Life is not complicated you are summary

A team of scientists at Bilkent has designed the simplest experimental system to date to identify the minimum requirements for the emergence of complexity. Their work is reported in the current issue of Nature Communications. While it is universally recognized that human beings are complex systems, living a complex life in a complex environment, very little is known about how complexity emerges and how it can be controlled. Much of scientists' understanding of this matter comes from model systems such as cellular automata, which are so artificial that they have little relevance to actual physical systems. In contrast, real-life systems are so complicated that it is difficult to pinpoint the essential factors for the emergence of complex dynamics. The work done by the Bilkent researchers has revealed that simply shining a laser onto a colloidal solution is enough to observe a very rich set of complex behaviors, showing that particles can form autocatalytic aggregates that can self-regulate, self-heal, self-replicate and migrate. Quite similar to living organisms, these aggregates can also take very many different forms patterns ; these forms then compete for limited resources, which often ends with the survival of the fittest and the "death" of less successful competitors.