astonishing scientific discovery du jour

I one read a concatcenation of definitions of Life, starting with Heraclitus in the 6th century and ending with Eric Drexler et al. Possibly this is one of those words whose meaning expands or contracts according to the capacity of the thinker.

Here it is at http://baharna.com/philos/life.htm

For me the most mind expanding definition of Life was from a science book, by whom I forget, which gave a new context on the now-commonplace notion of Life as Digital Information; the context was that Life is any orderly chemical system that emerges in a physical range of the dissipation of heat. The attempt to situate Life in thermodynamics reflects the wider desire to contextualise the complications of reality into ever simpler terms.

Anyway, until yesterday I drew the line between Life and not-Life at DNA replication. That is to say, RNA enscription in viruses in my opinion is not life. But I was reading John Robert Marlow's novel Nano as I walked down a street when I learnt something remarkable: we have lifeforms that don't even have RNA!!

I had to stop and take a few deep breaths at this revelation. The implications are too astounding to go into here and now in detail. Suffice it to say, if bacteria operate the macrobiosphere that we occupy, it is fair to assume that nanobes, atomic sized lifeforms, in turn manage the microbiological level of the biosphere. But the thing is, these critters are machines. So now the simplest explanation for the existence of squillions of little robots in and on everything is that they are an ancient form of nanotechnology.

For glossies of these, go to:

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/index.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/nanobes/nanoimages.html

For context:

http://www.johnrobertmarlow.com