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The EvoGrid
From The EvoGrid: The Evolution Technology Grid
Evolution Technology Grid
| Our Research Paper |
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| The EvoGrid: Simulating Pre-Biotic Emergent Complexity |
| EvoGrid The Movies |
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What is the EvoGrid?
The EvoGrid is a worldwide, cross-disciplinary effort to create an abstract, yet plausible simulation of the chemical origins of life on Earth. One could think of this as an artificial origin of life experiment. Our strategy is to employ a large number of computers in a grid to simulate a digital primordial soup along with a distributed set of computers acting as observers looking into that grid. These observers, modeled after the very successful @Home scientific computation projects, will be looking for signs of emergent complexity and reporting back to the central grid.
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The Near Future
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The Prototype 2009 is an attempt to get a working chemical simulator in place that can process a wide variety of variable initial conditions, as well as provide a useful testbed for distributed chemical simulation and analysis.The prototype will use a distributed processing method, by running simulations in parallel, providing different initial conditions to each parallel instance. Additionally, simulation analysis will be performed separately to simulation, allowing for load balancing between data generation and data analysis.
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Prototype2009: Alpha 10-01 released. Images for VMWare available.
The Far Future
We hope that one day simulated exploration of environments and situations that cannot be easily reproduced in the laboratory will allow production of artificially evolved pseudo-life-forms.
Why simulate?
- Artificial evolution allows for development of systems that are capable across the range of possible conditions.
- Simulation would allow automated testing of both the expected conditions as well as variations that cannot be reproduced under laboratory circumstances.
- Simulation could be performed at speeds greater then real time, providing results faster.
How did we begin?
| The EvoGrid Question |
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 Feb 16, 2009: Bruce Damer's presentation (download 33MB MP3) for transfer to PhD candidacy. Play Presentation: |
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Oct 2008: Divine Action and Natural Selection: Science, Faith and Evolution launched. Features Chapter "The God Detector" on EvoGrid concept by Bruce Damer with dialogue by Tom Barbalet. |
In 1996 Bruce Damer founded an organization called Biota.org to serve as a catalyst bringing diverse communities together around the theme of the origin of life, software that simulates life-like properties, artificial-life platforms, synthetic biology, and artistic and science fiction visions. Four conferences were held, the first at the site of the Burgess Shale in 1997, and featured notable figures as Douglas Adams, Richard Dawkins, Karl Sims, Tom Ray, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker and others. After a decade of work with NASA on building open source 3D simulations, Bruce and an international team are coming together to develop another endeavor for Biota.org, Project EvoGrid. "EvoGrid" is a short form of "Evolution Technology Grid" and will take a bottom-up approach to the challenge of merging biology with technology.
Find earlier background on the EvoGrid project here.
Sign up for the Biota Podcasts with some discussion of the EvoGrid.
Sign up on the Biota mailing list.
A project of Biota.org