Are stars a living organism?

[SunshineSmiles]

A good base for a definition of life(From a user on the IRC)

1. The entity has a metabolism

2. The entity reacts with its surroundings.

3. The entity has some way to reproduce.

 

And a star has all three of these attributes.

 

Metabolism: Nuclear Fusion, This is a suns energy, without this, the star will die out.

Reactions: It has radioactive properties that help to protect its self.

Reproduction: At the end of a stars life, it may go super-nova, possibly creating a nebula, possibly creating more stars.

 

And some may use the counter, "Not all stars go supernova."

 

A reply to that is, not all humans can reproduce either.

[CaptainPanic]

In addition, certain microorganisms can reproduce, but lose their ability to reproduce after a certain period of time (under certain conditions). I'm no microbiologist, so perhaps some of our resident experts can add the correct terminology for this phenomenon.

 

So, a star that goes supernova enables the formation of new stars... and this cycle can repeat a number of times. You can perhaps find some analogy in the microorganisms that can multiply a couple of times before losing this ability...

 

But perhaps I am missing something essential here... this is not my expertise.

Edited October 28, 2011 by CaptainPanic

[Psycho]

In addition, certain microorganisms can reproduce, but lose their ability to reproduce after a certain period of time (under certain conditions). I'm no microbiologist, so perhaps some of our resident experts can add the correct terminology for this phenomenon.

 

So, a star that goes supernova enables the formation of new stars... and this cycle can repeat a number of times. You can perhaps find some analogy in the microorganisms that can multiply a couple of times before losing this ability...

 

But perhaps I am missing something essential here... this is not my expertise.

I have never heard of a microbe that can do that, they can enter stasis phases such as endospores where they don't really have any characteristics of anything alive and then reincarnate so to speak when conditions are more favourable.

 

The problem is with stars being alive is that they don't really react to their surroundings, they effect their surroundings, but they have no response if say there was a black hole, they won't try and avoid it or go into it they will just do what gravity chooses.

 

Secondly when living organisms reproduce they pass on their version of their information, where as a star just passes on elements that won't all go to one progeny or can't easily be distinguished from other similar elements. Unless I am wrong and you can tell which stars the elements came from that build another, but I rather doubt this as it is mainly hydrogen in a star and once it has been in one it comes out as helium.

[CaptainPanic]

I remember that there is a possibility - especially in GMO - where cells aren't 'balanced', and certain essential parts cannot reproduce quickly enough (RNA? Some other part that also needs to be copied, like RNA, DNA?).

 

Again, I may be completely wrong.

[Psycho]

I remember that there is a possibility - especially in GMO - where cells aren't 'balanced', and certain essential parts cannot reproduce quickly enough (RNA? Some other part that also needs to be copied, like RNA, DNA?).

 

Again, I may be completely wrong.

GMO aren't really a good example as that is because someone has screwed them up and hasn't balanced pathways correctly, however even in these cases I would suppose that either they would be able to reach the point of replication and therefore consistently be able to do it or not be able to do it at all, but I am sure there are cases where redox imbalances only become critical at generation X. The idea of life is for it to be able to pass it genes to the next generation and still be fertile. I think the real answer to the question is if some things that are alive (ligers, tions) can't reproduce, reproduction isn't a necessary requirement for life.

[derek w]

I would go further and say that the whole universe is a living organism and there you have god.

[Moontanman]

I would go further and say that the whole universe is a living organism and there you have god.

 

 

Which god? Is a human god to the bacteria living inside him? Please elaborate....

[derek w]

If you have a god he only has 1 option and that is to create a universe,i cant think what else he could do?Do plants use the sun's energy to grow or are plants a product of the sun.

Edited October 28, 2011 by derek w

[JustinW]

I guess I'm lost. I think we went from stars being organisms to god creating the universe because he had nothing better to do. Quite a leap.

