Artificial life: sustainable self-replicating systems
This foundational research addresses the problem of understanding and creating non-natural life forms for scientists and philosophers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing ALife concepts without new breakthroughs.
The paper explores the creation of alternative life forms through Artificial Life (ALife), aiming to study life 'as it could be' beyond natural biological systems, but does not report specific results or numbers.
Nature has found one method of organizing living matter, but maybe other options exist -- not yet discovered -- on how to create life. To study the life "as it could be" is the objective of an interdisciplinary field called Artificial Life (commonly abbreviated as ALife). The word "artificial" refers to the fact that humans are involved in the creation process. The artificial life forms might be completely unlike natural forms of life, with different chemical compositions, and even computer programs exhibiting life-like behaviours.