[ExI] Maximum biological lifespan

[David Lubkin]

Anders wrote:

>So, no, there is no inherent maximum beyond the survival of the 
>ecological niche the being lives in.
         :
>(To get to a million year lifespan the scaling requires about 10^16 
>kg mass, about the same as the entire Earth biosphere. That sounds unlikely.)

Who says it has to be animal?

It seems to me there could be a planet where there only has ever been 
one organism of one species. That "evolved" not through our 
competitive pressures but through that one organism's adaptation to 
external environmental pressures: climate, weather, radiation, 
seismic events, bombardment, etc.

Or, the biosphere had an evolution much like ours until a combination 
of external events killed off enough other life for one species to 
supplant all others. Say one fungus that covered the whole planet, 
that needed no other species, that then potentially develops further 
as in the previous paragraph. That can be considered a unitary metabolism.

The question for me is then whether such a being could become capable 
of thought and, if so, how and why does this happen.


-- David.