What are the important differences between living and non-living things?

Question

What are the important differences between living and non-living things?

Answer 1

Living things are continually doing somethng to survive.

Answer 2

you shouldn't eat living things...they need to be killed and cooked...otherwise you might get worms.

Answer 3

I should think the main difference would be...LIFE !   lol

Jim D

Answer 4

Living things thorugh chemical reactions (mostly) are constantly trying to stay alive.  

The jury is out as to the perfect definition of what life is.

the process of eating or breaking down light and respiration-- are all ways (or parts of the process) of making energy to sustain life.  And having a process by which the "entity" tries to maintain is chemical reactions going...is usually part of the definition of life.  

non-living things may have chemical reactions or reactions with the environment but they do not have a process by which the chemical reactions are continuous.

There are things that are in the middle...and science cannot decide if they are living or non-living (although we usually go with non-living):  Like fire.

I read an article recently that there is space dust or gas (or something like that) that also follows some of the rules that define life.  One of those being that a spiral-molecular shape occurs through out it.  Like our genes' double-helix shape.