Life

Life Temporal range: 3770–0 Ma Had'n Archean Proterozoic Pha. Archean – present (possible Hadean origin)
Stegosaurus in museum
Scientific classification
Domains and Supergroups
Life on Earth: Non-cellular life Viruses[note 1] Viroids Cellular life Domain Bacteria Domain Archaea Domain Eukaryota Archaeplastida Plantae SAR Excavata Amoebozoa Opisthokonta Holomycota Fungi Holozoa Animalia

Life is a concept in biology. It is about what separates a living thing from dead matter.

Most life on Earth is powered by solar energy: the only known exceptions are the chemo-synthetic bacteria living around the hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor. All life on Earth is based on the chemistry of carbon compounds, involving long-chain molecules such as proteins and nucleic acid. With water, which all life needs, the long molecules are wrapped inside membranes as cells. This may or may not be true of all possible forms of life in the Universe: it is true of all life on Earth today.

1. ↑ International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses Executive Committee (May 2020). "The New Scope of Virus Taxonomy: Partitioning the Virosphere Into 15 Hierarchical Ranks". Nature Microbiology. 5 (5): 668–674. doi:10.1038/s41564-020-0709-x. ISSN 2058-5276. PMC 7186216. PMID 32341570.