How would we Identify an Alien Life

Imagine that we have visited a planet many light years away from earth in search of extraterrestrial life or aliens, and we found one. But how are we going to know that it is alien or not, I mean in order to be alien life first it had to be living, after all, we cannot simply declare a strange piece of rock as alien. So in order to identify a life outside of earth first, we need to understand how can we define life, to the extent where we can classify anything as living or non-living. In order to do that we have to look for a pattern in life.

Look around you and you can easily classify anything as living or non-living based on your experiences and knowledge. But our knowledge and experience are of the earth only and that is why we have to be prepared for anything which is strange, and that is why we need the most fundamental function of life.
So what is that bold line which differentiates living and non-living? Is it the sense of Environment?
Well, every living thing we have seen by now has some kind of sense or they behave according to the environment, it does not have to be the kind of sense we see in ourselves or in animals or plants because we are very complexed beings which are the product of over 3 billion years of evolution. So what we know that living things react according to the environment and there is no exception to it. But wait, non-living things also react according to the environment we have a lot of examples for that. So it is a very general property and we cannot draw a line on this hypothesis.

Maybe it Consciousness, I mean consciousness is what which makes us feel alive, it is what which makes us, think, ask questions and react to the situation. So do we have that one basic fundamental property of living things, maybe no. Consciousness may seem like a fundamental property of being alive but it is not so, and for the very same reason we discussed above. It is the product of billions of years of evolution and on top of that many living things like bacteria do not have consciousness and yet they are considered as living.

So now we have only one possible property which is to pass on the information or we can say reproduction. Of all the living things we have seen by now show this property with not even a single exception. Mode of passing the information can be very different in different species, like we do reproduction by process of intercourse which requires a partner of opposite gender, on the other hand, many species don't even need a partner and they can pass on their information without any help.
So What we know that every living thing wants to pass their information, evidence of their existence and that is how we can declare anything as living.

Now, we have finally found that basic property which can draw a line between a living and a non-living thing at the most fundamental level. So maybe when the time comes when we really interact with an alien this is how we will identify them.


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