Frankly speaking ...

Introduction: The Informational Universe We typically perceive our world through the lens of tangible matter and flowing energy. We see a landscape of atoms, forces, and heat. However, modern science is beginning to realise that these physical properties might merely be the surface of a deeper architecture. At its most fundamental level, the universe appears to be composed of “bits” of information. Consider the extraordinary feat of a single microscopic cell: how does it “know” how to construct a complex human being? The answer lies not just in chemistry but in the sophisticated processing of data. By shifting our perspective to information theory, we can begin to decode the underlying software of existence and see ourselves as nodes within a vast, self-optimising system. This article follows that idea from first principles to wider systems. It moves from Shannon’s formal definition of information, through biology and thermodynamics, then into active theoretical debates in physics...

Over the weekend, I had the chance to explore a local forest with my partner. As we wandered along the track, we came upon a variety of mushrooms and fungi sprouting from the forest floor. It was a magical moment that sparked my curiosity about these fascinating organisms. When I think of the terrestrial world, I usually picture plants as the foundational pillars of life on land. However, long before the first leaves reached for the sun, a vast, hidden network was already laying the groundwork: fungi . What fascinates me about fungi is how they exist in a category entirely their own—neither plant nor animal, yet holding the world together. Molecular evidence suggests they diverged from a common eukaryotic ancestor roughly 1.5 billion years ago (much like the deep evolutionary history I explored in my post on LUCA ). Surprisingly, they are closer evolutionary cousins to animals than plants. In their earliest days, these organisms likely lived in water and possessed flagella . But a...

For some time, I have been following research on LUCA—the last universal common ancestor of all life on Earth. This short article draws mainly on recent work, especially the 2024 paper by Moody and colleagues, as an introduction to current thinking. What makes LUCA so compelling is the scale of the question it represents. This is not just another organism in the history of life, but the most recent point from which all modern biology descends. What seems increasingly clear is that this starting point was not simple in any everyday sense of the word. Many of us picture the earliest life as fragile and barely formed—a transitional step between chemistry and biology. In that picture, complexity emerges slowly over immense stretches of time. Current evidence points in a different direction. LUCA appears to have been a recognisable, free-living microbe rather than a primitive intermediate. It likely possessed core systems we associate with modern cells, including: A genetic code and...

Reading Pathogenesis by Jonathan Kennedy , the first revelation came very early in the book. In the introduction Kennedy claimed that human birth wouldn't be possible without an ancient retrovirus. I went down a research rabbit hole trying to make sense of it, and that's when I hit on this mind-bending number… 8% That is the percentage of your genome that is made up of Endogenous Retroviruses (ERVs) . To put that in perspective, the protein-coding genes that make up your "human" parts - your eye colour, your enzymes, your height - only account for about 1-2% of your DNA. You are literally more "ancient virus" than you are "human. Usually, we are told this is just "junk DNA"—fossils of old infections that didn't kill our ancestors millions of years ago. But recent research suggests something far stranger. We didn't just survive these infections; we domesticated them. In fact, without these ancient viral invaders, mammals as we kno...

In the book, Life's Grandeur , Stephen Jay Gould goes into detail why the most common misconception of Evolution by Natural Selection. That is the misconception that evolution progresses from lesser forms, to more advanced, complex forms. Indeed Charles Darwin disliked the term evolution as it carries with it exactly this connotation. Instead he preferred the term, Descent by Modification. When you look at the principles behind Darwin's great idea the reasons for his objection become apparent. There are just three simple propositions: organisms tend to produce more offspring than can possibly survive off-spring vary among themselves and not identical to their parents off-spring inherit at least some of these variations That is it. The remainder is about following the consequences of these principles. Darwin deduced that, given the above, then those organisms best able to adapt to their local environment will tend to have an advantage. That advantage help...