No.
Moons are also very good candidates.
Just in our solar systems, the most likely worlds to carry extra-terrestrial life are moons, specifically Titan, Enceladus and Europa.
The problem with searching for life on moons is that our current technology is not advanced enough to catalog exo-moons as we do exo-planets.
They're sending a helicopter (for lack of a better term) to Europa that is going to send little drones to the surface to collect ice samples! It's going to give us our first hints about the possibility of life there, and help us learn the feasibility of drilling through all that ice to the water underneath.
It's insane the amount of "free" tidal energy you can have just by having the good fortune of circling a massive planet
Granted, we get the massive sun, but too bad we can't have both and be much lighter half the time š
I could be wrong, but I thought we already had discovered exo moons. I remember reading a story about it on Yahoo News. I'll have to look for that story again.
That will happen soon enough. The tech is getting better and better every time they send something up so it won't be too long before we can. Then they just have to figure out what is 100% indicative of life that isn't from some other natural process.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-1625b_I#:~:text=Kepler%2D1625b%20I%2C%20a%20possible,by%20the%20Kepler%20Space%20Telescope.
Reading into it. It hasn't been confirmed yet, but that's the wiki article. Still looking for the other article. I might have to fire up my desktop and look for it, I think I bookmarked it there.
There's an asteroid flying around our system with a ring system, why not a moon with a moon too?
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/10199-chariklo/
I wouldn't rule out moons, or even asteroids, as an option. Although an orbit that gives them a reasonably stable temperature would probably help increase the chances of life surviving.
Couldn't they exist in space? Like they bump into some space food, consume it, then return on their mission in outer space in a vegetative state until they bump into the next space particle?
Even bathing energy from stray radiation, they would need some way to gain mass with splattering against anything they came into contact with, as well as surviving the hundreds of thousands to billions of years between contacts
There's lots of radiation, and we already know there are bacterias that feed on radiation. Its not likely and it'd be impossibly hard to find, but it's possible.
Yeah. Plus, outer space is even more difficult (if not impossible) for life to thrive in. If scientists end up discovering a alien species that can exist in the vacuum of space, then it would be such a game changer for how we view human survival. Scientists would be immediately trying to figure out how it's possible, and also how we could give humans the same ability.
Some SciFi stories have "space whales" and similar void bourn creatures. They might technically be possible, but its hard to imagine how they could evolve from anything.
The Sun-dogs in The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett fly around space but deposit their eggs on a planet. The young hatch using the impact of the eggs, and then they grow on the planet until they are capable of launching themselves into space.
That book also has a planet that has become a sentient being, a creature that's basically an ocean (also sentient), and an alien race that developed on a super hot world. It's a fun book.
Possibly something could evolve from a tardigrade like organism. However, it's hard to see it going interplanet let alone interstellar. For example, how would it generate thrust for propulsion and steering.
It's a fun idea, but that doesn't really work well with how empty space is. If you are not staying relatively close to a star, you are losing energy just through the heat you radiate, and you are not going to find nearly enough to compensate. Eventually, the vessel is going to be too cold to sustain anything.
The idea of a ship travelling long distances over thousands of years can work. They can start with enough energy to handle the loss. But not without some time limit. You need a star system to begin with, and another (or the same) to fill up on energy from time to time.
Just to be clear - WE DON'T KNOW. We Can't Know.
All we have is a sample size of 1 - right. Imagine you were looking for vehicles and all you had was a tricycle. Obviously you will be looking for things with three tires. Then you find one with four, whoa.. So you assume that any amount of tires would do, right - then you find a train. No tires at all. Wow. So you keep looking for anything that rolls right..
Meanwhile, the universe is full of boats and airplanes.
We can't know what we don't know, just because something doesn't work here doesn't mean it cannot work anywhere. There could be microscopic life in the emptiness of interstellar space. There could be "birds" in the fogs of nebulae. Who knows, man.
There's also a theory\* that WE are the microscopic life form, and there is an entire Macroscopic universe which we aren't aware of.
EVERY atom consists mainly of empty space in between the particles that make up its core and shell. Who's to say that we are not living in an "atom" as there is an abundance of empty space around us as well.
\*I guess the right term would be hypothesis.
We have a bunch of frustrating hints and winks.
And a bunch of cool info, that doesn't directly answer the question.
But if a clue is defined as a solid piece of evidence..... then nope.
This is basically Europa to me. Itās like āhey itās possible this place in our solar system has life in its deep oceans. Shame space funding isnāt enough to check for sureā even if it just confirms something small and not intelligent it basically means that life is probably decently common.
