Az ősleves gridszerűen működő számítógépes szimulációja választ adhat az élet keletkezésének rejtélyére.
The power of computer processing could one day solve the riddle of life's origin. Enter the Evogrid, a computer creation concept that would be a digital version of the primordial soup. Its creators are developing the concept by adapting GROMACS, a powerful open source molecular dynamics simulator. Each virtual particle within the Evogrid's simulated liquid soup will have particular physical properties, and will behave accordingly. "We will be constructing a model of a 'toy universe', which has approximate properties of the early oceans on Earth," says the project’s leading researcher Bruce Damer. With a laundry list of basic physical properties entered into the starting parameters, the simulation would allow artificial nature to take its course. Interactions and connections between particles should occur, and ever higher levels of complexity may arise from the most basic elements. Much like SETI@home's screen saver, which enables computers at home to search for signals of extraterrestrial life within volumes of astrophysical data, the Evogrid is conceived to have volunteer computers become part of an interconnected grid for maximum processing capacity. Damer hopes to eventually get a million computers hooked into the grid. These computers would receive data from the EvoGrid simulation engine. The simulation would essentially consist of a vast virtual ocean of interacting numbers that would model the time before complex life forms emerged. To know whether self-organization is occurring, the program would look for persistent patterns within the data. Damer notes that present-day computer simulations run much more slowly than chemical reactions, but he anticipates that in the next 20 to 40 years, with the help of millions of microprocessors, an entire cell could be simulated in cyberspace. He envisions two possible versions of Evogrid: a hands-off "Origins" version, and an experimental "Intelligent Designer" edition that would allow people to tinker with the simulation. Damer says the ID edition of Evogrid could include a "miracle module" that would allow users to play God in their attempts to create proto-life. The Origins edition would be the focus of the science, however, with strict controls to shield the experiment from any guiding human influence.
IT3 komment: A jelenlegi legambiciózusabb mesterségesélet-kísérlet az ősóceánt, az élet kialakulását igyekszik szimulálni. Érdekessége, hogy – a földönkívüli lényeket kutató SETI@home mintájára, önkéntesen – otthoni számítógépek sokaságát hálózattá kapcsolva próbálja a maximális feldolgozási kapacitást elérni, s imitálni bonyolult folyamatokat. A „játékban” a gépek tulajdonosai is részt vesznek – az Evogrid jól szemlélteti a kollektív intelligencia (web 2.0-ás) alkalmazását (crowdsourcing), és felvillantja a jövő tudományos kutatói módszereinek egyikét.
Forrás: www.space.com
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