R

E

A

D

T

H

I

N

K

C

R

E

A

T

E

Simple, the problem is in many respects one of the most profound. It stressed the medical controversy, from abortion and life, the right to die began, and when the end of life. Reach deep into science, because we have to understand the time, life on our planet, the first to be held, and whether there is any life, on other planets.           What is Life?     Off the coast of Western Australia, in ancient rock buried 3 miles below the ocean floor, lie what some scientists claim are the smallest living organisms ever discovered. These minuscule life forms are known as nanobes because they are so tiny that they are measured in billionths of meters, or nanometers. But while some scientists are hailing this finding as an important discovery, others argue that nanobes are not living organisms and could not possibly be.   The Australian researchers who recently discovered the nanobes say that the tiny organisms carry hereditary material, known as DNA, just as other living organisms do. These scientists also report that, like other forms of life, nanobes grow. In fact, nanobes grow so quickly that within weeks they go from being visible only with the world’s most powerful microscopes to being visible to the naked eye as expanding colonies of threadlike mats.   Skeptics, however, contend that nanobes are much too small to be alive, too small to contain the materials and machinery basic to life. Any schoolchild can distinguish between an inanimate stone and the living being who skips it across a pond. How can it be that scientists cannot agree on whether something is alive or not?   What is life? Deceptively simple, this question is in many ways one of the most profound. It underlies medical controversies ranging from abortion and when life begins to the right to die and when life ends. It reaches deep into the sciences as we seek to understand when life on our planet first took hold and whether life has ever existed on other planets.   Scientists and philosophers alike have found that life defies easy, airtight definition. What really does distinguish life from nonlife?           — Michael L. Cain, Hans Damman et al., Discover Biology                 Indexes/09