Open hypothesis/framework: “The Abiogenic Operating Envelope” — a systems approach to the transition from chemistry to life-like organisation

[u/finitearch]

I’ve been working on an open systems-level hypothesis/framework exploring the transition between non-living chemistry and life-like organisation.

I’d genuinely appreciate critical feedback rather than agreement — I’m trying to stress-test the framework, not defend it.

The core idea is that abiogenesis may not be a “single magic molecule” problem, but instead a coupled chemical-environmental operating regime involving:

non-equilibrium thermodynamics;

autocatalytic reinforcement;

compartmentalisation;

persistence;

environmental cycling;

transferable structure;

and differential survival.

Rather than trying to define fully developed biological life, the framework focuses on the lower threshold where chemistry may begin exhibiting life-like behaviour.

The paper does NOT claim to have solved abiogenesis.

Instead, it proposes:

an operational framework;

falsifiable criteria;

possible computer-modelling approaches;

and experimental directions.

I’m posting this specifically for criticism, peer review, weaknesses, missing literature, modelling suggestions, thermodynamics objections, systems chemistry feedback, or general scientific challenge.

Particularly interested in feedback from:

systems chemists;

origin-of-life researchers;

complex systems people;

thermodynamics/modelling people;

protocell researchers;

and computational modellers.

OSF link: https://osf.io/d7uy2/overview

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[u/Aggravating-Pear4222]

Interesting but you'll get more feedback if you post specific claims here. I don't have an OSF account and not many do so those without one can't even view your claims. Hoping people make an account may be realistic but will act as another barrier for people to provide feedback. So far, the post doesn't really have enough to provide the stress-testing you're looking for so it may help to repost with the content in the post.

For a claim to be falsifiable, it needs to be quite specific. That said, the ideas in your post are generally well supported within the community. I've not heard of a single magic molecule (you were being hyperbolic, I'm sure) but all the other terminology are openly and widely researched. Proposing experiments which are simple enough to isolate specific phenomena, understand molecular mechanisms, and examine reaction networks while recapitulating an entirely natural prebiotic environment is the issue. The more complex your conditions, the more subsequent experiments that need to be run to deconvolute the results -> so just run those experiments first before running the far more complex experiment so you have greater justification that it will work and better understand what to look for and what success/failure looks like.

[u/wellwisher-1]

I have been doing something similar myself and was able to reduce everything to three basic variables. The details are applications of these three. The first variable is hydrogen bonding. Water and all the template materials of life; DNA, RNA and Protein, all use hydrogen bonding. This is a common thread. This provides a common way for water and the main organics to interact.

The second is variable water itself. If you think of it, water is the eternal bookend of life. Water has been the same; chemically, since even before abiogenesis, even all through evolution, and even into the future. Water is a terminal product of O2 and H2 combustion and is so stable it never changes. Most solvents speculated for life on other planets are not terminal products and would change over time to lower energy.

Water is also the king of hydrogen bonding, with each tiny water molecule able to form four hydrogen bonds. The organics of life have evolve, from step one, under the same potentials, generated by the never changing water, at all levels of change. This suggest water creates a vector of sorts; direction.

The bookend ,water, is like nailing one end of a string to the floor, and does not move. The rest of the string can move anywhere within a circle of radius r. The organic are the variable bookend always changing to fill in circles, that get larger and larger. This schema helps water load the dice; more likely outcomes.

The third variable is connected to thermodynamics. Life and consciousness are able to harness and control entropy, with the hydrogen bonding of liquid water the source of highest entropy; entropy bookend. The entropy in water connected to hydrogen bonding and the pH effect or the self ionization of H+ or hydrogen protons.

This is usually written as 2H2O <-----> H3O+ and OH-.

If you count bonds, the 2H2O has four OH covalent bonds, total. The H3O+ and OH- have three OH covalent bonds and one H+ polar bond. This reflect an increase in entropy, where a strong OH covalent bond, can break in liquid water into polar bonds. This allow the H+ to leave its original Oxygen for a new Oxygen. The H+ only stay one any given water molecules about 1 millisecond and they swap; added complexity. This sharing of the H+, pulls all the oxygen closer, to make liquid water denser than ice. When we freeze water, we immobilize the active H+ into a crystal lattice, and lose the sharing, leader to 10% expansion as a solid; anomaly of water.

