Scientists claim that if we ever find extraterrestrial life, it may be so unrecognisable that it needs a new term. But lyfe is not as alien as it looks
Mr Spock never actually said to Captain Kirk: “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” (That comes from the 1987 single “Star Trekkin”.) But the principle is sound. If we ever find extraterrestrial life, will we even recognise it as life at all? It might be so alien that it’s actually “lyfe”.
“Lyfe” is a recent scientific coinage defined as any system that combines four processes: “dissipation, autocatalysis, homeostasis, and learning”. Life in the familiar sense is merely “the instance of lyfe that we are familiar with on Earth”, but other much weirder types might exist.
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