[ydoaPs]

The problem is with stars being alive is that they don't really react to their surroundings, they effect their surroundings, but they have no response if say there was a black hole, they won't try and avoid it or go into it they will just do what gravity chooses.

But, do micro-organisms choose to do anything in a sense that stars don't? Any choice (yes, even those made by humans) is the play between cause an effect. Planets pull on stars, and stars pull back. The result of this is the wobble we use to tell if distant stars have planets. Taking the intentional stance (as one does when one says micro-organisms 'choose'), this is the star trying to maintain equalibrium. This sounds just as much like an interaction between the star and its surroundings as a plant growing toward the sunlight. Is a plant not alive?

 

While there may be good objections to the thesis of the OP, this is not one of them.

 

Secondly when living organisms reproduce they pass on their version of their information, where as a star just passes on elements that won't all go to one progeny or can't easily be distinguished from other similar elements. Unless I am wrong and you can tell which stars the elements came from that build another, but I rather doubt this as it is mainly hydrogen in a star and once it has been in one it comes out as helium.

The elements making up a star do determine many things about it. Its colour and solar activity, for instance, are dependant upon its chemical composition. One could easily draw a parallel (as you just did) between the chemical composition of a star and the genetic makeup of living organisms. Just like in biological evolution, the genetic data the parent gives to its offspring is not the same as what it was given by its parents; it has mutated. One can see what chemicals are in any given star, so, if one knows the sequence of stars, one could presumably give the chemical makeup of the parent star.

[Psycho]

But, do micro-organisms choose to do anything in a sense that stars don't? Any choice (yes, even those made by humans) is the play between cause an effect. Planets pull on stars, and stars pull back. The result of this is the wobble we use to tell if distant stars have planets. Taking the intentional stance (as one does when one says micro-organisms 'choose'), this is the star trying to maintain equalibrium. This sounds just as much like an interaction between the star and its surroundings as a plant growing toward the sunlight. Is a plant not alive?

 

While there may be good objections to the thesis of the OP, this is not one of them.

Yes, microorganisms do, they move towards food sources, away from toxins, work cooperatively together, compete against other microorganisms, breakdown structures to gain nutrients, many thing that aren't comparable to star, starts and planet don't choose to pull at each other they have to.

 

 

The elements making up a star do determine many things about it. Its colour and solar activity, for instance, are dependant upon its chemical composition. One could easily draw a parallel (as you just did) between the chemical composition of a star and the genetic makeup of living organisms.

Though it is true they have different compositions, unlike with DNA it isn't used for anything, it has no "non-chemical" meaning, DNA is a code that means something and can be read to make something that has no chemical connection to it, it just happens to mean it, for example all amino acids are L-isomers however there is no reason when life started everything couldn't have been made with D-isomers, that just isn't how things ended up.

 

In the case of a star the chemical effects that cause the solar activity and colour are predictable you can't just change these effects by deciding the code means something else, it is based on physics rather than an arbitrary meaning.

 

Just like in biological evolution, the genetic data the parent gives to its offspring is not the same as what it was given by its parents; it has mutated. One can see what chemicals are in any given star, so, if one knows the sequence of stars, one could presumably give the chemical makeup of the parent star.

The whole point is that really it is the same, it has the same function there are just variants of each gene which mean the same thing, where as in chemistry H2 always means hydrogen, it never mean helium, the gene for eye colour doesn't always mean blue, it can also mean brown. Edited October 28, 2011 by Psycho

[tar]

but a sun can have sunspots one day and not have them another

 

the sun is "doing" this

 

seems to me, that if we are considering whether the sun is alive or not, we might have to "think" on a different than human size and time scale, to guess at what the sun might be "thinking" or what its "purposes" might be

 

some argue that even humans have no "choice" and are just doing what the sum total of all the chemical reactions and physical reactions occurring in an around their "organism" are causing them to do

 

that we are merely intricate stones rolling down an intricate hillside

 

seems to me that entities, by being entities, have already gained a bit more respect than that, and should be given a little credit for managing to be what they are in spite of the universe's apparent drive toward disorganisation

[insane_alien]

the sunspots are cause by the fact the sun is a great big convecting spinning conductive ball with some powerful magnetic fields.

