Because of the difficulty of estimating the complexity of biological reproduction of even the simplest cell, the minimal complexities of several simpler self-replicating systems are computed. These include viruses (both biological and computer, which require additional complex resources to replicate). Also considered are a proposed self-reproducing factory and two conceptual self-replicators. Because even some of those are difficult to evaluate, very, very low bounds are computed. Still, in all cases, the minimal complexities are enormous-more than all the quantum state changes in the entire history of the whole known universe in all time. Therefore, because biological reproduction is more complex, all origin-of-life proposals, including RNA hypotheses toward the first self-reproducing cell, must demonstrate how at least such minimal complexity could have accumulated beyond using simply trial-and-error.
Waldean Schulz (Thu,) studied this question.