sandlewood

There have been simple computer simulations to play around with evolution, such as Richard Dawkins’ program from The Blind Watchmaker. I’ve also immensely enjoyed the article <a href="http://www.infidels.org/~meta/getalife/" target="_blank">Get a Life</a>, and Core Wars is interesting although I haven’t tried it myself yet.

But those are all gross representations of reality. I was wondering if anyone has tried to create simulations on a lower level, such as the molecular or even atomic level. It would seem that it would be very interesting to model molecules and then throw them together in a primordial soup to see what happens. Could you create a self replicating molecule? How far could this simulation progress?

Obviously, you could only simulate very small things, since it takes many atoms in reality to simulate a single atom in the computer. Nevertheless, it is interesting to speculate about starting with models of atoms and letting them progress to abiogenesis and then evolve further. Of course, it would not prove anything because you still need to do the experiment with real chemicals. But it might be a good tool for adjusting variables and then rerunning the simulation to see what happens. Easier than mixing chemicals.

So, has this been done?

[ July 20, 2002: Message edited by: sandlewood ]</p>