Article View: aus.science
Article #1016Artificial Life
From: Don H
Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 21:49
Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 21:49
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2168 bytes
What is "life"?
Life occurred by natural forces, when a chemical formula developed (a)
ability to sustain itself, and (b) capacity to reproduce.
Hence, "life" is not something intrinsically different to non-living
matter. Even a human being is merely a highly-complicated chemical
reaction.
Now some clever scientists have made "artificial life" in the laboratory.
Proteins have long been synthesised; from hydrogen, ammonia, methane, and
steam - plus electric spark; but it took advent of DNA science to speed
things up.
Will the new bacterial beings escape from the lab and take over the
world? That is in the realm of Science Fiction, for the moment, but such
scenario is by no means impossible.
Most life preys on other life, and the New Bacteria are probably no
different.
Robots taking over is a long way off, as they require self-awareness
(eyes?) and ability to generalise from empirical examples (a long way from
Spell Checkers) - but bacteria don't need all these pre-conditions.
Once the gene genie is out of the bottle...
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X-Google-Thread: db42311052,73b008d7a78d135f,start X-Google-Attributes: giddb42311052,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!g2news2.google.com!news1.google.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!nx01.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!news.linkpendium.com!news.linkpendium.com!pit-transit.telstra.net!news.telstra.net!news-server.bigpond.net.au!53ab2750!not-for-mail From: "Don H" <donlhumphries@bigpond.com> Newsgroups: aus.science Subject: Artificial Life Lines: 21 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1409 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409 Message-ID: <OdDJn.26261$pv.14058@news-server.bigpond.net.au> Date: Fri, 21 May 2010 21:49:34 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 144.134.175.36 X-Complaints-To: abuse@bigpond.net.au X-Trace: news-server.bigpond.net.au 1274478574 144.134.175.36 (Sat, 22 May 2010 07:49:34 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 07:49:34 EST Organization: BigPond Internet Services