The EvoGrid and ChemoGrid:Genesis Engines

Driving toward a New Origin of Life

Bruce Damer, DigitalSpace and Biota.org

CONTACT 2012-SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA03 30 2012

ETHow many (if any) are out there?

How many are on the move?How did they figure out how to do that?

And can we do the same?

where:

N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;

and

R* = the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space L = the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.[2]

The Drake Equation (for ETs of the “I Love Lucy” detectable kind)

where: N = the number of civilizations in our galaxy which got up the gumption to boldly go out and find the others (ie: In Real Life);

and fv = the fraction of civilizations who sport “visionary geeks”, wacky individuals or collectives not solely committed to mundane productivity but instead hooked on this “boldly go” escapade f$ = the fraction of those civilizations whose visionary geeks are not only out of the closet but able to get funding support f(t+n) = the fraction of those civilizations who are willing to fund visionary geeks for indeterminately long periods of time fT = the fraction of the above civilizations that are willing to pay for large scale versions of the geeks’ products for a very long time fm = the fraction of the above that are able to remember what it was all about and handle the end results (or lack of them) in a “mature” way (ie: not killing off all the visionary geeks and burning the fleet)

Damer’s extensions to the Drake Equation(for ETs of the “boldly go where no ET has gone before” kind)

So how do these ET visionary geeks accomplish theBoldly Go Thing?

I postulate that it can and must be done in these seven easy steps…

They have to understand the concept of abstraction (math) as all good geeks do and that they have to learn how to adapt their brains and/or build machines to render these abstractions into a simulation (computing conceptual worlds at many scales)

They have to have acquired understanding of their own evolution and that ET civilization and innovation can be vastly advanced over mere tinker-toy fiddling by tapping the power of evolution

They have to then marry the mechanisms of evolution with the tool of simulation and play around with primordial soups for a while, proving they can make this work before their grants run out

They then have to decide to apply this magic combination to the challenge of evolving a viable biota (bio-plasmic or machine or both) to take them or their replacements out into the universe

They obviously have to have a good working knowledge of the bits of the universe where they expect to send their “Bio-Universal-Machine” (BUM) selves

Time to put it all together for our visionary geek ETs: get your BUMs in simulated gear, fabricate them in atoms and dispatch them to boldly go forth and multiply

Some (not small) time later… in a parking orbit above Earth, the ETs honk and wave “yo down there, got anyone crazy enough to be working on what we just did, if so, send em up!”

And our visionary geek ETs will have answered the key question of the Universe:

Are there are other BUMs like us out there?

Now back to SETIwhich is…

=

Now enter… the EvoGrid

Which is kind of like SETI…

…but turned…

…on its head!

In that the EvoGrid first creates the haystack(an origin of life simulation)

then hopes that a needlespontaneously appears in it…

…and that the needle is found!

Roll tape!

But is this realistic?Freeman Dyson: “the simulation should be truly ‘messy’, ie: nature is not clean and neat as you are showing in the movie, cells are more like dirty water surrounded by garbage bags”

-Professor, Institute for Advanced Study

Princeton, NJNJ

Building life… the hard way

Chemically Recreating the Origins of Life: Miller-Urey, 1953

Radically new chemical life cycles

Complex chemical models

Your chemical origins of life computing equipment

But how easy is this going to be?

Penny Boston: “The simulation must model abstract universes and not attempt a high fidelity chemistry model, all that counts is if you can demonstrate a method for supporting ever increasing levels of emergent complexity”

-Associate Professor of Cave and Karst ScienceDirector, Cave and Karst StudiesDept of Earth & Environmental ScienceNew Mexico Tech, Socorro, NM

Boston: “You need this…. to originate and evolve complex life (and civilization)”

Model for a minimal cell

How do we get…

From here… to here?

Protocells must form on their own through successive “ratchets” of complexity

Ref Pierre-Alain Monnard, FLinT

So how to map this computer onto this one?

