Plasma blobs hint at new form of life

Physicists have created blobs of gaseous plasma that can grow, replicate and communicate - fulfilling most of the traditional requirements for biological cells. Without inherited material they cannot be described as alive, but the researchers believe these curious spheres may offer a radical new explanation for how life began.
Most biologists think living cells arose out of a complex and lengthy evolution of chemicals that took millions of years, beginning with simple molecules through amino acids, primitive proteins and finally forming an organised structure. But if Mircea Sanduloviciu and his colleagues at Cuza University in Romania are right, the theory may have to be completely revised. They say cell-like self-organisation can occur in a few microseconds...
Finally, they could communicate information by emitting electromagnetic energy, making the atoms within other spheres vibrate at a particular frequency. The spheres are not the only self-organising systems to meet all of these requirements. But they are the first gaseous "cells".

Sanduloviciu even thinks they could have been the first cells on Earth, arising within electric storms. "The emergence of such spheres seems likely to be a prerequisite for biochemical evolution," he says.
full article here

So.... plasma eh!
This is very interesting research. Romania is where the plasma is at!
*wonders what the funding application for this research looked like*

and the point of the research?
But perhaps the most intriguing implications of Sanduloviciu's work are for life on other planets. "The cell-like spheres we describe could be at the origin of other forms of life we have not yet considered," he says. Which means our search for extraterrestrial life may need a drastic re-think. There could be life out there, but not as we know it.

It's great to see some research like this getting done, most research ideas now days only go forward with tag of global warming woven into it somehow.

it is certainly interesting to think about what constitutes that physical manifestation that makes us 'living' and 'thinking'.
I mean... think on it some - if you took apart a human atom by atom, you'd have a pile of somethings that alone constitute nothing that is living but together is something alive and cognitive and as unique as a fingerprint.

At what point does the magic of energy reactions kick in?
Good find!