Can a Living Creature Be as Big as a Galaxy?

Post by Koshkin » Sat, Aug 05, 2017, 9:57 PM UTC

21 wrote: post #96

Koshkin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow I am having hard time imagining a single-celled, synthetically created, non-water-based, sterile human being... I am not sure I understand the drive to redefine life beyond the life as we know it (i.e. what it actually is, as a fact), the drive that leaves one in what can only be seen as the domain of fiction at best (and pseudo-science at worst).

Do you believe its possible for a computer, more specifically an Artificial General Intelligence, to be "alive" (if one such thing ever gets built)?

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 05, 2017, 10:13 PM UTC

diminish wrote: post #100

stareatgoats wrote: post #88

The question is not correctly formed: what we really want to know is if there are life-like beings that could operate on a totally different scale than ours (both time and size wise, including viruses and whales here). Self centered thinking, i.e. restricting our inquiry to only include protein-based lifeforms or other qualities required on our scale obviously prevents us from having the required open minded mindset.

states, companies, religious communities, planets as whole ecosystems can all be construed as "single being"s.

Post by seszett » Sat, Aug 05, 2017, 10:32 PM UTC

Koshkin wrote: post #74

21 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should expand your definition of life to not require proteins. From Wikipedia: > From a physics perspective, living beings are thermodynamic systems with an organized molecular structure that can reproduce itself and evolve as survival dictates. ... A major strength of this definition is that it distinguishes life by the evolutionary process rather than its chemical composition.

There are a few things that are wrong with Wikipedia's (re)definition of life; one thing I would like to mention is that what is missing from it is that a "living being" cannot exist outside of a pretty rich (and sufficiently dense) material environment, which 'space' as such is not. Incidentally, a galaxy-size dense environment (and the creature itself) would collapse into a bunch of stars and black holes "in no tim…

Post by seszett » Sat, Aug 05, 2017, 10:38 PM UTC

laumars wrote: post #68

Koshkin wrote: post #62

Since proteins cannot exist in space, then, using the currently accepted definition of "life" at the basic level as the complex of processes that allow protein molecules to exist, then the answer must be 'no'. On the other hand, it is an interesting mental exercise to also consider other reasons why such creature might be impossible. One reason could be because the time needed for such creature to grow from something…

There are animals on Earth with a decentralised nervous systems (most famously the octopus) and there isn't any confusion about whether they're classed as one animal or multiple ones.

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 05, 2017, 11:18 PM UTC

eljimmy wrote: post #50

tsunamifury wrote: post #39

It's answer of "No" is predicated on two assumptions: that the lifeform is not colonial in nature and that time is not a localized phenomenon. While on the surface that later assumption might sound absurd, our universe could very well be a Local Bubble of time. Time could even be a biological function of a higher dimensional being that is the size of the universe. There is also no way to disprove that without observi…

Thinking about what exists outside the universe always makes my brain feel weird. It seems impossible for your thoughts to imagine anything because your thoughts themselves are bound by the universe itself.