Plasma Comes Alive

j_hirny writes "So, it seems that the widely acclaimed theory of how life begun, during hundreds of millions of years is, at least, not the only one which is being researched. As New Scientist report, a physicist managed to create life-alike beings made of plasma. They can replicate, grow and duplicate. They don't have amino-acids or DNA strains, of course, yet they may reveal something new about life's beginnings."

Comments

Plasma Aliens

[Zarkonnen]

This is interesting in the light of speculation about life-forms living on the surface of suns. (As described, for example, in David Brin's Sundiver.)

Considering that a the surface of a sun itself consists of plasma, it's not improbable that spheres like in the experiment get formed there all the time. The question is whether there is any way those spheres could attain a more complex form of internal organisation, or if they remain stuck at that basic level.

Re:Plasma Aliens

[vidarh]

In "Starmaker", Olaf Stapledon, 1937, wrote "Stars are best regarded as living organisms, but organisms which are physiologically and psychologically of a very peculiar kind. The outer and middle layers of a mature star apparently consists of 'tissues' woven of currents of incandescent gases. These gasous tissues live and maintain the stellar consciousness by intercepting part of the immense flood of energy that wells from the congested and furiously active interior of the star". So plasma as living cells isn't exactly a new thing in scifi.

Any references older than 1937? :)

(Btw. Starmaker is quite interesting, though I find Stapledons writing rather tedious - it's essentially fictional history of life in the universe, from beginning to end; spanning billions of years in a few hundred pages)

Not!

[mcrbids]

I'd consider that one of the definitions of "life" could be "a pattern that attempts its own continuance despite destructive obstacles".

Reproduction is simply a continuance of that pattern. Think about it:

1) loud noise == cat runs to preserve itself.
2) War == baby boomer generation.

ad nasueum. What we have is a curiousity of bare physics, nothing more.

Re:No

[NickFitz]

...pathetic excuses for people with a dark soul that has been invaded by satan to replace God with primitive ideas

What, like ignoring the intellectual faculties given you by the Creator in favour of slavish devotion to some ancient collection of fairy tales?

No offence, but experiments with plasma aren't anything like as primitive as some of the things my Christian friends believe, such as the two creation myths in Genesis (although they never seem to have noticed that there are two, they just run with the cute serpent story).

Just my $0.02. You may now inform me that I am damned.

Re:A bit of wordplay here

[Brad Mace]

I agree they're stretching quite a bit. For one, communication isn't happening unless some action is taken (or considered) in response to a message. Vibrating is not an intelligent or even an instinctual response; it's a basic physical property.

the high temperature needed to form doesn't seem like a major issue since at the very least volcanos and geysers could provide such an environment.

The plasma bubbles are interesting, but they don't seem to have even a wild guess about how they could have led to more typical forms of life.

Yes, yes you are.

[wirelessbuzzers]

Disclaimer: I am Christian, but I believe that the creation account in the bible is metaphorical.

This orchestration of life is almost certainly bullshit. Even if a life-form could evolve from his bubbles, it would not share many of the features of life on earth. These things are pretty much miniature ball lightning.

However, many of the experiments into the origin of life are quite reasonable. Scientists have a pretty good idea of the environment about the time that life arose (at least, the time it arose if you trust fossil evidence). So they try to simulate things like lightning strikes or tidal pools in a similar environment, and they find that it creates many of the prerequisites for life "as we know it," including amino acids, nucleic acids, and microscopic spheres bounded by structures siimilar to prokaryotic membranes (no, I'm not talking about the plasma experiments).

Such experiments do not have humans "designing" life, but merely trying to recreate conditions which could have started it.

In any case, development of life this way can still be consistent with a God that created the universe, and possibly guided the development of life.

Ball Lightning

[God of Lemmings]

Gee. Why am I not surprised by this. Perhaps because I've heard of ball lightning ages ago. I find it odd that this article on Sanduloviciu doesn't even mention anything about it either.

More interesting references.
http://www.amasci.com/tesla/balligntn .txt
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/tesla/ballgtn.h tml

Here's some more crap on your shoe...

[Eldairn]

I agree with iCat. Go get an education. A real one this time.

Anyway, on to something on a slight side note. Here's a great rant by esteemed author Ben Bova. He gives a good argument on why teaching creationism is a load of bull, and that all the agguments against evolution and for creationism are ultimately flawed. Very enlightening.

Re:Neat

[Bingo Foo]

The guy is saying that he found objects that fit the criteria we have for living cells.

Then perhaps we should think carefully about whether we should use a definition of life that admits such phenomena. Aristotle's definition of "man" needed to be revised when a counterexample was pointed out.