The Physics of Life. Part 3: The Artificial Animate Materials

Dmitry A Kukuruznyak (1)

1 Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research

This paper introduces artificial animate-like materials suitable for fabrication of synthetic quasi organisms with independent autonomous behaviors. The artificial animate matter undergoes chemical condensation accompanied by ordering structural transformations. Its atoms build new, or improve existing, chemical bonds. While doing so, they arrange their local atomic neighborhoods. These small reconstructions interact, coordinate their efforts, and combine into large collective reconstructions. The combined collective reconstruction of the orderly condensing body may form a closed loop and create a self-sustaining process, in which case it makes an independent organism. The organism sustains its function by reconstructing its environment, exchanging energy and matter with the environment, and producing new active atoms. In general, the quasi organism maintains its structure during operation. At the same time, thanks to the exchange of matter with the environment, it varies its structure and adapts its behavior. The notion of artificial animate matter may produce new conceptual, mathematical, and physical models of living subjects. In practical applications, the animate materials can be used for the mass production of simple artificial brains.

Mots clés: animate state of matter; autonomous motion; definition of life; living matter; collective condensation

Domaines: Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]; Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]; Systèmes désordonnés et réseaux de neurones [cond-mat.dis-nn]

Dmitry A Kukuruznyak. The Physics of Life. Part 3: The Artificial Animate Materials. 2020. ⟨hal-02541236⟩