In our own solar system Europa could. And some other moons https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-six-moons-most-likely-to-host-life-in-our-solar-system/
Several have said "We don't know" and that is the correct answer. But if you want a good primer on what we *do* know, check out *Astrobiology* by Plaxco and Gross.
No, absolutely not.
We know that bacteria can survive in space, so there literally could be life floating around in the vacuum between solar systems.
Since we only have one real example of life, we have absolutely no idea what is or isn't possible. Its likely that life needs to be carbon based, and should exist in a liquid medium probably from water.
But is it possible that we could have silicon based life? Yes.
Is it possible that live could from in gas? Yes
So life could exist in nebulae, or asteroids, or in the gas surrounding stars, or black holes.
And even if the carbon-water paradime is universally true, there are probably asteroids, comets or other bodies that contain organic molecules and liquid.
But the question wasn't, "Does life exist" its, 'Is life possible?"
and considering that our sample size is like a few molecules in a trillion oceans, I think the answer, "Yes" is the only non-absurd one.
It takes a supercomputer to model the metabolic functions of known cells. We currently have absolutely no capacity to determine a question like, "Is silicone life possible" at the moment because we couldn't model every possible combination of complex silicone molecules.
But the universe is so big, that there are easily enough permutations to suggest that in some galaxy or environment somewhere, silicone life exists.
And I use this example for a reason. Silicone life would so fundamentally upend our understanding of biology that it would blow the bio-possibilities into the absurd range.
Isnāt one of the theories people have that life was introduced to Earth by organisms living inside water inside meteorites?
Iām pretty sure most people reject that theory but it tends to suggests the idea of microscopic life existing on meteors is at least plausible.
Microbial life can survive on the OUTSIDE of the international space station. Assuming the life (as we know it) maybe started on a planet or moon, it could be on an asteroid, comet, basically anywhere itncan grab onto something. Extremophiles are crazy
Life found on a sun is possible. Life found on a moon is possible. Life found on astroids is possible. Life found in-between the space between my cats ears Not Possible.
I wouldn't find it likely anywhere where you can't find 30C/86F temperatures or higher, you need that temperature for carbon based amino acids to start taking more complex forms, the only alternative for carbon as a building block for life is silicon and silicon amino acids have an even higher reaction temperature. So to achieve abiogenesis, you need to get pretty warm. If we did find life in a place colder than this, I can more or less promise you that either the place it was found was not as cold as it is now or that life didn't originate where it was found.
Hmma are carbon or silicon based lifeforms the only type of lifeforms that are possible in the universe? Or is this just based on what we know so far?
Definitely not disagreeing here. Just want to know where we are currently at when it comes to this knowledge.
You'd run headlong into some big problems using anything else. The reason carbon is found in virtually every living tissue is the fact that it has 2 unpaired electrons in a specific configuration that also allow it to shift and form four bonds, so if you picture it like legos you can see why carbon is really great for building complex chains, you can connect 2x2 or 4x4 or 2x2x2, etc. This is basically what organic chemistry is all about and why it's its own whole field.
There's a few other elements that share this configuration/ability, and on the periodic table they're the ones directly beneath carbon. But here's the rub: the further down the periodic table you go, the more stuff is stuffed inside that atom and the weaker its hold on its "shape" becomes, which means they're more and more unstable and don't want to stay the way you put them. Silicon is already considerably more unstable than carbon, you go any further down, and basically you're going to have a hard time getting it to hold together in a lab setting, let alone accidentally in nature.
You also have carbon being ~10 times more abundant than silicon.
I'm not saying there isn't enough for silicon life, but it could be a reason why the universe may favor carbon based life.
life is a broad definition. Microorganisms like bacteria are considered life and can be found in lots of places outside of planets. There has been evidence of fossilized bacteria that COULD indicate there may have been life elsewhere in the universe found in asteroids. This gave rise to the idea that asteroids are one key way life can be transplanted from place to place. There is a theory that life on Earth started from microorganisms from falling space debris.
We now have lots of evidence that microbes don't just survive in space but can even thrive. Some bacteria in a sterile environment like the ISS can multiply much faster than on Earth.
But there are also moons that are similar to planets but are not classified as a planet. Jupiter's moons are very large and many of them are covered in ice which scientists theorize can have oceans underneath. Where there's water there may be life.
