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Scientists recently discovered a “missing law” of nature that they believe explains how everything in the universe, including humans, evolved.
“Physical laws — such as the laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics — codify the general behavior of varied macroscopic natural systems across space and time,” the scientists wrote in a study published this week in the academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We propose that an additional, hitherto-unarticulated law is required to characterize familiar macroscopic phenomena of our complex, evolving universe.”
Becky Ferreira of Motherboard breaks it down in easier to understand terms…
The so-called “law of increasing functional information” predicts that all evolving phenomena are subject to natural processes that prioritize important functions, such as stability and novelty, thereby enabling the development of systems with increasing order and complexity. This unique approach could help explain why a host of cosmic processes evolve over time, from stars that are more chemically enriched than their predecessors, to lifeforms on Earth that are more biologically intricate than their ancestors.
The study, led by Michael Wong, an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, suggests “that all evolving systems — including but not limited to life — are composed of diverse components that can combine into configurational states that are then selected for or against based on function.”
“We see, in the universe, so much richness and complexity, so many evolving systems, and yet we don’t seem to have a law of nature that adequately describes why those systems exist,” Wong told Motherboard.
Wong added, “Right now, the only time-asymmetric law of nature that we have is the second law of thermodynamics, which simply describes how closed systems move towards equilibrium towards higher and higher entropy. I think that alone may not sufficiently explain the richness and complexity that we see in the universe, and in our everyday lives.
“What we’re offering is nothing that is in conflict with this law of thermodynamics. Our proposed law works in concert with all of the other laws of nature that we have articulated so far, and adds something new to it.”
Then again, it is possible that a recently discovered law of physics could end up proving all of their work, and everything in general, is for naught.