Physics Stuff
Odds and Ends for the Classroom and Beyond
Some answers, useful resources and more questions.
Physics and Mathematics in Biology
From Thermodynamics we have the idea of Entropy. Death is being in Thermal Equilibrium with the Universe. From Information Theory (of signal transmission) we have low information implies High Musicality. Life's signature as irradiating Infra Red is of low musicality. From Prime Number theory we can calculate the highest common factor of a predator-prey system to determine why a Cicada appears to 'know' about Prime Numbers. Chiral Molecules in are body appear to come from polarised waves of left-handed Helicity.
Life is an Entropy Sink
Our Biosphere acts as a local sink for Entropy. Where there is no cell building in the universe Entropy increases. Though in early universe gravity was ant-Entropic as galaxy clusters accreted around local seeds of matter inhomogeneity.
Entropy and Information are one and the same – good music heard as a series of information is one that suprises – so contains little sense of what its future will be like. The richer the surprises the less chance you have of extrapolating the past into the future. Entropy as a measure of disorder then says that lower Entropy Music is less predictable and therefore richer from a musical point of view. Given that sine waves do not carry information, but rather more complex pulses made up of out-of-phase or polarised waves that have an orientation, we can see that higher information content of Infra red emitted from Earth carries signatures of life to cold bath of Universe
Left-handedness Signature from Circular Polarised Background Radiation
Handedness of DNA is modelled by Castle Spiral Staircase. Enantiomers are related to circular polarised light - which possess Chirality.
We see various types of polarised waves. Bees use great circle of polarised light to tell time of day. We see remnants of polarised gravitational waves in the CMBR. We observe that life is only made up of left-handed Amino acids. We can think of Plane-polarised light as the linear sum of circular polarised light (in which the electric field vector that defines plane of polarisation) rotates like a double helix. We call this the Helicity of the wave (photon=1 or gravition=2). Such circular polarised light is palendromic with time (t=-t) but not with space x=-x. If it is Thomson scattered from Surface of Last Scattering it will be polarised giving rise to a selected (left-handed) molecular enantiomer through optical roation.
Hibernation Cycle of Cicada
Hibernation cycle of Cicada colonies are in Prime Number periods of years: Evolution's survivorship bias gives the false appearance that the cicada "knows" of Prime Numbers. The Predators are the (Kalman) filters that kill off all other periodicities. Just as "good" fund - money managers have no "knowledge" they too are just the lucky survivors.