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The definition of life has long been a challenge for scientists and philosophers. [2] [3] [4] This is partially because life is a process, not a substance. [5] [6] [7] This is complicated by a lack of knowledge of the characteristics of living entities, if any, that may have developed outside Earth.
A life history strategy is the "age- and stage-specific patterns" [2] and timing of events that make up an organism's life, such as birth, weaning, maturation, death, etc. [3] These events, notably juvenile development, age of sexual maturity, first reproduction, number of offspring and level of parental investment, senescence and death, depend ...
Life arose from the Earth's first ocean, which formed some 3.8 billion years ago. [33] Since then, water continues to be the most abundant molecule in every organism. Water is important to life because it is an effective solvent, capable of dissolving solutes such as sodium and chloride ions or other small molecules to form an aqueous solution.
The timeline of the evolutionary history of life represents the current scientific theory outlining the major events during the development of life on planet Earth. Dates in this article are consensus estimates based on scientific evidence , mainly fossils .
Biological processes are those processes that are necessary for an organism to live and that shape its capacities for interacting with its environment. Biological processes are made of many chemical reactions or other events that are involved in the persistence and transformation of life forms.
Importance is a property of entities that make a difference in the world. [1] [2] So for something to be important, it has to impact the world around it.For example, World War II was an important event in history both because of the suffering it caused and because of the long-term political changes it affected. [3]
What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell is a 1944 science book written for the lay reader by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger.The book was based on a course of public lectures delivered by Schrödinger in February 1943, under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, where he was Director of Theoretical Physics, at Trinity College, Dublin.
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...