Primordial Soup

Primordial Soup is a simulation of life’s creation. In an artificial chemistry system, particles can organize into living organisms, in a process inspired by what might have happened in a drop of water on the young Earth billions of years ago. You can start life, change the rules it follows, observe the effects and interact with the organisms you create.

Life in the simulation

The system displays behaviors found in living systems, including predator-prey cycles of the kind described by Lotka-Volterra equations, evolution and self-organized criticality in organism populations. It also produces mechanisms such as seed dispersal and protective outer shells that limit predation. The simulation’s chemistry does not occur in nature, but it follows some of the same organizational rules, and can be used to explore how conditions might affect the emergence of life.

Life depends on a balance of conditions. Particles need warmth and motion, but too much motion prevents life from forming. A little radiation enables mutation and evolution, while too much stops organisms from organizing. The chemistry must support pattern replication, but if it is too rich, life-enabling structures become vanishingly unlikely to come together.

Particle chemistry

The simulation uses a multidimensional form of electromagnetism to create complex, short-range forces between particles. Its chemistry is constrained to make the emergence of life likely, which also limits the structures organisms can form. They do not become more complex in this version, and have far fewer possible structures than Earth’s organic life after millions of years of evolution.

Creating and observing

You can initiate life, alter the rules of the system, watch how your changes affect it and interact with your creations. The simulation currently limits you to these forms of intervention; designing organisms to compete with those produced by evolution and other ways of interacting with them are described as possibilities for future versions.