The EvoGrid: a large central artificial chemistry simulation operated upon by analysis clients

Historical antecedents informing the challenge and design of the digital simulation of evolution: Barricelli’s numerical symbioorganisms (Barricelli, 1953).

The Challenge of Computational Origins of Life Endeavours

Concept of Search (fitness function) implementing a

Stochastic hill-climbing algorithm utilizing

analysis, feedback and temporal backtracking

EvoGrid Optimization

Hardware configuration for EvoGrid, first and second small grids: DigiBarn (2010) and U.C. San Diego (2011)

Grid1: 2 months operation(4 cores average)

Grid2: approx 5 months operation(15-30 cores, distribution of

daemons)

The EvoGrid First Prototype Experiments and Analysis(teleological end goals)

Meta-experiment: Lots of molecules (directed search)

Meta-experiment: Large molecules (directed search)

Sample results by “molecular” products

WebGL 3D viewer depicting snapshot of simulations with current virtual molecular products (yields).

Experiment #1 (max=60) Experiment #6 (max=141)

Comparison of key experiments and analysis

Experiment #1: plateau maximum of 60 moleculesExperiment #6: surmounts serial maxima, eventual plateau at 141 molecules (189 at termination of experiment)

Conclusion of EvoGrid Experiments andNext Steps: the ChemoGrid

• Stochastic Hill Climbing through the simulation of dissipative systems (molecules) can be used to traverse vectors to higher complexity more rapidly toward teleological end goals

• Computers are decades from having the capacity to simulate chemical volumes in large enough numbers or for long enough times to carry out qualified origin of life experiments

• Next Steps: The ChemoGrid, using chemicals to simulate themselves in a hybrid between combinatorial chemistry and computer and robotically driven search and selection and reseeding of small volume chemical experiments

ChemoGrid Concept “Genesis Engine” (physical)

ChemoGrid Concept “Genesis Engine” (physical)

ChemoGrid (logical)

ChemoGrid Prototype (Damer, Summer 2011)

Production ChemoGrid (Deamer-UC Santa Cruz)

The power of (primordial) soups!

PhD Thesis!

Completed after 25 years of on and off workUniversity College Dublin, 2011

Book derived from Thesis!

Damer, Seckbach and Gordon, eds. (2013)Actively seeking contributing authors

Back to ET

Brewing up aliens in the EvoGrid, but are they alien?EvoGrid as a new kind of SETI telescope: where in the universe might life arise, and what kind?Or… what alternative universes (physics) would be conducive to life (is there a continuum?)Would the EvoGrid be our means to communicate with ET? A signal lock? If we talk to them via adaptive virtual creatures will they spare us the bulldozers building the intergalactic bypass?If we build the EvoGrid out of quantum computers will we be able to control the critters’ spread, turn on the universe?

Ode to a Genesis EngineOh Genesis Engine, you great Rube Goldberg machine of the 21st Century, resplendent with all your pumps piping chemical soups around, your computer eyes scanning for signs of competing lines of polymer-infused vesicles, and your purring grids of silicon modeling yields then selecting experiments to be robotically re-seeded. And inside of you one day, perhaps decades hence, an alarm will sound in one lone experiment within your millions of distributed ChemoGrids. A sample will be rushed for analysis and scientists will emerge breathlessly declaring that a second genesis has occurred, or rather is in the course of occurring if time (and budgets) permitted running you for another thousand years. You will leave us all  wondering what it all means, but it will mark a major moment for our species, as powerful as when our Earth was first photographed from space, for thanks to you we will know that we are most certainly not alone in the Universe, and in some sense, we will have made CONTACT.

Acknowledgements and Resources

• DigitalSpace EvoGrid Team: www.evogrid.org• NASA Ames Research Center and other NASA

Centers and contractor colleagues• UC San Diego Calit2• University College Dublin/SMARTLab• Elixir Technologies Corporation• Getting in touch: Bruce@Damer.com

Closing Thought