Transcript: Given trillions of potential sites for life and billions of years for it to evolve, it’s impossible for scientists to know how strange life might be or how different from life on our planet. In the discussion of life in the universe, scientists tend to make the strong assumption that life elsewhere will be biologically based. We know that DNA is not the only replicating molecule, but we certainly assume that carbon-based chemistry is at the core of life on other planets around other stars. But what if it’s not the case? What if life could form deep in an interstellar cloud? It seems unlikely because the density is so low. What if gravity or electromagnetic fields could somehow self-organize and produce complexity and store information? It may be possible, but we have no mechanism at the moment. Another possibility is that biology is just one phase of evolution. Perhaps a simple extrapolation of our own experience with technology and biology is that within a few generations, the organism and machine will merge, and perhaps the frailty of a biological organism will eventually be replaced by machine-like intelligence. Artificial life could have so many forms, it’s hard for us to imagine, but scientifically we must consider the possibility that life beyond Earth might be non-biological.