Are plasma crystals alive?
In July 2007, a group of American scientists, in association with the National Research Council, issued a report recommending that scientists search for so-called weird life on other worlds, in space and even on Earth. Weird life is believed to be far different from life forms we’re used to seeing. Weird life may be organisms that don’t depend on water or that don’t have DNA at all. Some people even believe that weird life existed on Earth in the ancient past and that it may still exist on this planet. In reality, scientists don’t know what weird life is, but its presence has many reexamining notions of what alien life may be and where it might be found. Whether or not the plasma crystals are an example of weird life is difficult to determine. Some of the questions regarding these potential organisms come back to the debate about what life is. For example, on Earth, we consider life to be carbon-based and dependent on the presence of water. Life forms also perform certain basic functio