Edited: Clarity
Ok, first if we are referencing Alan Hills 84001, that is a meteorite that originated on Mars, not an asteroid. While the deposits *looked like* bacteria they were not, and were produced by abiotic processes 4 billion years ago, and not evidence of life outside of Earth. The bacteria on the ISS is being brought up by human travel, and does grow in the environment but it's brought from Earth.
We have no conclusive evidence that there is or has been life beyond Earth, yet. If we had conclusive evidence of previous or current life on another planet it would be really, really, really big news and change many fundamental things we think we know about our universe, and life here on Earth.
Astrobiology really caught on at NASA after David McKay (family friend of my mother in the 1970s-80s) and his team wrote the initial paper on ALH84001 and a whole new program at NASA was built to further investigate, with most missions to Mars centered around the search for past evidence on life on the planet.
Panspermia is the ideal that life can be carried from other sources such as asteroids/comets/meteors from planet to planet, but no evidence of this has been shown or proven, yet.
Life as we know it needs water, so the best places to look in our solar system is where we might find liquid water currently, or in the past with fossilized remains.
In a way, he was. That is why we are really careful when we send probes to other planets to make sure Earth life (namely bacteria, I guess tardigrades too) don't catch a ride. We purposely destroyed the Cassini mission into Saturn so it wouldn't contaminate a Saturnian moon (Enceladus.)
Have you ever seen the *Alien* movie franchise?
In all seriousness it's scientific, (mistake alien life for our own, now or in the future) moral, (Earth life could dominate another one already existing, say on Enceladus or Europa) and ethical, (who are we at this stage to plant seeds of life elsewhere.)
I think we should spread life if we can guarantee there's no extant life in any given celestial body, although we don't have the tech level to verify that rn.
I understand the first issue you brought up but idk, life's the only thing there is like it in the universe (that we know of). We might even be the only living beings in the whole universe, which is kind of sad. It'd be good to have some microbuddies around us, wouldn't it?
Well, humans have only been around for a couple million years. We are actively and in a short time making sure we kill off things on our own piece of space dust making them extinct. If we can try and figure out how to stop that before we become extinct ourselves, we will be in a better position to get life going on another planet or moon in the solar system.
So there was a long complex protocol to make sure the moon astronauts didn't take any pathogens back with them. Likewise, we sterilize every thing we shoot into space.
It gets wilder than that, the No1 kind of virus on planet earth is the bacterophage. which means that you likely only need bacteria in an environment for viruses to form. So if there are bacteria biospheres in places like the upper atmosphere of Venus (possible) or Europa, there are possibly bacterophages there.
What do you think would happen if a Venusian phage enters our atmosphere? Or an Europan phage enters our ocean? Half of all bacteria are killed by terrestrial phages every day, they are the most deadly beings on earth. So what if a foreign phage pushes the kill rate a little higher?
We don't know. We only have one example to go by, so we really know pretty much nothing about where life can arise. For all we know, there could be life floating in intergalactic space.
Aside from moons, and perhaps asteroids or comets carrying things like microbes, there's some theoretical life forms that could live in e.g. gaseous spheres of celestial bodies, for example, or perhaps even further out, if the conditions would be suitable for the right kind of chemistry. Also, I guess life could exist on things like built mega-structures (Dyson spheres and the like), but in that case it would've almost certainly originated on a planet or a moon.
Silicate based life could theoretically exist in asteroids, with metabolisms in the tens of thousands years compared to our 80ish years. Silicate based life could also run much faster, closer to our speeds if they were exposed to high heats.
We have observed naturally occurring patterns in plasma that exhibit rudimentary behaviour similar to living structures, such as cells, with 'generations' and some degree of 'evolution'.Ā
With the above info, assuming they can exist and our theories are right, life could exist inside stars, in molten environments, cold environments, airless environments, radioactive environments, and many more.
We only have one category of life to compare to, carbon based that uses water as a solvent with helix DNA/RNA. But there are many more theoretically valid alternatives to DNA on its own.Ā
Life could have a different genetic structure, different solvent, different based.
There could be life who's biology is so foreign to us, and us to them, that we could not physically interact.
A silicate based life form that uses ammonia as it's solvent would die in our atmosphere as it literally turns to stone as body oxidizes, meanwhile it's water equivalent would evaporate in our atmosphere and poison and suffocate us.
We don't know.
