Multiple Origins of Life on Earth: A Physical Scenario Based on the Phase Topology of Water

Abstract

We are asked to think that all life on Earth had one ancestor – LUCA. But what if it's a mistake? What if life arose not just once, but hundreds and thousands of times—in every hydrothermal vent, on every clay surface, in every zone where water became orderly? In this article, we show that LUCA is not a physical reality, but a mathematical abstraction. The real story is about multiple generations, parallel paths, and the fact that life is an inevitable physical process, not a unique accident. We trace how water created tetrasignatures, condensate cycles, and protocells in different niches, and why all these lineages share the same genetic code—not because they shared a common ancestor, but because the physics of water is the same everywhere. The article is based on the physical mechanism described in detail in the paper (Lagoda, 2026#14).