What are the scientific views about the thing which makes us alive?

Question

Hi,

What makes us alive?
We eat, breath and do other things to keep ourselves alive but how did we become alive in the first place?
Can it be some kind of energy which works that?

I am not looking forward to an answer like spirit or God :)

PLEASE DO NOT ANSWER WITH LINKS.

Thanks

Answer 1

Welcome to the world wide web. It works by not requiring the same information to be replicated on multiple servers. Instead, you can be linked to the authoritative information at the location where it is sourced.

Of course it is energy. The whole universe is energy. A star is energy; is it alive? But it is the same energy that comes from a star that makes us alive.

Answer 2

If you constructed the simplest single cell organism atom by atom exactly like the real thing, would it be alive? Would it go about doing whatever that organism does? Would it reproduce? I doubt it.

I've looked pretty hard and I haven't found any good scientific explanations for what makes something alive, what makes the atoms function together as cells, and the cells as organs and so on. It is clearly more than just chemical reactions, but what is it and how did it begin.

The recycling of energy doesn't explain how life started or why living organisms do what they do with the energy that they have. Having energy doesn't make something alive. Fire, lightning, wind, and of course the sun all have energy but they are not alive.

I doubt life can be explained without reference to God, but I would be very interested in hearing what scientist come up with.

Answer 3

From a scientific perspective, energy is always conserved and thus is never created or destroyed. Plants take in solar energy, convert it to chemical energy, and we take in this chemical energy to breath and do other things.

When humans reproduce, they have one cell formed from the male and female sex cells. This cell divides and divides in a process called mitosis until it is the a full grown baby.

This baby will eat, breath, and do other things that move its energy back into the Earth. It will then regain this energy by eating and its cells will continue to divide, allowing it to grow and someday reproduce again.

Answer 4

I think it's something called BIOLOGY.