Life arose

Model of SARS-CoV-2 virus, each 'ball' an atom; image courtesy of Alexey Solodovnikov and Valeria Arkhipova, via Wikimedia Commons

Are viruses alive, or just very complex molecules? Most but not all biologists say they're not alive. Really sometimes it's hard to say what's alive and what's not.

And how did life arise? Maybe it arose naturally from non-living matter, through "abiogenesis," and maybe it's arisen various times, and still is doing so. Or maybe Life on Earth originated in space, and came to Earth through the process of "panspermia."

And then there's the matter of whether the living thing is the honeybee or the hive, or maybe even the field the hive occupies. Or the Earth Herself. Or maybe everything in the Universe is alive, just in different ways and different intensities. Maybe all things in the Universe are just One Thing, One Life-like State, with all us manifestations within the One Thing just internal singings. There's an essay on the matter.

For our purposes, having it all straight isn't necessary. From our perspective, the Earth started out dead, and now its biosphere is charged with life. It's not important to know when and how life began, just that it did, and that its emergence from dead stuff rates as miraculous.

MORE INFO:

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US provides a 2021 update on "Making headway with the mysteries of life's origins".
• A Science magazine online article looks at the "Origin-of-life conundrum".
• Smithsonian Magazine provides an online story about The Origin of Life.