Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The origin of life is commonly treated as an erratic and contingent outcome of chemical evolution, lacking any governing principle comparable to those found in fundamental physics. Despite extensive experimental and theoretical effort, no general law has been identified that constrains how inorganic matter progresses toward selfreplicating, evolving systems. This absence of structure has reinforced the view that biological emergence is largely accidental, shaped only retrospectively by natural selection. The present work examines the possibility that life formation is not unconstrained but instead biased by a persistent physical mechanism linking planetary-scale processes to molecular organization. The object of study is a coupling between deep Earth dehydration chemistry, electromagnetic forcing, and aqueous condensation reactions, investigated as a unified physical system replacing standard and assumed isolated phenomena. It is found that dehydration reactions within the interior of the Earth generate ion-rich water under sustained energetic stress, and that the delivery of such water to near-surface environments alters the chemical potential of water and the kinetics of condensation reactions. Under these conditions, polymer-forming pathways become admissible in aqueous media without invoking biological catalysts. In parallel, recurring geometric constraints-characterized by axial organization, pairing, and repeated bifurcation-are identified across molecular, developmental, and organism scales, suggesting a restricted space of stable biological configurations. The analysis proceeds through standard thermodynamic relations, kinetic estimates, and geometric stability arguments, without reliance on empirical fitting or post hoc selection. Evolutionary processes are retained as selective filters, but are repositioned as operating within a space of forms preconditioned by physical and geometric constraints. The results support the conclusion that life formation may be governed by a small set of persistent physical biases in the replacement of unconstrained contingency. Life is thereby interpreted as a recurrent outcome of planetary chemical and electromagnetic evolution, arising wherever sustained forcing and geometric stability coincide.
Author: Bruno Wayne Salter
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7127096187