| Abstrakt: |
The realms of biology and astrophysics are usually regarded as distinct, to be studied within individual frameworks. However, current searches for life in the universe, and the expectation of positive results, are guiding us toward a unification of biology and astrophysics called astrobiology. In this chapter the unifying aspect of Fisher information is shown to form two bridges of astrobiology: (i) In Section 5.1 quarter-power laws are found to both describe attributes of biology, such as metabolism rate, and attributes of the cosmos, in particular its universal constants, (ii) In Section 5.2 we find that the Lotka-Volterra growth equations of biology follow from quantum mechanics. Both these bridges follow, ultimately, from the extreme physical information EPI principle and, hence, are examples of the ˵cooperative″ universe discussed in Chapter 1. That is, the universe cooperates with our goal of understanding it, through participatory observation. The participatory aspect of the effect (i) is the observation of biological and cosmological attributes obeying quarter-power laws. In the Lotka-Volterra quantum effect (ii) the participation is the observation of a general particle member that undergoes scattering by a complex potential. This potential causes the growth or depletion of the particle population levels to obey Lotka-Volterra equations. Effectively, the interaction potentials of a standard Hartree view of the scattering process become corresponding fitness coefficients of the L-V growth equations. The two ostensibly unrelated effects of scattering and biological growth are thereby intimately related; out of a common flow of Fisher information to the observer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
