Definitions…explanations…cause-effect…

Everything in science seems to revolve around such words. Living/Non – Living………a concept which has enticed me since childhood….living things grow, non livings don’t and a host of other differentiating factors. We are alone in this universe, we haven’t found any “living” organism till date outside earth…

Now, what is living? We base living only to the extent of our definition or what we understand of living……do we have any idea of life which could survive without breathing…mmm….life which will not suit our definition of life but still be….. Living. We all know about a virus being an exception but let’s not get there, everybody knows about it ;)

We have our own space-time in which we define life….though in our Hindu mythology one life term just goes in a blink of an eye……hence I say, that our definition of life surely has an undercurrent or you may call it, a condition, of time involved……nobody agrees….good.

Take our Planet Earth as an example. It is the only living planet; and why? Simple, because “Living“ creatures inhabit the planet. Now, Picture this…..is Earth a living entity by itself…….imagine none of the living creatures inhabiting it……is it still “Living”.........??

My answer is in two parts: Layer one of my understanding says yes….. the sea is in motion, volcanoes are erupting, the ocean currents are the same…..one may argue that it is because of the rotation of the Earth that the sea is in motion….BANG ON……exactly…..here comes cause-effect…..we have found a cause for an act…... so what….imagine rotation as being the food for earth….will a child, or any organism grow without food….similarly Earth’s rotation is its food…

And the second part of understanding brings me to the space-time domain. We had an ice age; initially they say there was only one solid mass of land called pangea and then it broke up into segments we now call continents; cause being the movement of tectonic plates…..why the hell do these tectonic plates need to move…why are the Himalayas young fold and growing…… If I think myself as an observer from heaven I would see the earth as an independent living entity…

We all know about the supernova…stars becoming black holes……eventually the whole solar system collapsing…….that is Death of the planet….just if you see, it is living but we can’t observe it in our space-time definition of the living. We explain everything and pose that we have understood it all…