Spectral Thoughts

Attended a talk on Laws of Life from an astrobiological perspective, i.e., are there basic laws / principles that can help us determine life from non-life. This may also shed some light on what forms of life are possible. It occurred to me that is a binary view of life - life and non-life. What if it is really a spectrum - there is a spectrum of complexity, capability, functionality that is arising. Life happens to be one that is past a certain threshold with emergent properties that we find particularly appealing as we happen to be of this form. One can look at universal evolution from energy, to particles, to atoms, to heavy elements, to replicating molecules, life, ...... as a spectrum.

This bring up an interesting question, what is next after life as we know it -  higher levels of complexity, capability, functionality ?   Access to space, time, matter, in ways we can't yet imagine?