Our definition of life changes every couple of decades, as new
   things are learned about the nature of life.

   There has been, for a long time, a movement within some
   scientific circles [and I don't have its name offhand] to push
   for certain crystals to be considered life. And, it may happen.
   It's all what the collective body decides is correct, with
   whatever means it considers to be valid. In the early 80s, my
   textbooks STILL had "tool use" as a qualifier for "human", for
   example. But we learned from an old 60s textbook that was
   hanging around. School Science sucks. They still teach the Law
   of Dominance in Mendel squares as "Fact" in school... which it
   ain't.. - they've known this LONG before I went to school - and
   it wouldn't be so much a problem except child welfare in
   different parts of the western world have used the 3rd law to
   break up families because they used the sorter as Proof...

   But anyway.. that's my school rant of the problems of teaching
   tendencies as facts, in the hopes that they'll be corrected in
   college... and the lackluster education kids get, in which wrong
   ideas get carried into adulthood and into the jobs they have.

   Oh well. I digressed. Nothing to do with OP. Sorry - just tired
   [truth be told, I had a female black biology teacher, who was
   awesome, except on one test. A question was about dominance and
   the question had to do with white and black and what will the
   child be? I didn't pay attention to that segment and answered
   white. She kept me after school and lectured me about racism,
   Nazism... discrimination.. and really all it was is that I
   wasn't paying attention in class. *sigh*. yeah, school stories.
   Tired].