by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright May 2025
Characteristics of life on earth
Comparing robot evolution to biologic life evolution
Why did having the male/female system become such a widespread way of handling design changes in life on earth?
Here is a list of characteristics of life on earth. How many of these will also apply to what becomes defined as life on other places distant from earth has yet to be determined. (Note that this is just a personal list made from my hunches.)
o The basic unit of life is a cell, which is very small. An exception to this life unit is the virus, which is even smaller and simpler but shares a lot of other characteristics. (I can't think of any other exceptions to the cell.)
o Cells grow and age. Many cells divide to reproduce, but not all, some let other kinds of cells handle producing more of their style of cell. An example of this is growing hair.
o Some cells team up with other cells to form larger organisms. When this happens the cells differentiate and specialize in their activities -- example: the difference between skin cells and muscle cells.
o Life has chemistry at its heart. The style of chemistry involved is called organic chemistry for good reason. It centers on hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and nitrogen -- other elements such as calcium and iron are used in smaller quantities. Silicon is widespread in the earth environment but used very little in life processes.
o The dinosaur category of life form transformed into an obsolete life form. Have other life form categories also made this transition? If so, which ones? And did they have anything in common?
o Thriving life changes a planetary environment. Earth's atmosphere consists mostly of nitrogen and oxygen. If plants were not thriving it would be mostly of nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Looking for an odd atmosphere may be one of the early ways to explore for life on nearby worlds.
o The most exciting way of identifying life is getting a positive answer to the question, "Can we communicate with it?" That opens up a whole lot of opportunities to exploit.
Robots are evolving. How does their evolution compare to biological life evolution? Instead of DNA, robots have their designs in data storage systems on computers. Currently human engineers come up with and evaluate the success of various robot designs. In the near future artificial intelligence (AI) will add to this design system. Advanced AI can be looked at as robots doing design work on themselves. How much AI will contribute in the future is a big question mark.
All this leads to an interesting question: As we begin to travel among other star systems, how will we identify life in these other systems? If an alien life form is not based on DNA, chromosomes and organic chemistry, how will we recognize it? As we begin to explore other star systems our definition of life is going to have to change dramatically. Hmm... if robots on Earth become a life form, we may not have to travel to need to change our definition.
All forms of life on earth that are more complex than viruses use DNA and chromosomes as the system for controlling the design of the living organism. And these more complex forms of life use having males and females as the way of passing designs on from one generation to the next. Why did this male/female system become so dominant? Why aren't there alternatives also in existence and thriving on earth?
As we explore our galaxy will we find life forms that are based on a different chemical system? Will we find life forms that aren't based on chemistry at all? Whew! If so, we are going to have to return to the basics and examine what we define life to be.
As an example of an alternative, think of robots. Robots are evolving but they don't require male and female as part of their evolving process. (for that matter, they don't even require robots. <grin>)
--The End--