Living things are composed of biochemical molecules, formed mainly from a few core chemical elements. All living things contain two types of large molecule, proteins and nucleic acids, the latter usually both DNA and RNA: these carry the information needed by each species, including the instructions to make each type of protein. The proteins, in turn, serve as the machinery which carries out the many chemical processes of life. The cell is the structural and functional unit of life. Smaller organisms, including prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea), consist of small single cells. Larger organisms, mainly eukaryotes, can consist of single cells or may be multicellular with more complex structure. Life is confirmed only on Earth but extraterrestrial life is thought probable. Artificial life is being simulated and explored by scientists and engineers.

The definition of life has long been a challenge for scientists and philosophers.[2][3][4] This is partially because life is a process, not a substance.[5][6][7] This is complicated by a lack of knowledge of the characteristics of living entities, if any, that may have developed outside Earth.[8][9] Philosophical definitions of life have also been put forward, with similar difficulties on how to distinguish living things from the non-living.[10] Legal definitions of life have been debated, though these generally focus on the decision to declare a human dead, and the legal ramifications of this decision.[11] At least 123 definitions of life have been compiled.[12]


Des 39;ree Life Mp3 Download


Download 🔥 https://urluso.com/2y7ZKF 🔥



Since there is no consensus for a definition of life, most current definitions in biology are descriptive. Life is considered a characteristic of something that preserves, furthers or reinforces its existence in the given environment. This implies all or most of the following traits:[4][13][14][15][16][17]

From a physics perspective, an organism is a thermodynamic system with an organised molecular structure that can reproduce itself and evolve as survival dictates.[21][22] Thermodynamically, life has been described as an open system which makes use of gradients in its surroundings to create imperfect copies of itself.[23] Another way of putting this is to define life as "a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution", a definition adopted by a NASA committee attempting to define life for the purposes of exobiology, based on a suggestion by Carl Sagan.[24][25] This definition, however, has been widely criticized because according to it, a single sexually reproducing individual is not alive as it is incapable of evolving on its own.[26] The reason for this potential flaw is that "NASA's definition" refers to life as a phenomenon, not a living individual, which makes it incomplete.[27] Alternative definitions based on the notion of life as a phenomenon and a living individual have been proposed as continuum of a self-maintainable information, and a distinct element of this continuum, respectively. A major strength of this approach is that it defines life in terms of mathematics and physics, avoiding biological vocabulary.[27]

Others take a living systems theory viewpoint that does not necessarily depend on molecular chemistry. One systemic definition of life is that living things are self-organizing and autopoietic (self-producing). Variations of this include Stuart Kauffman's definition as an autonomous agent or a multi-agent system capable of reproducing itself, and of completing at least one thermodynamic work cycle.[28] This definition is extended by the evolution of novel functions over time.[29]

Death is the termination of all vital functions or life processes in an organism or cell.[30][31] One of the challenges in defining death is in distinguishing it from life. Death would seem to refer to either the moment life ends, or when the state that follows life begins.[31] However, determining when death has occurred is difficult, as cessation of life functions is often not simultaneous across organ systems.[32] Such determination, therefore, requires drawing conceptual lines between life and death. This is problematic because there is little consensus over how to define life. The nature of death has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical inquiry. Many religions maintain faith in either a kind of afterlife or reincarnation for the soul, or resurrection of the body at a later date.[33]

Whether or not viruses should be considered as alive is controversial.[34][35] They are most often considered as just gene coding replicators rather than forms of life.[36] They have been described as "organisms at the edge of life"[37] because they possess genes, evolve by natural selection,[38][39] and replicate by making multiple copies of themselves through self-assembly. However, viruses do not metabolise and they require a host cell to make new products. Virus self-assembly within host cells has implications for the study of the origin of life, as it may support the hypothesis that life could have started as self-assembling organic molecules.[40][41]

This account is consistent with teleological explanations of life, which account for phenomena in terms of purpose or goal-directedness. Thus, the whiteness of the polar bear's coat is explained by its purpose of camouflage. The direction of causality (from the future to the past) is in contradiction with the scientific evidence for natural selection, which explains the consequence in terms of a prior cause. Biological features are explained not by looking at future optimal results, but by looking at the past evolutionary history of a species, which led to the natural selection of the features in question.[51]

