Assembly Theory of Time

Summary

ASSEMBLY THEORY OF TIME Abstract TIME IS AN OBJECT: Not a backdrop, an illusion or an emergent phenomenon, time has a physical size that can be measured in the laboratory. Time is unidirectional forward. ASSEMBLY THEORY: Proposed by Sara Walker of the University of Arizona and Lee Cronin of Glasgow in Scotland. Darwin’s Natural Selection is at play here and Assembly Theory quantifies selection by making time a property of objects that could have emerged only via evolution. Life is evident when the space of possibilities is so large that the universe must select only some of that space to exist. Assembly Theory can function as a universal life-detection system that works by measuring the assembly indexes and copy numbers of molecules in living or nonliving samples. Discussion Assembly theory explains evolved objects that involve biospheres, molecules and computers. Such objects exist only along lineages where information has been acquired specific to their discovery. The nature of these objects are explained by Walker and Cronin as follows: If the lineages are followed back beyond the origin of life on Earth to the origin of the universe, it would be logical to assume that the memory of the universe was lower in the past, which means that the universe's ability to generate objects of high Assembly is limited by its size in time. Some objects are too large in time to come into existence in intervals that are smaller than their assembly index. For complex objects such as computers to exist in our universe, many other objects had to form first, such as stars, heavy elements, life, tools, technology and the abstraction of computing. All this takes time and is path-dependent due to the casual contingency of each innovation that is made. The early universe may not have been capable of computation, as we know it, because not enough history had existed. Time had to pass and be materially formed through the selection of the computer's constituent objects. This is also true fo...