Living and Non Living

When I was in Austin, TX, I was sharing a room with some of my friends. To kill time, sometimes we used to engage in discussions and debates on generic topics. At times, I used to take a position/stand in the discussion which is completely opposite or different to that of most other friends. Though within my heart I did not believe/support my position, I used to play a role of devils advocate just to keep the discussion going and flesh out more and more substantial and supportive arguments, facts and examples from others. It also helped me in fortifying/re-asses my original positions, added clarity to my thoughts.

One of the discussion topic we had was "What is the meaning of Life" ? How can we differentiate Living from Non living thing ?

Some of us said, any thing which shows growth or Reproduction, uses energy or metabolism can be defined as Living being.
But then question arises, How does one know that something is showing these qualities ?
For long, Plants were regarded as Non-living as they showed no signs of metabolism. Only when a one of our renowned scientist discovered this new phenomenon called 'Photosynthesis' they were regarded as Living beings.
Recently scientists came up with a theory that Virus is an exception i.e it lies between living and non-living. They say it because virus has no cells but has all other characteristics of life. Even today scientific community is divided on the classification of Virus as living being.

All matter, both living and non-living, is composed of same building blocks called atoms. The computer you are now looking at is also composed of billions of various atoms which is same as that of your body. Atom is made up same elements called electrons, protons and Neutrons.The 95% of atom is void (meaning nothing) and what is left of remaining 5 % percent is made of electrons, protons and neutrons. So when everything is made up of same material, how does one classify something as living and non-living ?

When I was in South Africa, we visited a big Baobab Tree which was carbon dated to be 6000 years old. So today its rate of growth is so slow that for short lived creatures such as bacteria, it is virtually lifeless. Similarly, we the humans who live for maximum of 60-70 years can reliably gauge the growth, and metabolism of creatures whose life span is either less or slightly higher. Why can't it be possible that, rock is also living being whose rate of metabolism is too slow for humans to measure ? What if rocks communicate with each other through waves which are undetectable for humans ? Just like how scientists recently discovered that Whales communicate with each other through sound frequencies which are inaudible to humans.

German scientists at Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics using their ultra-short time measurement technology claimed to have measured the shortest-ever time interval by discovering the tiniest duration an electron takes to leave the atom after the impact of the photons or light particles. This effect, known as photo emission, was explained by Albert Einstein more than hundred years ago.

They found that electrons leave the atom with a small but measurable time delay of about twenty attoseconds. "One attosecond is one billionth of one billionth of a second, an unimaginable short interval of time.

Average human life span of 70 years could be considered as 'Blip' wrt age of Baobab tree which is known to survive thousands of years. Similarly, one attosecond is the least unit of time known to man, so that could very well be average life span of things termed as 'Non living' today.