Droplet scientists push the boundary between living and non-living matter
About this episode
The episode explores the physics of droplets that exhibit behaviors resembling living organisms.
In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, we hear from a trio of scientists with a common interest in the physics of droplets. Specifically, Joe Forth , Rob Malinowski and Giorgio Volpe share a fascination with droplets that are “animate” – that is, capable of responding to their surroundings in ways that resemble the behaviour of living organisms. As they explain in the podcast, systems must tick three boxes to qualify as animate. First, they must be active, able to use energy from their environment to do work and perform tasks. Second, they must be adaptive, able to move between different dynamical states in response to changes to their environment or their own internal states. Finally, they must be autonomous, able to process multiple inputs and choose how to respond to them without intervention from the outside world. Incorporating all these behaviours into a droplet – or a system of many droplets – is challenging. The boundary between autonomous and non-autonomous systems is proving especially hard to overcome, and Volpe, Malinowski and Forth have a friendly disagreement over whether any droplet-based system has managed it yet. Crosses disciplinary borders Part of…
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