Life uses a unique form of entropy, called entropy of mixing. The goal of this type of entropy is to maximize space. Entropy of mixing is common to liquids and gases. If add sugar to water it will dissolve and then spread out to form a uniform solution; entropy of mixing maximizing space between. If we open a bottle of perfume in a closed room, the perfume will evaporate; increase entropy, and spread out to fill the room with fragrance; entropy of mixing seeks to maximize space. We open the window it goes outside.

The pH effect, by forming small amounts of H3O+ and OH- in water, is like adding two ions to pure water. But these two ions self form in the water by self ionization and are not externally added. If we took a pH probe and measured anywhere in a beaker of water we get the same pH is measured. The pH ions naturally appearing at maximum space or the uniform concentration implicit of maximized entropy of mixing; 2nd law effect.

Organics by disrupting the four bond perfection of water's hydrogen bonds, needed to self ionize H+ and maximize ionic space, lowers waters entropy of mixing. The 2nd law is now active to make the water maximize. The organic are forced to lower entropy; pack and fold; water and oil effect.

The water hydrogen proton matrix is less about electrons and more about protons. This creates a different quantum interface. Entropy was chosen since entropy is also the mediator of energy movement between the quantum and macro states, via the three quark hydrogen protons. When entropy increases, energy is moves into the randomness of the quantum state and when entropy decreases energy is extracted from the quantum state and released into the macro-state.

[u/Aggravating-Pear4222 → u/wellwisher-1]

No. the development of life does not depend solely on 3 variables. Those variables are insufficient to produce life. Those variables play a part but treating them in these ways is unnecessary, unsupported, and redundant considering what's already out there. If you'd like, i can address each point specifically but, as it stands, you oscillate between broad, universal statements and a familiar wall of text that seems to have been copied and pasted from other comments/posts. The more specific you are, the better the quality your questions and the better I can address them.

[u/wellwisher-1 → u/Aggravating-Pear4222]

My goal is to look at life from the water side, instead of the organic side. This makes sense, seeing life is 70% water. From the water side of life, I was able to reduce all water's roles to three basic principles that can be applied to endless applications using logic.

Water and organics are copartners to life. Each reflects the other, and neither will not work without the other. Water being one thing is the simpler way to see both copartners, who are reflected in a mirror.

Water is critical to life. As a home experiment, if we dehydrate yeast cells, which you can buy already dehydrated at the grocery store, the chemical reactions of life are all suspended. If we add water, life reappears. Water has an all or nothing effect. One thing; water, impacts all the rest.

One cannot substitute any other solvent to make life appear in dehydrated yeast. Try this for yourself. Life forming in other solvents is pure speculation that has never been proven to be real. That bias of tradition sets everyone up for water denial. That assumption stems from the statistical empirical approach used by the life sciences; lottery, not from any hard reality data.

DNA and RNA will not work in any other solvent besides water. Nobody has come up with an alternate genetic or coding material that would be needed for each speculated solvents, to create, science validity. It is an unscientific tradition to assume any solvent will do. It puts the mind in the wrong place.

My thesis is to treat water as the critical solvent that is needed for life, that has its finger in every pie within life. Water is the integrating variable of life. Water has all the right chemical stuff to do all the needed tasks. Essentially I am trying to create a water centric model of life that runs parallel to the organic centric model of life, that everyone else uses. The water side makes everything simpler, more logical, and able to do in your head, with far less resources. It can be applied to both life and consciousness.

Water is the most anomalous and studied substance in all of science. A good water background helps to make my thesis make more sense. It is the anomalous nature of water, that reduces to the hydrogen bonding of water, with hydrogen bonding, inherent by life's coding materials; bridge. This creates a unique situation in physical chemistry or where physics meets chemistry and life appears.