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Date Posted: 23:04:30 08/14/07 Tue
Author: Roger
Subject: Re: Inorganic material is alive...
In reply to: iteo 's message, "Inorganic material is alive..." on 19:50:33 08/14/07 Tue

>Interesting report:
>
>New studies of dust that form lifelike structures
>suggest that extraterrestrial life may not be
>carbon-based at all.
>
>From the Institute of Physics press release:
>
>Quite bizarrely, not only do these helical strands
>interact in a counterintuitive way in which like can
>attract like, but they also undergo changes that are
>normally associated with biological molecules, such as
>DNA and proteins, say the researchers. They can, for
>instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of
>the original structure. These new structures can also
>interact to induce changes in their neighbours and
>they can even evolve into yet more structures as less
>stable ones break down, leaving behind only the
>fittest structures in the plasma.
>
>So, could helical clusters formed from interstellar
>dust be somehow alive? "These complex, self-organized
>plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties
>to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living
>matter," says (V.N.) Tsytovich, "they are autonomous,
>they reproduce and they evolve".
>
><a rel=nofollow target=_blank href="http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/14/inorganic_life.htm">http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/14/inorganic_life.htm</a>
>l

Insofar as I can understand this, it's not so much alive as mimicking some of the attributes of life. It is not exactly sentient life, and it may be preliminary to call it life.

There are some things that appear to exhibit the superficial signs of life, but may indeed be simple, unfeeling, unthinking, inorganice collections of chemical reactions. This seems to happen amongst Republicans.

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