PHILIP RUSHTON

Despite a voluminous amount of research, science is still very much in the dark about the origin of life. Here's the paradox. The accepted view within science today is that the first life forms were simple entities. But if this is the case, why is science unable to produce the first living beings in the laboratory, if they are so simple and primitive? 

Contemporary science is clearly missing something big, indeed very big. This is what I find irresistibly attractive about the origin of life. There is a strong chance that what got life started in the universe, is unlike anything discovered so far in science. My general approach to solving the origin of life is to think outside the box. Not once, or even twice,  but as many times as it takes - until I arrive at the answer.

To find the origin of life, it is first necessary to know what life is itself. This is an obvious statement to make, after all, how can you possibly look for the origin of something, if you don't even know what the thing is in the first place! Yet, this is precisely what science has been doing all along, since the answer to life is still unknown. Origin of life research has therefore been groping in the dark - looking for the origin of life, without even knowing what life is. 

Innumerable definitions of life have been proposed, which raises the question: how will we know when the correct answer to life comes along? A necessary (though not sufficient) characteristic of the correct answer is universality. That is, it should apply everywhere in the universe, not just here on Earth. The answer to life must therefore not be dependent on specific molecules or even carbon, rather it should be independent of any specific matter. 

One way to guarantee your theory of life is universal, is to build it in from the start. This is what I've done. I took a well-known concept - communication - and considered it independently of space, time and matter, that is, from a purely logical perspective. In this immaterial, timeless realm, I found there exists just one communication architecture, I call it the Non-Physical Communication Architecture or NPCA. 

As abstract as all this undoubtedly sounds, the NPCA has a startling down-to-earth connection - with biology. At the heart of all living cells is a unique communication system composed of DNA, RNA and protein. This is an extraordinary system because it implements the famous genetic code. But there's more to this triadic system than meets the biochemical eye: it has exactly the same communication architecture as the NPCA. I developed a universal theory of life as a result of this remarkable correspondence: life is the physical embodiment of the NPCA in matter.   

DNA, RNA and protein, the genetic code and their immensely complex molecular machinery, did not arise slowly over time. On the contrary, the NPCA predicts it all came into existence at the same time. Simply put, the origin of life is an event with an incalculably small probability. The universe is filled with evidence to support this prediction, since no evidence of life anywhere in the universe has ever been detected. It is highly likely we are alone in the universe. We are therefore looking for an extremely unique mechanism at the origin of life. My task is to discover this mechanism.