Google creates self-replicating life from digital ‘primordial soup’

A self-replicating form of artificial life has arisen from a digital “primordial soup” of random data, despite a lack of explicit rules or goals to encourage such behaviour. Researchers believe it is possible that more sophisticated versions of the experiment could yield more advanced digital organisms, and if they did, the findings could shed light on the mechanisms behind the emergence of biological life on Earth.

While the process of evolution is well understood, little is known about how inert molecules first came together to form life.…