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dchin's picture

Week 4

Given our discussion on the characteristics of life and how vast the universe is, I wonder what characteristics non Earth based life forms, assuming they exist, use to define life. What characteristics could they possibly use?

Visualizing our significance in relation to the other planets, stars, suns, galaxies, etc. out there is disorienting. They are to us as we are to extremely small organisms like bacteria. This reminds me of our discussion about how categories are human constructions that are subject to change and created for a purpose. The subjectivity in creating categories makes me wonder about how categorization might change in the future as technology progresses and we are able to discover more about life on Earth and other planets.

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