Last December, a team of designers, journalists and musicians collectively known as Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell uploaded a YouTube video entitled "What Is Life? Is Death real?", a colorful animated presentation that discusses the concept of life and death in both a philosophical and scientific approach.

In the video, the narrator begins by introducing a proposition by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who defined living things as that which avoid decay into disorder and equilibrium. The narrator then proceeds to illustrate this definition starting with an analogy between the universe and a computer's download folder. "It started orderly, and got more and more chaotic over time," the narrator explains. "By investing energy, you can create order and clean it up. This is what living things do. But, what is life?"

Throughout the entire clip, the narrator discusses more analogies between abstract subjects and concrete scenarios using a basic manner of speech. They move from topic to topic in a logical progression; for instance, explaining that all living things are made up of cells, then moving on to the definition of a cell, and then discussing how a cell is composed of non-living matter animated by the laws of the universe. According to the video, since matter is broken down into other matter and does not completely cease to exist, we are fundamentally no different from what we call non-living things.

The narrator asks near the end of the video: "Is life and death an irrelevant question, and we haven't noticed it yet? Is it possible we are much more part of the universe as we thought?"

"What Is Life? Is Death Real?" has been published on Dec. 11, 2014 and has had well over 500,000 views till date. Watch the video here:

Credit: YouTube/Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell

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