A tiny creature again raises the question: What is life?

"An organism must consume energy and produce waste, a process called metabolism."

With this constraint on the meaning of living things, I wonder if a virus qualifies since a virus is simply DNA with a celly wall or membrane around it. It doens't really eat or excrete.

Coluber


I think bacteria is a better representation of life than a virus.

BBB

Bacteria, without question, is living, but I wonder about viruses.

I suspect that we will find microbes infesting our entire solar system if we ever manage to explore that far. Microbes are found thriving in the most inhospitable paces on Earth even without the benefits of water and oxygen.

BBB
I found some useful information here:
http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/institute/focus_groups_detail.cfm?ID=8

Plumes of water have been seen ejecting from a Saturnian moom. One of Jupiters moons has a liquid ocean almost 60 miles deep. There is water on Mars. I think it's only a matter of e very short time until we discover alien forms of life even in our own solar system.

Isn't all life composed of chemical molecules? I mean, when you break it down far enough, we're Ozygen, Hydrogen, Calcium, etc. So, were does life stop, indeed. I wouldn't call it so much of a wide gulf, but more of a deep noman's land - a sort of a grey fuzziness.

In my totally uneducated opinion.