 

it is "doing" sunspots in the same way magnets "do" attracting iron filings.

[mooeypoo]

I get the idea of philosophizing about other types of life out there, and I do agree that the definition of life should (and does) evolve as we discover new things that might be included in it.

 

I also share the belief that we might find life out there in the universe that we didn't previously define as life. We might, as the OP pointed out in the IRC channel earlier, "look at it and not realize we're looking at life". That may well happen, I agree. Which is why we need to make sure we run proper tests, and keep that in mind to allow for the possibility that the definition of life might need to change.

 

We discover life we didn't think would exist all the time, especially in the past 50 years, and we adjust the definition of life accordingly.

Case in point:

• Life in the bottom of the ocean: http://news.national...03_deepest.html
• Bacteria living on arsenic: http://www.nasa.gov/...c_chemical.html
• Extremophiles that live in environments we wouldn't have guessed possible http://en.wikipedia....i/Extremophiles

Each of these challenged us to redefine the word "life" and how we see it. And each of those should. For the record, I think the 'arsenic' one turned out to be false (not sure) but regardless, this clearly shows that we're not *rigid* with the definition of life, and scientists do agree that life in the universe can be something we didn't consider as life before.

 

That said, in this particular case, I don't see why we'd want to do that.

 

The only way stars fit the definition of life is if we take the definition of light in the most artistic way possible.

• Stars don't have a metabolism.
  You can "think of" fussion as a sort of artistic metabolism, but it has none of the characteristics of actual metabolism; they don't take energy out of their environemnt and transform it to energy they can use.
  They *produce* energy internally. There isn't really "using" either, here. The fission is "used" to be expelled.
• Stars don't react to their environment like life does
  From bacteria to human beings to dogs and fish -- life reacts to its environment in the simplistic or elaborate ways.
  Reacting can be as simple as an instinct or a change in behavior due to different external stimuli. Bacteria changes its behavior when temperature changes, or when it has more of it around itself, or when it has different bacteria around itself, or when it has food around itself.
   
  How do stars "change behavior" due to stimuli? There's quite a lot of stimuli in space, you can consider comets 'stimuli' since some of them go QUITE close to the sun. You can even consider the planets some sort of stimuli, as they change places and align differently during the year. The only thing that happens is that the sun experiences different gravitational forces -- and it doesn't really 'react' to them.
   
  If I took a rock and dropped it off a cliff, it would "react" to gravitational forces the same way the sun does; it would fall. That doesn't mean it's reacting to stimuli.

 

There's a few more issues with defining stars as life, but these are, in my view, the big ones.

 

The last point I would like to make is related to our definitions in general. Consider Pluto. Pluto used to be defined as a planet, and last year it was defined otherwise. It wasn't just an arbitrary decision, and it wasn't done because someone hated the little rock so much they wanted it out of the "group" -- it was done because we learned new evidence. We saw that there are so many similar items that are bigger-than or similar-to Pluto, that if we keep pluto in this definition, we will end up with 10,000 planets.

 

Ending up with 10,000 planets might make the definition more "broad", but it would also make the definition of planet less useful. So we defined a new object -- Dwarf Planet -- and reconsidered Pluto and the rest of the objects.

 

Definitions in science are not just meant to help us keep an open mind, they're there to help us describe reality. If a definition is so broad that it includes every possible possibility, it's not useful anymore.

 

~mooey

[ydoaPs]

the sunspots are cause by the fact the sun is a great big convecting spinning conductive ball with some powerful magnetic fields.

 

it is "doing" sunspots in the same way magnets "do" attracting iron filings.

The same way amoebas "do" swallow other organisms.

[Psycho]

The same way amoebas "do" swallow other organisms.

