  The existence of life is one of the most fundamental problems of
astrophysics. The intriguing existence of progressively complex and apparently
improbable living beings should be a general tendency of life in the Universe.
We are looking for general physical laws governing the growth of complexity in
any astrophysical environment. We posit the existence of a vital scalar field.
This scalar is sensitive to the gradient of the inverse of specific entropy,
such that its distribution tends to very high values in the interior of living
beings. Besides the classical mutations, vital field driven mutations only
produce decrements of entropy. The field equations give rise to the existence
of vital waves. This theory is able to deal with both the origin of life and
the evolution of life. We show that the growth of complexity is accelerated by
the vital field.
