There’s a mathematical law that dictates the exact geometric shape of the "Tree of Life" for every living thing on Earth.
bioRxiv · March 13, 2026 · 10.64898/2026.03.09.710612
Why it matters
The study proves that evolution isn't just random, but must follow a specific hyperbolic curvature to pack information into space. This geometric constant (1.245) held true across every species tested, from decade-old viruses to 3.8-billion-year-old cellular lineages.
From the abstract
Any process that generates information at a constant rate into a branching hierarchy faces a geometric packing problem: the number of distinguishable lineages grows exponentially, but Euclidean space grows only polynomially. We show that this tension forces a unique resolution. By deriving a geometric state equation from three physical postulates -- information flux, hierarchical topology, and geometric fidelity -- we prove that any such system must embed into a hyperbolic manifold of curvature