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Life

How a radical redefinition of life could help us find aliens

Sara Imari Walker, who developed Assembly Theory with chemist Lee Cronin, explains how the theory's definition of life might help us find it on other planets

By Thomas Lewton

19 June 2023

·ï»Ë²ÊƱ. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Nabil Nezzar

What is life? It seems like a simple enough question. And yet the truth is that we can’t explain why one lump of matter is alive and another is not, which is a problem if you want to figure out how life on Earth began – never mind whether it exists elsewhere. But , a theoretical physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University, has a radical new theory that purports to transform our understanding of what it is to be alive.

Most attempts to describe life use Earth as a blueprint. Instead, by pushing past cells and their chemistry…

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