If I had a microscope that could see atoms and molecules, how far out would I need to zoom before I could tell I was looking at life?
I’ve heard things like “people are 70% water” but water is not alive.
I’m asking in chemistry because I’m not sure if life at a molecular level is considered biology.
In: Chemistry
I have seen a nice enough explanation from Kurzgesagt that tackles this subject: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOCaacO8wus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOCaacO8wus)
Long story short, the world, the universe, at any level, moves towards equilibrium, a state that is uniform and nothing changes anymore (eg. if you leave a hot cup of tea at room temperature, it exchanges temperature with the room air until it reaches the equilibrium temperature, which is room temperature tea).
Life is when there is a system that actively fights “getting to equilibrium”. The cell does that by getting stuff in, convert it to energy, produce some side-stuff in the process, and using that energy to move around and bootstrap this process again and again, while also gathering enough stuff from around it to multiply.
For living organisms, the “equilibrium” within their environment is … well… being dead, as it no longer actively fights the equilibrium and is slowly decaying, moving towards the environment.
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