What Is Life? Is Death Real?
So what is the difference between you and a rock? This seems like an easy, even stupid question. But even the smartest people on earth have no idea where to draw the line between living and...
==========
Life is fundamentally different from dead stuff—or is it? Physicist Erwin Schrödinger defined life this way: Living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium. What does this mean? Let’s pretend that your download folder is the universe. It started orderly and got more and more chaotic over time. By investing energy, you can create order and clean it up. This is what living things do. But what is life? Every living thing on this planet is made of cells. Basically, a cell is a protein-based robot too small to feel or experience anything. It has the properties we just assign to life: it has a wall that separates it from the surroundings, creating order; it regulates itself and maintains a constant state; it eats stuff to stay alive; it grows a...
==========
Life is fundamentally different from dead stuff—or is it? Physicist Erwin Schrödinger defined life this way: Living things avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium. What does this mean? Let’s pretend that your download folder is the universe. It started orderly and got more and more chaotic over time. By investing energy, you can create order and clean it up. This is what living things do. But what is life? Every living thing on this planet is made of cells. Basically, a cell is a protein-based robot too small to feel or experience anything. It has the properties we just assign to life: it has a wall that separates it from the surroundings, creating order; it regulates itself and maintains a constant state; it eats stuff to stay alive; it grows a...
