Phase Change

Ice - life - love

Photo by Maxim Potkin ❄ on Unsplash

Ice

I am stuck.

I feel stuck; a glacier, impenetrable by time, moving with the tick and tock of decades rather than seconds. I am ice, frozen in an awkward position in life, one that seems inescapable. Neither here nor there, simply… stuck.

Yet, unknown to the ice, it can flow as water and fly as steam.

That change, from frost to flow, from stream to steam, seems impossibly distant until, suddenly, it arrives.

This arrival is called a phase change.

In physics, a phase change is the flip from one state of matter (solid, liquid, gaseous, plasma) to another without changing chemical identity - H₂O remains H₂O, whether it’s ice, water, or steam. Adding or removing energy (often in the form of heat) changes the organization of the H₂O molecules.

Steam hits cold glass and the boisterous, free-wheeling H₂O’s cool down (aka lose energy). Instead of ping-ponging like billiard balls, they begin tumbling around each other. Still separate, but more connected. Water. Drops of water glide to the ground, which cools further during a cold, lonesome night. Our life-supporting molecules slow down more until they snap together in a grid of strong hydrogen bonds. Water has these bonds too, but in ice, they are rigid and unforgiving. Water is molecules giving each other high fives; ice is clasping hands and not letting go.

The reverse happens when we add energy. The sun rises and the ice heats up. At first, nothing seems to happen, but the molecules are shaking with just a bit more energy. More heat, more energy, until - snap - hydrogen bonds incessantly break and reform in a beautiful chaos. Chains of ice become morning dew.

Water’s transformations are examples of first-order phase changes in which the absorption or dissipation of energy builds up to a sudden discontinuity.

This post is about more than ice.

Life

Life has its phase transitions too.

Maybe life itself was the result of a phase transition. A recent preprint argues that we can model the switch from non-life to life as a phase transition. And once life got going, more transitions followed. Famously, John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry described eight major transitions in evolution, all the way from replicating molecules to human society.

One of the major transitions is the rise of eukaryotes. Prokaryotes, like bacteria and archaea, lack a nucleus and other ‘little organs’ (organelles) , which means that there’s not a lot of internal organization. Molecules just… bumble around inside them. But, a little over 2 billion years ago, that changed. An archaea swallowed a bacterium and that set the trajectory toward eukaryotes (plants, animals, you). Eukaryotic cells have a nucleus that contains (most of) the DNA, and plenty of other organelles that provide spatial organization for the processes that keep the cell running.

The rest, as they say, is history.

A new study suggests that there is a ‘genetic phase change’ that underlies this major transition. Looking at genes of over 6,500 species, the scientists find that,

At the onset of the eukaryotic cell, however, mean protein length stabilizes around 500 amino acids. While genes continued growing at the same rate as before, this growth primarily involved noncoding sequences that complemented proteins in regulating gene activity. Our analysis indicates that this shift at the origin of the eukaryotic cell was due to an algorithmic phase transition…

In short (and on average), in the evolutionary history of prokaryotes, genes grew and the proteins those genes coded for grew more complex. But, in eukaryotes, while genes still grew, this was not reflected in the complexity of the proteins, but rather in the addition of more genetic regulatory ‘dials’.

Even in artificial life, we encounter phase transitions, write Google’s Blaise Agüera y Arcas and James Manyika,

The emergence of artificial life looks like a phase transition, as when water freezes or boils. But whereas conventional phases of matter are characterized by their statistical uniformity — an ordered atomic lattice for ice, random atomic positions for gas and somewhere in between for liquid — living matter is vastly more complex, exhibiting varied and purposeful structure at every scale.

Living matter is vastly more complex, they rightly state.

Do you know what else is really complicated?

People.

Love

If people are complicated, putting two of them together is asking for trouble (or bliss).

For example, romantic relationships know phase changes too. Recent research that combined four longitudinal studies found that long-term relationships ending in separation go through a decline in two phases. The preterminal phase is characterized by a minor but persistent drop in relationship satisfaction. But then there comes a tipping point with an accelerated decline — a phase change. This is the terminal decline, and, shockingly, not a single couple across the four studies (altogether thousands of couples followed for over a decade) made it through this phase together.

If something doesn’t feel right in a relationship, address it yesterday. You can come back, together, from the preterminal phase. Reframe, rethink, refind each other. Insert cliché about communication being key.

This is where the gloomy part of me would end this post, but he is distracted by a bounty of blessed almond butter, made by loving hands half a world away. Maybe their warmth is melting me.

Good relationships, the best relationships, are not strangers to phase changes. First, you meet. There is initial mutual interest, the excitement of getting to know little things about each other. A frisson of firsts, or phase one. But, that is the surface. To make it last long-term, we want depth. So we start seeing each other beyond dates, on normal days. On bad ones. Blind spots come peeking and insecurities rattle their chains. Show up for each other, have the tough conversations, and you find the magic in the mundane, or phase two. There is not a fancy restaurant in the world that can compete with making each other snort with laughter while doing groceries. Finally, you - intentionally, transparently - choose each other fully. You cement the bonds and settle into the safety of a shared orbit, or phase three. Maybe you decide to birth a baby planet or two and build your own little solar system.

None of this is easy. It’s challenging. A phase change, after all, requires a temporary and transformative discontinuity. But choose, truly choose each other, and you can be the glacier that holds back the storm, the sea that seeds new life, and the atmosphere that sparkles in a cold universe.

H₂O can be ice and water and steam.

One day, I will flow.

One day, I will fly.

I am ice, but that can change. Any day now.

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Have you been through a phase change lately? A shock of discontinuity? Perhaps this is where the world is at right now, so thanks for joining Gunnar’s glacier today.