No, amoebas follow chemical signatures and move towards them and then actively change their molecular pathways to endocytose other organisms.

 

The actual equivalent example you are looking for is micelles absorbing other phospholipids, these are what make cell membranes but are not classed as alive on their own without other cellular structures.

Edited October 29, 2011 by Psycho

[ydoaPs]

No, you're just suffering from selective reductionism. When you pick a level and stick with it consistently, stars do fit the definition provided by the OP fairly well.

[Psycho]

No, you're just suffering from selective reductionism. When you pick a level and stick with it consistently, stars do fit the definition provided by the OP fairly well.

Ok, if this is true explain to me your example in terms of a star or iron fillings and a magnet, barring in mind the description below of your example.

 

An amoeba binds a foreign organism through its specific outer membrane proteins (most likely only binding glycosolated phospholipids), these pass the signal most likely through dimerisation or by protein conformational change to the cytoplasm (therefore through an impermeable layer), this therefore leads to a kinase cascade being activated (consisting of multiple proteins with reversible modifications causing activation or repression) leading to changes in the cytoskeleton of the amoeba to start engulfing the said organism and activating gene expression within the nucleus to up-regulate the transcription on mRNA relating to phospholipid production, there will also be further protein localisation at the distal edge of the incoming vesicle to stop cellular rupture when the vesicle is fully engulfed and breaks away from the outer membrane.

 

Or did you just thing it magically ended up inside, they don't "do" swallowing organisms they selectively choose which organisms to engulf and activate cellular pathways to make it possible.

Edited October 29, 2011 by Psycho

[mooeypoo]

No, you're just suffering from selective reductionism. When you pick a level and stick with it consistently, stars do fit the definition provided by the OP fairly well.

 

I think I showed how they don't in my post.

[Realitycheck]

I've also been thinking about how remarkably simple things stars are. Basically, they're just fires burning, confined by the gravity that they impose, a really small set of chemical reactions and nothing more, almost entirely consisting of hydrogen fusing into helium, no membranes, no nucleic acids delegating instructions, just a fire burning, err fusing.

[tar]

Realitycheck,

 

So, what is a sunspot? Or a flare?

 

Seems to me, as big as it is, it probably has some character, some regions and some complicated attributes.

 

Magnetic fields and such. Remember a few years ago hearing about a "song" the sun sings. I will see if I can google it.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/singing/singing.html

 

OK, sort of like a crackling fire. Perhaps you are right.

Or a boiling pot of fudge.

Edited November 2, 2011 by tar

[Brainteaserfan]

mooey said it nicely, but to state it in simpler terms:

A living organism must be able to SENSE changes in its enviroment AND respond to those changes.

 

And some may use the counter, "Not all stars go supernova."

 

A reply to that is, not all humans can reproduce either.

Our cells still are reproducing.

[questionposter]

A good base for a definition of life(From a user on the IRC)

1. The entity has a metabolism

2. The entity reacts with its surroundings.

3. The entity has some way to reproduce.

 

And a star has all three of these attributes.

 

Metabolism: Nuclear Fusion, This is a suns energy, without this, the star will die out.

Reactions: It has radioactive properties that help to protect its self.

Reproduction: At the end of a stars life, it may go super-nova, possibly creating a nebula, possibly creating more stars.

 

And some may use the counter, "Not all stars go supernova."

 

A reply to that is, not all humans can reproduce either.

 

Well, I guess a star responds to stimuli and it grows and changes, and it often reproduces or at least "produces" other stars after dying, so actually, maybe a star is some kind of living thing. I don't imagine it would be very smart as there is so much energy that it would be hard for information to organize and things like cells to form.

[Appolinaria]

If stars are living organisms, what are the "cells"?

 

 

Where is the genetic material determining how these cells act?

[Brainteaserfan]

If stars are living organisms, what are the "cells"?

 

 

Where is the genetic material determining how these cells act?

Wanna go get a piece of sun to examine under a microscope so we can see the cells?