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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 21: Stochastic Thermodynamics
DY 21.7: Hauptvortrag
Dienstag, 10. März 2026, 11:15–11:45, ZEU/0114
Why Life Is Hot — •Tanja Schilling1, Patrick Warren2, and Wilson Poon3 — 1Institute of Physics, University of Freiburg, Hermann-Herder-Straße 3, D-79104 Freiburg, Germany — 2The Hartree Centre, STFC Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington, WA4 4AD, United Kingdom — 3School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, Peter Guthrie Tait Road, Edinburgh EH9 3FD, United Kingdom
Biological organisms use strongly driven cycles to optimize the output of chemical reactions. This mechanism is versatile, it is employed to meet a large variety of cost functions such as robustness, precision, or sensitivity to external stimuli. However, the improvements over the equilibrium behaviour come at the cost of increased production of heat. We show that the heat generated by this mechanism constitutes a large part of the total heat produced by living organisms. Further we demonstrate that the effect saturates and that nature operates near saturation. Hence we conclude that the heat production of living organisms is consequence of their need to function accurately and to adapt flexibly to varying demands.
Keywords: Biophysics; Non-equilibrium statistical physics; Stochastic thermodynamics