Vitalism is the belief that there is a non-material life-principle. This originated with Georg Ernst Stahl (17th century), and remained popular until the middle of the 19th century. It appealed to philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Wilhelm Dilthey,[59] anatomists like Xavier Bichat, and chemists like Justus von Liebig.[60] Vitalism included the idea that there was a fundamental difference between organic and inorganic material, and the belief that organic material can only be derived from living things. This was disproved in 1828, when Friedrich Whler prepared urea from inorganic materials.[61] This Whler synthesis is considered the starting point of modern organic chemistry. It is of historical significance because for the first time an organic compound was produced in inorganic reactions.[60]

During the 1850s Hermann von Helmholtz, anticipated by Julius Robert von Mayer, demonstrated that no energy is lost in muscle movement, suggesting that there were no "vital forces" necessary to move a muscle.[62] These results led to the abandonment of scientific interest in vitalistic theories, especially after Eduard Buchner's demonstration that alcoholic fermentation could occur in cell-free extracts of yeast.[63] Nonetheless, belief still exists in pseudoscientific theories such as homoeopathy, which interprets diseases and sickness as caused by disturbances in a hypothetical vital force or life force.[64]

The age of Earth is about 4.54 billion years.[65] Life on Earth has existed for at least 3.5 billion years,[66][67][68][69] with the oldest physical traces of life dating back 3.7 billion years.[70][71] Estimates from molecular clocks, as summarized in the TimeTree public database, place the origin of life around 4.0 billion years ago.[72] Hypotheses on the origin of life attempt to explain the formation of a universal common ancestor from simple organic molecules via pre-cellular life to protocells and metabolism.[73] In 2016, a set of 355 genes from the last universal common ancestor was tentatively identified.[74]

The biosphere is postulated to have developed, from the origin of life onwards, at least some 3.5 billion years ago.[75] The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes biogenic graphite found in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks from Western Greenland[70] and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone from Western Australia.[71] More recently, in 2015, "remains of biotic life" were found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia.[66] In 2017, putative fossilised microorganisms (or microfossils) were announced to have been discovered in hydrothermal vent precipitates in the Nuvvuagittuq Belt of Quebec, Canada that were as old as 4.28 billion years, the oldest record of life on Earth, suggesting "an almost instantaneous emergence of life" after ocean formation 4.4 billion years ago, and not long after the formation of the Earth 4.54 billion years ago.[76]

The diversity of life on Earth is a result of the dynamic interplay between genetic opportunity, metabolic capability, environmental challenges,[91] and symbiosis.[92][93][94] For most of its existence, Earth's habitable environment has been dominated by microorganisms and subjected to their metabolism and evolution. As a consequence of these microbial activities, the physical-chemical environment on Earth has been changing on a geologic time scale, thereby affecting the path of evolution of subsequent life.[91] For example, the release of molecular oxygen by cyanobacteria as a by-product of photosynthesis induced global changes in the Earth's environment. Because oxygen was toxic to most life on Earth at the time, this posed novel evolutionary challenges, and ultimately resulted in the formation of Earth's major animal and plant species. This interplay between organisms and their environment is an inherent feature of living systems.[91]

As advances in microscopy enabled detailed study of cells and microorganisms, new groups of life were revealed, and the fields of cell biology and microbiology were created. These new organisms were originally described separately in protozoa as animals and protophyta/thallophyta as plants, but were united by Ernst Haeckel in the kingdom Protista; later, the prokaryotes were split off in the kingdom Monera, which would eventually be divided into two separate groups, the Bacteria and the Archaea. This led to the six-kingdom system and eventually to the current three-domain system, which is based on evolutionary relationships.[120] However, the classification of eukaryotes, especially of protists, is still controversial.[121] 006ab0faaa

fahrenheit to celsius formula

rainbow wallpaper

free pool games for android download

the beatles rock band pc download

don toliver life of a don zip album download