A system of particles able to self-assemble and self-heal in presence of acoustic wave

In previous posting (see also the article) I told about a system of charged plastic balls above electrode with same charge of sign imbedded in plasma of positively charged Argon ions. This system exhibits life-like properties, in particular a sequence of phase transitions between crystal-like with synchronous oscillations and gas-like states. This requires a feed of metabolic energy which is not present. To my view non-equilibrium thermodynamics with stochastic resonance feeding the energy is not enough to explain the finding.

One can develop a model for the system based on TGD inspired quantum biology. This involves the notion of magnetic body carrying dark matter identified as h_eff=n×h phases; a network of magnetic flux tubes (magnetic body) controlling biological body (now charged plastic balls) and responsible for coherence and synchrony (of the crystal-like phase now); the control of the oscillations of BB by cyclotron radiation (now the plastic ball system) resulting from decays of cyclotron condensates of charged particles (now protons and Ar ions). The source of metabolic energy would come from dark nucleosynthesis explaining nuclear transmutations occurring in living matter and "cold fusion" and serving as source of metabolic energy in prebiotic stage when the chemical energy storage had not yet emerged. Dark analogs of DNA, RNA, tRNA, and amino-acids are dark protons sequences realizing degeneracies of vertebrate genetic code are dark nuclei and can transform to ordinary nuclei and liberate nuclear binding energy so that the hen-egg question about which came first: metabolism or genetic code, is resolved: hen= egg.

Now I found a popular article "Sound waves direct particles to self-assemble, self-heal" telling about another particle system far from thermal equilibrium and exhibiting life like properties. Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) demonstrated how particles, floating on top of a glycerin-water solution, synchronize in response to acoustic waves blasted from a computer speaker. The article "Emergence of an enslaved phononic bandgap in a non-equilibrium pseudo-crystal" telling about the study is published in the journal Nature Materials.

In this case there is an energy feed to the system realized as a monochromatic sound wave. The system responds to an incoming sound wave and gradually the average response of the system which is in the beginning of the experiment essentially constant as function of wavelength develops a wave length gap in the response below the wave length of the incoming sound wave. The emergence of forbidden wavelengths can be interpreted as a synchronous response modellable as a reaction of damped oscillation to a driving force at resonance frequency. The video of the popular article shows how the wave length gap emerges in time scale of 45 minutes. Also the theoretical prediction for the response is given as a curve and is agrees rather nicely with the outcome.

The comment of the co-lead author Chad Ropp, a postdoctoral researcher in Zhang's group is following. "We show that individually 'dumb' particles can self-organize far from equilibrium by dissipating energy and emerge with a collective trait that is dynamically adaptive to and reflective of their environment. In this case, the particles followed the 'beat' of a sound wave generated from a computer speaker."

To my opinion "beat" cannot however mean here what it means usually since this requires that input acoustic signal would be superposition of signals with nearly same frequencies and beat would occur with frequency which is difference of these. This unless one interprets the acoustic signal as beat signal associated with the frequency difference.

The abstract of the article gives a more technical description about what happens.

Material systems that reside far from thermodynamic equilibrium have the potential to exhibit dynamic properties and behaviours resembling those of living organisms. Here we realize a non-equilibrium material characterized by a bandgap whose edge is enslaved to the wavelength of an external coherent drive. The structure dynamically self-assembles into an unconventional pseudo-crystal geometry that equally distributes momentum across elements. The emergent bandgap is bestowed with lifelike properties, such as the ability to self-heal to perturbations and adapt to sudden changes in the drive. We derive an exact analytical solution for both the spatial organization and the bandgap features, revealing the mechanism for enslavement. This work presents a framework for conceiving lifelike non-equilibrium materials and emphasizes the potential for the dynamic imprinting of material properties through external degrees of freedom.

The system has energy feed as acoustic wave (from the left in the video) which gradually shifts the system to the right. Therefore the far from equilibrium thermodynamics without stochastic resonance works satisfactorily. TGD vision might provide a competing quantum description.

Also now the system involves materials appearing in living matter. Glycerin relates closely to glycerol and (glycerol backbone appears in lipids serving as basic building bricks of cell membrane). Glycerin is dissolved in water, which is in a key role in TGD inspired quantum biology. Since I have only access to the abstract of the article, I do not know what is whether the particle are organic material too.

Can one apply the general quantum description to explain the frequency gap?

1. The metabolic energy feed is now by acoustic oscillations and should induce the phase transition generating magnetic flux tube network containing dark particles having h_eff= n× h responsible for the synchronous oscillations.
2. Quantum criticality at the level of the MB could make adaptation possible. The flux tubes with same ratio of L/S of length L and transversal area S scaling like h_eff/h=n so that L/S remains invariant under scalings of h_eff correspond to same magnetic energy and cyclotron energies. Adaptation would mean that cyclotron frequency for BE condensate of say protons at magnetic body becomes nearly equal to the frequency of sound wave by a suitable choice of n if the value of magnetic field strength is in reasonable range: this means that flux tubes tune their length and thickness by magnetic motor actions. Note that in pseudo-crystal phase exhibiting life-like aspects it would be MB which drives rather than sound wave. Cyclotron radiation from BE condensates at MB would drive the synchronous oscillations of particles at the nodes of flux tube network performing oscillations (generalization of Alfwen waves to oscillations of flux tube analogous to string vibrations).
3. The wavelength distribution of the response evolves from an asynchoronous response of the particles to acoustic wave to that corresponding to pseudo-crystal and dictated by the response of MB to acoustic wave. In the initial situation the response does not depend on λ. The response of MB affects the particle system only in a narrow band of wavelengths below λ=&lambda₀ and "freezes" it in this range.
4. The quantum model for the plastic ball system would suggests an analog of entrainment with the acoustic frequency occurring also in brain. Flux tube network would "freeze" the acoustic oscillations of the system of balls in the wavelength gap forcing them to oscillate in phase but with reduced amplitude. The energy would go to the Alfwen waves of MB analogous to lattice oscillations and having a wavelength band around the acoustic wavelength. Due to the "freezing" the amplitude of the oscillations becomes small in the gap. The energy distribution in the wavelength region outside the gap would not be affected.

   The analogs of Alfwen waves are realized as stringy oscillations of magnetic flux tubes at MB. Alfwen waves have a wavelength band around the acoustic wavelength. The wavelength band is analogous to energy bands associated with energy levels of atoms in solids.

5. The healing of the system would mean a regeneration of the MB under metabolic energy feed. The ability to react to sudden changes in environment might be understood in terms of the ability of MB to adapt in the proposed manner. It would be interesting to see how the system reacts to the change of the acoustic frequency. The model would require change of the value of n.

See the chapter Life-like properties observed in a very simple systems or the article with the same title.