>>5087
Relevant part
>This means clumps of atoms surrounded by a bath at some temperature, like the atmosphere or the ocean, should tend over time to arrange themselves to resonate better and better with the sources of mechanical, electromagnetic or chemical work in their environments
If the theory behind this is correct, it would probably rather lead to minerals forming that absorb a lot of light.
(There certainly is an *evolutionary* advantage to being an efficient heat engine, i.e. absorb sunlight and radiate excessive heat efficiently, so one wouldn't need any new physics to explain what self-replicators tend to look like, once they are around.)
It is very much possible btw that Earth is one of very few planets in the universe to develop life at all. Emergence of self-replicators might therefore not be a once-in-ten-billion-years-per-planet-surface event, but might be billions of times more rare.