The Thing organism is impossible

*slowclap*

Finally, after almost 40 years a hero comes along and lets us know...

Nah its real dude, don´t you know its based on a true story.

It's real. Didn't you watch the movie. It imitates. That's how it does it.

Listen to Blair. It's science.

Try telling that so MCU STANS who argue that Tony Stark's technology is "real world"

Superman and all his powers, zombies (rotting corpses moving around despite their musceles receiving no oxygenating, nutrient-rich blood to fuel them); werewolves; 500 foot-tall, nuclear fire-breathing dragons; Iron Man's armor (flying hundreds of miles somehow, despite the armor carrying no fuel tanks that could possibly hold anything capable of providing the necessary amount of reaction mass...)

I could literally write pages of examples. The movies are full of things that are impossible. They're just movies. You're supposed to suspend disbelief for a couple of hours, and sit back and enjoy the ride.

I just read a story by Peter Watts, "The Things" (2010) which tells the story of the movie from the viewpoint of the THING itself. The story was a Hugo finalist along with sundry other awards. I just bought a copy of the 2016 anthology Things From Outer Space, specifically to get this story. Watts has his own theory, which is pretty good, and the story is very cool.
I do not entirely trust the explanation provided in the film. It is built up hastily by a single scientist with limited information. I think we are dealing with something not unlike a virus, but colonial. It attacks cells and rebuilds them around its own essential "DNA" and attains sentience at some threshold of cell numbers. I suppose it might be capable of taking over an organism with a single THING cell, but it might be attacked by the bodies immune system (leucocytes might be capable of dealing with individual THING cells), and thus require some minimum number. This would render the finished THING-conversion cells only recognizable via something like the MacReady test or a DNA test as each THING cell would include not only the host DNA, but a fully functional THING "DNA" set. I parenthesize the THING "DNA" since it is not reasonable that it would actually be DNA, but rather some alien biological code, presumably containing a similar set of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc. It is possible also, that some special staining technique might make a THING cell nucleus apparent under a microscope.

Whaddya mean, molecules can't be something and something else at the same time? Why would that necessarily be the case?

Molded silicone can mimic flesh extremely well under certain conditions, for example, but it is a completely different molecule.

Cuttlefish can look and move like a little kelp bed or whatever, but they have different molecules than kelp.

I don't think it's impossible. Many organisms on earth, including yourself and everyone here, does something that science can't explain yet: consciousness.

[deleted]