Life IN space

[Jay-qu]

this thread is old.. I never even saw it the first time round..

 

I would like to think that life could adapt and exsist almost anywhere - it would just be very wierd and we probably wouldnt recognise it for what it is if we where staring at it!

[Eclogite]

Orbsycli,

the possibility of life originating in space, to me, is more likely than it emerging on a planet. Here are some reasons:

 

Organic Molecules Abundant in Space: (partial list)

In total more than one hundred and twenty five types of organic molecule have been detected in space.

 

acetylene (mono-, di-, and tri-)

hydrogen cyanide

benzene

cyanodecapentayne

Acetone

Propanal

Ethylene

Methanol

Dimethyl ether

Ethyl formate

vinyl alcohol

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

glycine (amino acid)

 

In addition more than seventy kinds of amino acid, the building block of proteins, have been found in meteorites.(And interestingly, the L-isomer dominates.)

 

Abundant Water in GMCs (Giant Molecular Clouds)

Water constitutes the most common molecule found in hot GMCs. (Their temperature raised by star formation.) It is not detected in cold GMCs, whose temperatures are close to absolute zero, because the water is quite decidedly frozen.

 

Adequate Temperatures

As noted above, temperatures of the GMCs cover a wide range. The range comfortably includes that in which liquid water is stable.

 

Reaction Surfaces

Abundant dust particles provide extensive surfaces on which molecules can gather and interact. The primeval soup envisaged by Darwin, confined to a tiny planet, pales into insignificance with the scale of even a single GMC, which can measure light years across.

More than enough reactive surfaces on which that first self replicating organism can arise.

 

In short, the conditions within warm GMCs are ideal for life to arise. We may owe the puzzlingly rapid emergence of complex life (and anyone who thinks a prokaryote isn't complex, isn't paying attention) on Earth to seeding from the GMC that fostered our sun and homeworld.

[TheFaithfulStone]

I would like to think that life could adapt and exist almost anywhere - it would just be very wierd and we probably wouldnt recognise it for what it is if we where staring at it!

 

I've often wondered on this myself. How would we recognize intelligent life if we found it? Alien life we could probably puzzle out, but what if we ARE the only species for a long, long distances that gives a crap about skyscrapers, and radios, and interstellar cruise ships?

 

I'm picturing a race of hyperintelligent broccolli beings, able to work out tensor calculus in their head, and with beautiful operas - but they don't have cars or trains or buildings or space ships. We call them "The Singing Brocolli of Eta Carinae" and we eat them with cheese. After all - they're only a plant that makes weird noises!

 

What if intelligence is all around us all the time, but it's just so different that we don't even notice it? Maybe the drake equation is missing a term - "similarity of priorities to humans" and the Fermi Paradox isn't a paradox at all.

 

Of course, that's a "prove me wrong" argument, so it's pretty well useless as an actual position - but it raises some interesting questions - are we anthropomorphizing nature by insisting that we be able to instantly recognize "life" or "intelligence" for what it is?

 

What if Jupiter is hanging up in the sky right now, contemplating the motion of the spheres and thinking - "Man when those monkeys from the third planet get here, it's gonna be BAD news."

 

TFS

[Buffy]

Well, I've always been partial to the Hitchiker's Guide theory that the Dolphins are way ahead of us: I see them staring in amazement at those "silly hairless apes" wasting their time building all those pointless contraptions. If you go over and take a look at Sanctus' thread on 5717, you might notice that Dolphin society very much resembles the nirvana in that thread...

 

Who's to say what "intelligence" really is?

 

The concept that I really like in this thread is the "panspermia" idea: its again very anthropocentric of us to assume that life had to have *started* on Earth, and with all that junk floating around, who's to say what a head start evolution got long before our Sun was even a difuse cloud of hydrogen gas?

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[sigsfried]

What about the Black Cloud by A.C. Clarke (I think) that descirbed a creature that was basically a large cloud of gas. It would approach stars getting very close and gain energy before moving off again. Though I struggle to see how such a thing could evolve (Then again I struggle to see how any life can come about) Once it is there it might be feasible to survive.

[Eclogite]

What about the Black Cloud by A.C. Clarke (I think)

Fred Hoyle. It was his fictional exploration of his scientific work on pan spermia.