*life
In: Earth Science
Actually ELI5. There used to be a ton of chemicals in the ocean. They would just mix and combine into new chemicals as time passed. Most of them did nothing, but eventually a chemical was made that could copy itself using other chemicals around it.
Naturally, this chemical took over because there was no other chemical doing the same thing. It had the whole ocean to itself. But as it copied itself, some copies were imperfect. Most of the imperfections would just stop the chemical from being able to copy itself ever again, but sometimes they would make the chemical do something new. Such as make the surrounding environment more toxic to its other cousin chemicals.
Repeat this brute force method of chemicals mixing and copying themselves enough, and you get a cell. The cell goes through the same process, and you get multicellular life.
See, life is just about making copies. All other things like blood and math and music are just parts of that.
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