Loudzoo wrote: ... lets see if we can make a case for a star in the context of the seven criteria according to Wikipaedia: [sic] ...
Let's indeed.
Homeostasis: What mechanism does a star employ to keep its chemical state as it were? How does it respond to disturbances of that balance and how does it restore that balance afterwards?
Organization: An arbitrarily set layer of depth is not a cell. Structural complexity, setting aside that a star doesn't come close to the structural complexity of any cells as we know them, is also not quantifiable and for that reason completely irrelevant. Nor do the different depth layers perform any functions necessary for the stars survival. If they did, stars would be homeostatic.
Metabolism: Stars do not convert chemicals and energy into cellular components. At best one could say they convert chemicals into waste energy and waste chemicals and it is only due to their mass that they can keep the latter at all. They do not decompose organic matter either. They barely get energy from the outside and use none of it to maintain internal organization or any other phenomena associated with life. The different depth layers do result from the different density chemicals but the star does nothing to maintain the ratios as they were. It just keeps on burning.
Growth: Prefacing that for objects as large as stars internal gravity actually matters and by size we consequently mean mass, stars do not increase in size in all of their parts. If they catch other objects, they can accumulate matter, but overall they actually tend to decrease in mass for the sheer energy they radiate out into space.
Adaptation: If you are going to argue as you did with changing chemical composition of the body, I'm afraid you'll have to drop that homeostasis paragraph you gave earlier. The adaptation point is not about individual organisms but populations. In other words, living things pass on genes and the ones better suited to the living conditions tend to propagate better. Stars do not have heredity. They do not experience selective pressures either. They do not evolve. If we are comparing the gas cloud to a legacy of previous stars, then we must also argue that random reshuffling of biomatter would not only produce new life but one that is indeed offspring of the one the biomatter came from. Anyone thinking of the
peanut butter jar nightmare
? :silly:
Responsiveness: If we are going as far as including the effects of gravity, then everything that has mass is responsive to it. Stars do not bear tides because that grants them energy for survival or stabilizes their internal composition. They do it because they are rocks and rocks fall on each other. You might notice how flying birds typically are unimpressed by gravity. They
do respond to it, in a way that warrants their survival. Stars don't. If they did, they'd avoid colliding with each other or anything that would disturb their internal balance. However, given how they follow gravity one might think they are all to eager to engage other massive objects. It's like they are positively suicidal.
Reproduction: No, I don't think that's what Akkarin said or meant to say, and I'm pretty sure he would be wrong about it, if he did. Matter in gas clouds does coalesce into new rocks, the least of which ever become stars, and if my layman's understanding doesn't betray me, the stars would have a significantly shorter life spans than that of the parent stars if you will. On that note one should add that since there is no such thing as genetics with stars, parent star is a misnomer. A draught of water is not a child of the ice cube it melted from. Nor would it be if you froze it again.
I'm not necessarily advocating the case that stars should be considered alive, but with the loose interpretations of the criteria as applied above I think they do fulfill many of the criteria.
Some might be applicable interpreting the criteria loosely, I guess. But to make all of the criteria apply one does have to intentionally ignore crucial parts. And one is welcome to do that, too, though I ask to not claim it has anything to do with the actual real criteria. I wouldn't say so confidently that they don't apply if the criteria allowed enough wiggle-room, without necessitating outright distortions.
There are, as you pointed out, other constructs under which stars and galaxies can be deemed alive and that's fine. I don't find them particularly useful nor do I find that there is any benefit or detriment in considering stars alive by those other standards. But then what matters it what I find? I just humbly request that we don't equivocate and that standards that do include the stars as alive things are not the standards used by the sciences concerned with the study of living things.
You are welcome to call rocks in outer space alien life forms, if you are so inclined. Meanwhile the rest of extraterrestrial life search efforts will be looking for that which we call life forms and we would rather say we didn't find anything than waste our time celebrating all the rocks we found.
