They're alien robots from outer space! Maybe. Pretty much like the Transformers, only smaller...
Viruses. Living, non-living, or alien?
- Thread starter King Toasty
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The major caveat people point out about viruses, viroids and plasmids is that they lack their own metabolism. Yes they their own have DNA/RNA, but like mitochondria or chloroplasts (which also have those things), they don't execute any form of metabolism. If we were to consider viruses, viroids, and plasmids as living we'd have to accept mitochondria and chloroplasts as separate living organisms as well; even things like transposons or ribozymes might be considered living.Ekonk said:
There's no real reason to believe viruses are extraterrestrial...or at least more extraterrestrial than all life. I also wouldn't consider Panspermia theory to be gaining steam in mainstream science, abiogenesis is probably the most widely accepted hypothesis by a fair margin.
I feel that it is silly to proclaim that something living can become a non-living being because it no longer seems to evolve. You can't exist as something not alive when you're made of living matter. Either it was always alive or never alive, and I vote alive.
The definition probably DOES need to be more flexible. A virus is certainly living enough to cause hell for human beings during its living process. It moves, it procreates, it eats, it responds to stimuli, and if it weren't still evolving then they would've been left in the dust by us humans instead of still infecting us.
The definition probably DOES need to be more flexible. A virus is certainly living enough to cause hell for human beings during its living process. It moves, it procreates, it eats, it responds to stimuli, and if it weren't still evolving then they would've been left in the dust by us humans instead of still infecting us.
Woo Hoo! Science!! I'd have to say non-living, but... well,
Be created.
Run:Reproduce.exe.
Be destroyed.
Hashime said:
AccursedTheory said:
because they really are just programmed to reproduce.AwesomePeanutz said:
Be created.
Run:Reproduce.exe.
Be destroyed.
If your 13 year old Human males can have the urge to reproduce why can'tKing Toasty said:
I think they are living but just really cunning and have not let us know that they are alive. They are waiting, they are watching, they are coming...
Wait. Are they without mercy? Do they not forgive? Are they legion?2fish said:
Ohnoes, Anonymous hacked viruses! Run for the hilllls!
alien? errm no.
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.
are viruses alive? Yes and no. when a virus is outside a cell it's dead however once it enters one, it becomes living. Viruses are not that much different from bacteria in the sense of living once a virus has entered a cell.
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.
are viruses alive? Yes and no. when a virus is outside a cell it's dead however once it enters one, it becomes living. Viruses are not that much different from bacteria in the sense of living once a virus has entered a cell.
I'll say living, with a dead/coma/hibernation state. Partially because it can actively do something (if the something is "limited"), and partly because a pet project of mine revolves around them, and it works best for me that way. Call me selfish.
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.mad825 said:
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 could say there's an invisible green elephant in my room. The evidence doesn't deny it, so it seems likely to me.King Toasty said:
I didn't say it was a perfect theory. Yes, it has glaring flaws, but so does evolutio-Dags90 said:
Sorry, not getting into an anti-evolution discussion here. This is strictly viruses.
This is my view ... sort of. I mean, I don't believe in the soul, I believe all of our sentience is merely a very complex series of chemical, physical and electrical reactions, so really, everything is 'conscious' to varying degrees, we just fail to see it as such because we assume that consciousness (and life as a lesser degree) can only exist with cells and brains and what-not. The reason I said 'sort of' however, is that life is a word and concept created by humans, so therefore humans can define life as whatever they wish. So really, this whole idea of soul and consciousness and life is more that huamns called what we have life, but life is like a sub-set, almost like life[footnote]Whenever I say life in bold I'll be talking about the set rather than the sub-set[/footnote] when in the form we are familiar with.King Toasty said:
So yeah, viruses are alive but not alive, because alive is what it has been defined as.
Viruses don't eat, respond to stimuli, or move while outside the bloodstream. They are incapable of reproducing on their own, instead altering the DNA of other cells to tell those cells to produce more viruses. They have no metabolic functioning what so ever. They are not alive. The feeling like crap you get when you have some type of virus in your system? Mostly the result of your immune system not being happy about this foreign thing being there.FalloutJack said: