This question was in the Quest magazine. They had a hard time answering that. I am curious if someone from the Belgian universities can formulate a nice answer to this.
It is a logical question, atoms in themselves cannot do anything special, there is no life in them, they react somewhat with each other and that is it. How come if you throw such a (huge) heap of atoms on top of each other, that it ‘works’? If I throw a lot of bricks on each other, it won’t live either, will it?
Answer
Of course we could start a discussion about ‘what life is’ now, but I’ll take it a different tack.
If you consider ‘life’ simply as a kind of dynamism or activity, then your heap of bricks is also alive: it reacts to the environment, to temperature, to other substances, etc. On the scale of a brick, the most natural changes are quite slow; this brick therefore remains recognizable as brick for a long time, but its internal structure does change gradually.
What is the difference with, for example, atoms? Well, they are simply much more sensitive or sensitive to changes in their environment. And they can get very close to each other. And therefore different atoms can exert a lot of influence on each other, e.g. form chemical bonds resulting in different properties. Certain structures are then more or less stable or sensitive. And that is what we typically call ‘life’ – something that changes, adapts, shows recognizable behavioral patterns, …
So, sensitivity in combination with ‘throwing some atoms in a heap’ can sometimes give miraculous results. But that’s just coincidence (or natural optimization). If you want a brick to emerge from a heap of atoms, science has tried to design predictable production methods. For the sake of predictability, those objects don’t look like anything alive.
An attempt …
Answered by
Dr Wolfgang Eberle
Bioelectronics Medical microsystems and implants Brain research Wireless applications Chip design
Kapeldreef 75 3001 Leuven
http://www.imec-int.com
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