Viruses. Living, non-living, or alien?

[Exterminas]

I think we shouldn't see life as a twodimensional concept. Things don't need to be life or not-life, just because we say so. If you thing about it, there seem to be many different degress of life.

A Jellyfish, an amoebia, a human and a tree are all counted as alive. Yet they are really different. Sure they have common attributes, but so have a lot of things that aren't of the same nature. The Jellyfish for example. Do these things have a brain or something? As far as I know they only have some kind of brainlike flubber, that is completely different from a system like ours. What I'm trying to say is that it's fine when we make up little boxes, to put stuff in, but that doesn't mean the world plays by that rule.

I like to imagine viruses as some kind of alternate type of life. You know, like a different take on to the same basic modell. Like the two kinds of electrical systems that were developed around Eddisons time (I don't know the english expressions for that stuff, hope you can unterstand, what I mean). So to me it makes sense to view a virus as some kind of different track than ours. They don't play the same game as we do, but they occasionally hit us with their ball. (I know that metaphor sucks, given the fact that they seem to need us (life) to survive.


Something else that bothers me is that quote from Matrix. The one that compared humanity's behavior to viral one. It's scary because it's true. So may be viruses are, as well as humans, some kind of natural concept, that somewhere went of the track of balance that nature seems to be all about. It looks like we (humans) and them decided just to screw everyone else over for fun and profit.

Of course I'm no expert on this stuff, these are just some thoughts that I can imagine on that topic. None of that has any scientific basis, but If you wish to give me a nobel price, please keep it. Since Al Gore got one, I don't want it anymore.

 

[Czargent Sane]

You could say it comes from space, because evidence doesn't deny it. In fact, it seems likely to me.

I could say there's an invisible green elephant in my room. The evidence doesn't deny it, so it seems likely to me.

actually, if the elephant is just invisible, there should be plenty of evidence for or against it.

also, how do you know its green?

 

[mad825]

Don't dismiss exobiology so quickly. Viruses are vastly different from anything else on earth, and we don't have any information on it's evolutionary history.
You could say it comes from space, because evidence doesn't deny it. In fact, it seems likely to me.
It's like gradualism vs. punctuated equilibrium.

I will dismiss exobiology very quickly.

If Viruses are foreign to earth then how come we can make viruses from scratch?

 

[Nouw]

They're tiny microbes?

 

[FinalHeart95]

They're basically DNA wrapped in a protein shell. Non-living.

Alien though? Possibly. Who knows?

 

[FinalHeart95]

EDIT: Double-post. Ew.

 

[The Atomic Irishman]

Well, viruses don't behave like living things, since they're sole goal is reproduction. Oh wait.

 

[Joey Rogers]

Looks like I just necroed an old thread.
Sorry.
I'll keep the op I made at the bottom for anyone interested, I guess. I should've looked at the date though, so again, sorry. Not a very good first post lol.
____________________________________________________________



"viruses can survives even in the most versatile environment and the fact they are made out of the most basic element protein, this could have only happened during the primordial soup."

^ Asserting that there could not possibly be another space in time which simulates the same qualities as the Earth's primordial soup, within the span of time at which galaxies have held formation, which is known to have spanned for at least the last 9+ billion years, in all the known universe, which encompasses billions of galaxies, each with billions to trillions of stars, and who knows how many planets, moons, or other satellites on each star.
Totally not likely, at all.

"Except they use DNA/RNA like all Earth based lifeforms and are obligate parasites of Earth based lifeforms."
Just because they use DNA/RNA does not mean they are Earth based lifeforms. An alien could have 4 appendages and a head, metabolizes organic tissue, and farts, but that would not make it a human, would it?
Is it unlikely that such proteins would be prevalent universally and are the only systems which would work in coding genetics? Yes. Impossible? No.

Them being parasites of Earth based lifeforms doesn't really say much. If they arrived here even 50 million years ago, it still wouldn't surprise me that they were dependent on other organisms for survival. I would, however, be surprised by their genetic diversity. Seeing as how they theoretically should have arrived about 4 billion years ago, however, I say they've had plenty of time to adjust to their new home.

I'm not saying viruses are aliens. I'm just saying no one's really made a great argument against the hypothesis, at least not in here.

Edit:
Forgot to put something on-topic.
It depends what your definition of life is. Some see life as having a metabolic function, DNA, reproductive, etc. Others see it as only needing intelligence, others see it as only needing to reproduce.

Personally I think the whole thing is silly, it's an organism that reproduces. It's not a rock or a ray of light. It changes dynamically to it's environment, that, to me, is life.
The argument that chlorophyll or mitochondria could also be considered life forms inside of cells, well, we as humans have bacteria and archaea inside of ourselves that we consider life, why can't cells have something inside of them considered life? It's all just one organism anyway, you don't need to classify it as another species. (Not talking about the microbes in humans here, talking about the organelles in cells.)