Heh... from Bio to Phys, I guess if you want to see death as the disordering of an ordered system then a star dying is analogous to an organism dying.

 

Anyway, for one closing point, which I have said b4 in a round about way, the topic of this post shouldn't be "death, why?" it should be "immortality, why not?".

The evolutionary advantage of death is to preserve versatility. If a species achieved immortality it would necessarily have to stop reproducing at some point, or at least severely slow it down. The gene pool would no longer be fluid, but stagnant. In the event of some dramatic change in climate or other circumstances there would be a limited number of variations and even those with advantageous genes would be accustomed to living in a particular manner and be slow to react and adjust.

If a species achieved immortality

 

When you say 'achieved' immortality, you seem to be making the implication that a state of 'relative immortality' would have evolved from the 'normal' state of 'internally programed absolute mortality'. What I have been trying to point out is that the evolutionary 'arrow' should have been from a state of 'relative immortality' to the presently universal state of 'internally programed absolute mortality'. Mortality should have evolved from immortality, but the record seems to indicate that multicelled organisms displayed the characteristics of absolute mortality from the 'get go'.

 

aguy2