In some ways viruses just seem incredibly alive. Viruses don't have any way of taking in molecules and fashioning those molecules by themselves into new molecules. All they have are basically instructions that reprogram a cell and that cell, not the virus, makes new viruses. So somebody actually asked one of the people who came up with the NASA definition of life, what about viruses? And he said, no, not according to this definition, they're not.
For every definition of life, there’s a creature that sends us right back to the drawing board.
This is the third episode in our three-part series, Origins, about the beginnings and boundaries of life on Earth.
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