What are the physics of life?

Answer 1

Nearly (if not literally) every aspect of physices goes into the formation of life. Starting with life its self, life can be recognized as an extremely complex chain of chemical reactions (inside your cells, chemical reactions are constantly taking place to repair old parts of cells or to form new cells). These chemical reactions can be explained through quantum physics, particularly Quantum Electrodynamics, or QED. QED can explain how and why all chemical reactions take place. From a larger scope, life as we know it can only exist under very specific conditions. For instance,we need, sunlight, to allow plants to grow and thus sustaine the ecosystem, an ozone in the atmosphere, to protect us from various types of radiation, and of course, gravity to keep us on the ground, hold down the atmosphere, etc. All of these components to the environment have their own physical principles. Newton's laws can explain the gravity from the earth. Keplers laws explain how the earth stays in orbit. Nuclear physics (in this case quantum chromodynamics, or QCD) can explain how the sun emits the different forms of radiation (such as visable light) that plants photosythesise (their leaves catch light and use it to cause chemical reactions that among other things, make glucose, a type of sugar). QED can again explain how the ozone shields us from harmful radiation.