Broken Symmetries in Living Matter

Explore a scientific lecture that delves into the fundamental principles governing living matter and its unique nonequilibrium properties. Discover experimental tools and theoretical frameworks developed to understand how active processes in biological systems lead to complex behaviors and self-organization. Learn about time-reversal symmetry breaking at the individual component level and its impact on emergent behaviors across different scales. Examine key concepts including the thermodynamic arrow of time, spatiotemporal organization of signaling protein patterns, and odd elasticity. Gain insights into how continuous energy consumption by interacting components generates motion and mechanical stress in living systems, contributing to biological complexity. Presented by MIT's Nikta Fakhri at IPAM's Modeling Multi-Scale Collective Intelligences Workshop, this talk illuminates the intersection of physics and biology in understanding the dynamics of living matter.