Could alien life be dna dust?

A recent amazing series of computer simulations performed by a team of physicists from Russia, Germany and Australia reveals that dust clouds in space can harbour spiral structures capable of reproducing - and being selected - in the same way as terrestrial DNA. Read an Institute of Physics news article here, and read another brief article with useful links and discuss the implications at the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) community forum here.

The following image was lifted from the IOP article, but is presumably copyright the authors of the article which prompted the IOP news piece.

Spirals