thoughts about extremeaphiles

Ok guys and gals i realize it is a possibility that this question may have been proposed before but i wanted to get some answers on it.
My question is this, we know that extremeaphiles live in almost every environment that we have encountered or ventured in so far, what is to say that there are not extremeaphiles in other areas that we consider impossible to host life in I.E. space, sun(s) or even something really extreme like a neutron star or black hole?

and to go a little bit farther along that line what about a life form that is somewhat sentient or is sentient in any of those environments?

These would not be lifeforms as we currently define the term. There is no way for life as we know it to survive or even develop in those kinds of environments.

If you aren't a biologist, quick overview.
Higher level bio people may wish to correct me or expand more, as its been a few years since i studied evolution of biological process....

'Life' (the process) in the simplest form (including abiogenic liife), requires a chemical chain reaction (metabolism), that decreases entropy for it-self vis increasing entropy elsewhere(or increases the energy available for use for the life-form), and has at least some small ability to self sustain and have other life-forms created.

Decreasing self-entropy is an effective meter-stick here, as it means whatever you are looking at is acting against the intrinsic forces of nature, and gives whatever the life-form is a way to gain energy from the system, as otherwise it would just be a normal chemical reaction.

An ability to self sustain, and the ability to have more created, is also important, as it ensures you are not just looking at a random chance event.

The problem as you might see, is that the anti-entropic and self sustaining properties mean the life-form must still exist afterwards. This is a problem as several outer space environments would preclude this. For example, most parts of a star are so hot that molecular bonds are destroyed, leaving only atoms behind, which would destroy any proto-life-form back into its constituent parts rapidly. Further out, temperatures may be lower, but so is matter, meaning the possibility to react to gain energy is low, and there is also high levels of radiation, which can break molecular bonds or cause nuclear decay (an alpha particle hitting a nucleus turning carbon into oxygen is bad for your molecule), altering your life-form. this makes self-sustaining hard, and replication harder. Neutron stars are hotter than suns, and tend to rip apart even atoms into bare nuclei and electrons, so even less luck there. As for black holes, current research suggests that there may be infinitely long times over infinitely short distances, meaning whatever is inside may take an eternity or more just to move a fraction of an inch, in their space-time frame.


Life may exist where you suggest. But it wont be anything remotely approaching what could currently be described as life, even generously.....


hope that helps, and I hope that was accurate from my memories of the classes.... . :/

Good definition Spacekiwi. I'd quibble about one parameter though.
Does life have to be biological? As many authors have postulated we can imagine entities that meet the entropy criteria; that are comprised of magnetic fields, plasma, supercooled superconductors, computer AIs, and other mediums.
As posters here have probably guessed I'm not religious, but do gods have cells or are they composed of other stuff?

Hence why i included abiogenisis and beyond, and tried to define life as the simple chemical reactions, to allow for proto-life to also be included, as well as self replicating chemical reactions, to classify even the most basic ideas that are demonstrably more than statistical anomalies. This allowed me to demonstrate that for at least currently accepted forms of life, these cant exist in the given scenarios.

I havent heard about plasma based or microwave based life analogues outside of scifi before today, so thats interesting research. A quick look at some plasma forms research shows that it seems to use plasma charge in place of chemical reactions, and dust particles as the interacting molecules, so potentially possible, although they only seem to have simulations at the moment. They have shown that it is possible for replication and evolution of these however, so assuming there is a way to enable self-sustainability, i dont see why they wouldnt be classed as life. the difficulty would be keeping conditions constant long enough for the life-forms to survive more than a few generations however, and they still kind of count as molecular based life forms...


As for AI, does that meet the 3 points i outlined? For me, i would asume that they sustain themselves, can reproduce and evolve, and can transform energy into information, decreasing their entropy.


Cant speak for any of the other life-forms however, os if anyone can......

Daryl wrote:Good definition Spacekiwi. I'd quibble about one parameter though.
Does life have to be biological? As many authors have postulated we can imagine entities that meet the entropy criteria; that are comprised of magnetic fields, plasma, supercooled superconductors, computer AIs, and other mediums.
As posters here have probably guessed I'm not religious, but do gods have cells or are they composed of other stuff?

viciokie wrote:Ok guys and gals i realize it is a possibility that this question may have been proposed before but i wanted to get some answers on it.
My question is this, we know that extremeaphiles live in almost every environment that we have encountered or ventured in so far, what is to say that there are not extremeaphiles in other areas that we consider impossible to host life in I.E. space, sun(s) or even something really extreme like a neutron star or black hole?

and to go a little bit farther along that line what about a life form that is somewhat sentient or is sentient in any of those environments?

For some entertaining speculation on life developing on a neutron star, I recommend Dragon's Egg by Dr. Robert L. Forward

http://www.amazon.com/Dragons-Egg-Del-R ... L.+Forward

...as well as its sequel, Starquake.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Forward

I think we would have to re define what life is for such to include very strange things in the aforementioned extreme environments.

While is is quite possible, (anything is) it might be a stretch to conclude that intelligence would exist under such conditions.

Just me. HB of CJ (old coot) But then what do I know. And it also depend upon our definition of intelligence I know some very smart people who are really dumb.

Here you go HB. an article on the theoretical possibility of dust and solar plasma based 'life', or as best as what can pass for it. really interesting researchg.



http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/9/8/263/fulltext/

HB of CJ wrote:I think we would have to re define what life is for such to include very strange things in the aforementioned extreme environments.

While is is quite possible, (anything is) it might be a stretch to conclude that intelligent would exist under such conditions.

Just me. HB of CJ (old coot) But then what do I know.

Life as some of you suspect may or may not conform to the ideas that we recognize. Truthfully though i suspect that there are many different variations of life spread amongst the stars and if multi verses do exist then there are different standards there as well. on some of these places we consider impossible i suspect there may be times we will need to re evaluate our judgments as to where life is or is not possible.

I am native american descent so that is what is giving me these ideas.

Thank you Spacekiwi. I did read the abstract. Cool indeed. Perhaps in the future we will find such life and will say to ourselves .... W ... T ... F ?

Warp One Mr Sulu! No ... Wait ... wrong time line! Humm ... what would Honor say to the helmsman anyhow? "All ahead slow?" HB of CJ (old coot)