Scientists have found a new way to stir their primordial soup to get the building blocks of life to start assembling. “[Their] study unites two prominent origin of life theories – the ‘RNA world’, where self-replicating RNA is proposed to be fundamental, and the ‘thioester world’, in which thioesters are seen as the energy source for the earliest forms of life”.
Can someone ELI5 where the line is drawn between “alive” and “not alive” self-replicating things?
Put 5 biologists in a room and ask this question and you’ll get 5 different answers :)
But generally you’d be looking for at least some signs of:
- using external energy to manage internal entropy (metabolism)
- reproduction or perpetuation
Fire really fucks things up, because it’s really easy to accidentally define it as living.
No cellular organization
There’s no reason to think life on other planets would specifically have cells. That’s a rule we made up specifically because of fire.
Depends if they replicate autonomously. Viruses don’t, bacteria do.
