No, they don't know whether nanobes are living organisms or not. The problem is, there's no consensus definition of 'life' yet; lots of wrangling over that.
How do they not know what life is? How can they search for life if they don't know what it is? I have life, you have life. Rocks do not have life. I think it's pretty obvious what life is. If they're wrangling over something like plants yeah that can't form by evolution either, not that they've found any outside of our planet.

Have you heard about the plasma constructs that have been seen? (Plasma is the fourth state of matter: solid, gas, liquid, plasma.) Well, anyway, there are plasma constructs that are apparently able to replicate, and they form helical structures not dissimilar to the helixes in DNA. (Seems like the helix is rather universal.) They haven't said that these plasma constructs are 'life', but they haven't ruled it out either, because they do exhibit characteristics we associate with life.
well, I've defenitley been led on a wild goose chase with this one. First of all, there are very few articles on this, and I first found one blogger on evoilutionspace who qouted another article from sciencedaily which got it's information from institute of physics which got it's information from New journal of physics. There's also one other article from the search for terrestrial intelligence. So there's really very little about this on either side of the debate. It also seems to be very new, from just this past week.

Here's what I've learned about it so far. It's not the plasma itself which is supposed to have life in it, it is inorganic "dust" within the plasma. The dust forms into spiral shaped structures. They use the term helical which really just means spiral, obviously meant to push the reader to think of it more closely resembling dna. But just because something looks "helical" by no means does that make it dna or any time of gene carring information necessary for life.

from the institute of physics article :
"However, Tsytovich and his colleagues demonstrated, using a computer model of molecular dynamics, that particles in a plasma can undergo self-organization as electronic charges become separated and the plasma becomes polarized. This effect results in microscopic strands of solid particles that twist into corkscrew shapes, or helical structures. These helical strands are themselves electronically charged and are attracted to each other."
So what. They are still inorganic molecules. If they form corkscrews and attach together, that's not evolution, that's just chemistry. Elements and chemicals that go through a chemical reaction " self-organize" all the time. An obvious one is when water splits apart into different gases or comes together to form a liquid. They apparently mean to suggest that since these molecules are cahrges while they are in strands that it appears to be a dna like structure because the molecules in our body are charged also. Of course it's much more complicated then that and there are other known inorganic charged molecules found in the natural enviroment for sure.

They can, for instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of the original structure.
This appears to be pure word play. If a stand of "helical" inorganic structures and it divides or splits, it's merely two stands of spiral shaped inorganic molecules!

These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours and they can even evolve into yet more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma.
One again their terminology appears to be very depective. Evolve simply means change in this istance through a chemical reaction, but they want you to cnnect evolve with evolution. of course the fittest structures in the plasma are left behind, they are the fittest. This is chemistry. Not evolution.


So, could helical clusters formed from interstellar dust be somehow alive? "These complex, self-organized plasma structures exhibit all the necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter," says Tsytovich, "they are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve".

These are the properties he says qualify them for "inorganic living matter". Which is interesting because according to what organic means it is life such as plants and matter and carbon compounds of living things but this has no life or genetic information observable and from what the article said it's not carbon based at all. So basiclly he's saying nonliving living matter. By autonomous he can't mean relating to the autonomous nervous system because their is no observable nervous system let alone dna. He must mean that it is in an indepent self governing state, which must be referring to how the structures forming by thier own intrinsic chemistry and physics of the structures themselves.

Hwen he says reproduce obviously they not reproducing by any organic processes so he must be reffering to how the chains split or some other process intrinsic to the nature of the molecule. evolve simply means change and is very vague and meaningless. There are other examples of chemicals that change when they are introdcued into different processes like interacting with another element or molecule.

He adds that the plasma conditions needed to form these helical structures are common in outer space.
That's interesting. I know that most of the stars and planets if I remember correctly are supposed to be plasma and this seems to be a generally non-disfuted fact on both sides of the debate but I can see how this could in fact be an argument against evolution. If these structures are so common and the intrinsic structure of the particles may cause them to
somehow form into dna like they seem to be hoping then wouldn't life in outer space be plainly evidence all through the galaxy, let alone the universe? from what they're saying it's not carbon based and so wouldn't depend on the same things as we do for life.

I find this whole thing very outraging because they're obviously not being honest with thier wordings. Basically thier aguement seems to be, it looks to the eye similar to helical structures in dna and so maybe it is dna or will turn into dna which is lucricrous. Just because it looks like it doesn't mean it is or will in any way form into extremely complex dna and rna or some other information bearing system able to reproduce or have a consciousness or central nervous system.

From what I've read elsewhere " this throws a small wrench in the current search-for-ET works, since today??s astrobiologists ??have based all of their searches and instruments on the existence of carbon and??on Mars, for example??on minerals that only could have formed in the presence of water.? Instead, it seems they should be searching for interstellar dust devils."

What do you think of what I wrote, I mean that's what this thread is about. I've answered some of your criticisms, not that I'm not find with discussing those things. You seem to have disagreements and I'd like to talk about that.