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This is not so much about the understanding of life as it is about the definition of life.
by jacquesm 1y ago
This is not so much about the understanding of life as it is about the definition of life.
- IAmBroom 1y agoEh, you're quibbling with words. We're getting closer to the quantum (indivisible) definition of life, and that's understanding.
- willis936 1y agoI don't think that they are. The term life, as it's currently defined, is not very useful. The reality is that there is a very colorful spectrum of microscopic biology and that a single bin of "alive" and "not alive" is like trying to paint the mona lisa with a single pixel. This scishow video gives a good look at the tip of the iceberg. https://youtu.be/FXqmzKwBB_w https://youtu.be/FXqmzKwBB_w
- Noaidi 1y agoAs they said in another comment, life is the ability to decrease entropy. That definition would tie in quantum mechanics.
- tshaddox 1y agoI don’t think a precise definition of life is particularly important or of particular interest to most biologists. This thing is life in the sense that it’s definitely in scope of being studied by biologists (same is true for viruses, of course). And the reason it is speculated that it may be crucial to understanding life is mentioned in the article: “This organism might be a fascinating living fossil—an evolutionary waypoint that managed to hang on.”