin are chemical reactions in the reaction environment. Temporality naturalized in chemical reactions proceeding as being subjected to frequent interventions of internal measurement is approachable in second-person description because of the participation of multiple agents of measurement there. The use of second-person description is found in the appraisal of the material capacity of generating, distinguishing, and integrating different tenses. An essence of the temporality to be naturalized is within the genesis of different tenses. A most conspicuous exemplar of naturalized temporality is sought in the origins of life conceivable exclusively on the material ground.

Forming and maintaining a heat engine for quantum biology

Chemical reactions upholding biological functions and structures are the process of measurement taking place among the participating chemical reactants. Chemical reactions occurring in thermal environments are either endothermic or exothermic. In particular, exothermic reactions that can live with temperature gradients of exogenous origin could potentially be competent enough to synthesize a robust quantum as a heat engine. Molecular organizations leading to the origin of the phenomenon of life might have been associated with the emergence of a quantum coherence embodied in a robust heat engine feeding on quantum decoherence. Evolutionary maintenance of a robust quantum heat engine, once appeared, can further be empowered by the build-up of temperature gradients of endogenous origin. Biology enriches the repertoire of quantum mechanics so as to include a robust heat engine as a legitimate member of a quantum in addition to the already established member of a quantum including an atom, molecule, and macromolecule.