What is Life?

Life has a vast, ever changing spectrum, from primitive bacteria to plant life and the extrodinary array of mammals, including ourselves. In our search for life, on our own planet and beyond it, we must certainly be open to the idea that life may exist in forms that we have yet no experience, or concept of.

Where, in our chemical and physical evolution on this planet, do we first draw the line between chemically complex non-life, and the first primitive forms of life? Might Artificial Intelligence, once sufficiently complex, constitute a new form of life? Might our earth itself, and others like it, be considered a lifeform itself, as is suggested in the Gaia hypothesis? Will other alien beings be so vast, and so far beyond understanding that we might consider them Gods, and not simply another form of life?

• Team 1 will argue that life has no barriers, that any self-organising structure, how ever large or small, has the potential to develop into a form of "life" and this open viewpoint is needed in our search for life elsewhere. In fact, it might be staring at us, but we have been too narrow in our concept of what constitutes a living entity.
• Team 2 will firmly argue that there are unique properties of organic life here on earth that limit what can be considered a living being, or structure. The special qualities shared by bacteria, humans and all other living things cannot be produced in a computer, or by a rocky planet such as Earth. The Gaia myth is a fantasy for hippies.