"Everyone, please tell me, what is life? How do we define it?" Hazel, the lead astronomer moderating the panel, opened the floor with this question.
The senior scientists in the auditorium immediately began murmuring among themselves.
Life was a profoundly mysterious concept. It sounded simple enough, but the scientific community had never agreed on a perfect, universal definition. Old World textbooks often defined it as any entity capable of reproducing and actively consuming energy.
However, most people relied on their own intuition. Did it move? Did it eat? Did it multiply? A vehicle consumed fuel to move, but it was inanimate. An advanced AI robot might be programmed to seek out power sources and build copies of itself, but it certainly wasn't considered alive. That was the general consensus.
