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All matter is made up of atoms. An atom is like a tiny solar system. In the center of the atom is the nucleus which is a cluster of protons and neutrons. The protons have a positive electric charge while the neutrons are electrically neutral.
Electrically charged specks of interstellar dust organize into DNA-like double helixes and display properties normally attributed to living systems, such as evolving and reproducing, new computer simulations show. But scientists are hesitant to call the dancing dust particles "alive," and instead say they are just another example of how difficult it is to define life.
Could something similar have happened with the Universe? It is a large complex system which, some cosmologists argue, cannot have appeared by chance. Simpler universes came first, they say, and it may have taken hundreds of millions of universal generations to progress to a universe as complex as our own. Lee Smolin, professor of physics at the Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at the Pennsylvania State University, is a leading proponent of this idea,