When people talk about radically different life, they talk about organisms that make use of organic compounds like arsenic, or DNAless life but with some other mechanism that achieves the same thing. Maybe not even carbon based, but silicon base. If any life could exist in the kinds of environments I'm talking about - i.e. a solar systemless universe, or a universe that only lasts a few million years or less (giving little time to evolve), or even an atomless universe it would be several orders of magnitude beyond radically different life.
But who knows, there may be parameters of subatomic particles that can be tweaked to create something just as ingenious as an atom. But for the context of what I'm talking about, it doesn't really matter what kind of life it is or how radical. Whatever life form it is, makes observations that determine quantum states, and the question of physically what does it take to make an observation still remains.
Well I'm outta here... I'm going to Florida to watch the last launch of Endeavour .... it's a bittersweet feeling
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