A profoundly fundamental question at the interface between physics and biology remains open: what are the minimum requirements for emergence of complex behaviour from nonliving systems? Here, we address this question and report complex behaviour of tens to thousands of colloidal nanoparticles in a system designed to be as plain as possible: the system is driven far from equilibrium by ultrafast laser pulses that create spatiotemporal temperature gradients, inducing Marangoni flow that drags particles towards aggregation; strong Brownian motion, used as source of fluctuations, opposes aggregation. Nonlinear feedback mechanisms naturally arise between flow, aggregate and Brownian motion, allowing fast external control with minimal intervention. Consequently, complex behaviour, analogous to those seen in living organisms, emerges, whereby aggregates can self-sustain, self-regulate, self-replicate, self-heal and can be transferred from one location to another, all within seconds. Aggregates can comprise only one pattern or bifurcated patterns can coexist, compete, endure or perish.

Hyperuniformity is evolving to become a unifying concept that can help classify and characterize equilibrium and nonequilibrium states of matter. Therefore, understanding the extent of hyperuniformity in dissipative systems is critical. Here, we study the dynamic evolution of hyperuniformity in a driven dissipative colloidal system. We experimentally show and numerically verify that the hyperuniformity of a colloidal crystal is robust against various lattice imperfections and environmental perturbations. This robustness even manifests during crystal disassembly as the system switches between strong (class I), logarithmic (class II), weak (class III), and non-hyperuniform states. To aid analyses, we developed a comprehensive computational toolbox, enabling real-time characterization of hyperuniformity in real- and reciprocal-spaces together with the evolution of several order metric features, and measurements showing the effect of external perturbations on the spatiotemporal distribution of the particles. Our findings provide a new framework to understand the basic principles that drive a dissipative system to a hyperuniform state.