Stanford researchers solve a mystery of dancing droplets

This was shown in a Ted talk by Martin Hanczyc http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_lif...

It shows that there is no fine line between life and non life and life is more like a spectrum with complex life on one side and a simple life-less item like a rock on the other side.

This (derivative) article has some cool animated GIFs that show the effect in action: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/04/dancing-droplets/

Reminds me of SmoothLife, a variation on Conway's Game of Life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJe9H6qS82I

Give them 3rd dimension (ie. water tank), make droplet that can grow and divide and maybe you've got origins of life.

But then you would lose the evaporation that is needed for this phenomenon to occur.

Weightlessness could give 3d with evaporation.

Evaporation could be replaced by any type diffusion in this system. I imagine a similar process could arise out of difference in salt concentration.

Edit: Updated to clarify the relationship between evaporation and diffusion.

It is a phase transition, it takes energy to evaporate because of the change in entropy/volume (from Clausius Clapeyron).