Quote:
Originally Posted by Veeger
Not to single you out, as many make this or similar statements regarding our inability to recognize alien life. The definition we have for life is the only one that is meaningful for us. There must be some bounds on what constitutes life, otherwise, why not say rocks are living or whole planets? Pretty soon everything is alive and then the discussion becomes pointless.
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Rocks and planets do not decrease entropy.
My favorite definition of life is "something that uses energy to increase complexity", i.e. locally decreases entropy. This includes viruses and even computer viruses, but does not include rocks, planets, fire, or even computer hardware.
A stable self-replicating magnetic structure in Sun's corona would match this definition. But we would not recognize it even if we were looking straight at it.