Life is Physics

There is nothing simple about life. Millions of carefully coordinated chemical reactions occur every second inside a single cell; billions of single-celled organisms can organize into colonies; trillions of cells can precisely stick together into tissues and organs. Yet, despite this complexity, life is easy to identify. Physicists think that this recognizability could arise from foundational physical principles that underlie all life. And they are on the hunt for a mathematical theory based on these principles that explains why life can exist and how it behaves. Such a theory, they say, could allow researchers to control and manipulate living systems in ways that are currently impossible.