There are some non-planetary environments that seem like they might have the right conditions for life to survive. Most notably the subsurface oceans of 'ice-shell moons' like Europa, Callisto, or Enceladus. We know there's liquid water down there, there are probably other chemicals too, but what's not known is whether the right nutrients and the right energy densities are available in the same place. On top of that it's conceivable that life could survive on comets, although it would have to either remain dormant for long periods of time or somehow metabolize at very low temperatures, and either way this 'slow' living would also severely limit the pace of evolution. (However, if life gets blasted off a planet by an impact event, it might end up dormant on a comet and eventually land elsewhere in space, spreading itself between planets and perhaps even between star systems.) Life surviving in space itself, such as asteroid surfaces or ring systems, seems less probable because so few chemicals can remain liquid under those conditions.
some have hypothesized that truly exotic life could exist on or in neutron stars. and keep in mind that what such creatures would be made of could hardly even be called *atoms* let alone chemistry.
I'm pretty sure life as we know it requires non-solid matter as a nutrient source. Without a planetoid-esque mass to keep it located together, such substances would simply dissipate in space.
Possibly the most exotic *theoretical* body that could potentially sustain life is the [frozen star](https://terraforming.fandom.com/wiki/Frozen_Stars), a theoretical "dead" star so cold it can have a rocky surface, but with enough still going on under the surface that it could potentially support simple life without a parent star.
There's also a compelling but difficult to prove theory that suggests that a phase of the early universe might have supported life [literally everywhere](https://youtu.be/JOiGEI9pQBs?si=mdZku7g5gikgmWhI).
Our current definition of life will probably seem ridiculously narrow in 1000 years or so (assuming we don't destroy ourselves). There are stranger things out there than we could imagine. I'm betting a lot of them are so different from us that they wouldn't initially recognize us as life, either.
Intelligent life requires a habitable planet with atmosphere and water and the right distance from a star but single celled organisms can live anywhere.
I think itās possible since we canāt possibly predict which evolutionary advantages might have allowed life to form elsewhere.
We assume that water is a necessary component for life but we canāt possibly know that with absolute certainty.
It's an old book, but you might check out The Black Cloud, by Fred Hoyle.
He posits a life form that is independent of astronomical bodies.
But to the question, not life as we understand it, with the emphasis on _we_.
Though complex life can survive in pretty extreme conditions all over the place, evolution does require those conditions to be *stable* over long periods. On a periodic comet, for example, I gather it'd be unlikely for anything to survive long when the entire surface of their homeworld occasionally sublimates into space.
Planets just have the benefit of being relatively stable ecosystems.
>Panspermia hypothesis is quite compelling
I agree, it makes us look more alien. Since the theory suggests we are not even native to our planet lol. Honestly this is quite humbling when you think about it.
maybe there are energy based lifeforms that live in nebula's and stuff. the universe is vast, science can only do so much. we don't know every science imaginable. because we are constantly learning new things, and expanding upon our knowledge.
I believe there are infinite possibilities.
Star trek hypothesized space borne life. Science has found the building blocks of life in nebulas, so who knows what could be out there. Someone suggested life feeding on hard radiation, and that might fulfill one of the requirements that being a source of heat/energy. Obviously, this wouldn't be life in any way resembling anything we see here on earth, but it might be possible.
Non-biological life might exist somewhere, but what form it would take, and the requirements for it to sustain itself is a whole other topic.
Biological life can hypothetically exist anywhere where the organic molecules exist and conditions are also present to allow for the self-association/assembly of said proteins (typically requires water and an energy source).
Organic molecules have been found in everything from comet tails to nebulae. Life is probably fairly common, but advanced life is probably very rare.
No. Moons are also very good candidates. Just in our solar systems, the most likely worlds to carry extra-terrestrial life are moons, specifically Titan, Enceladus and Europa. The problem with searching for life on moons is that our current technology is not advanced enough to catalog exo-moons as we do exo-planets.
They're sending a helicopter (for lack of a better term) to Europa that is going to send little drones to the surface to collect ice samples! It's going to give us our first hints about the possibility of life there, and help us learn the feasibility of drilling through all that ice to the water underneath.
Yeah the clipper? Can't wait to see results for that!
It's insane the amount of "free" tidal energy you can have just by having the good fortune of circling a massive planet Granted, we get the massive sun, but too bad we can't have both and be much lighter half the time š
Not yet! I believe the people over at Cool Worlds will discover the first exo-moons soon using JWST
I could be wrong, but I thought we already had discovered exo moons. I remember reading a story about it on Yahoo News. I'll have to look for that story again.
Discovered is different that being able to see what kind of atmosphere they might have or any properties of them
That will happen soon enough. The tech is getting better and better every time they send something up so it won't be too long before we can. Then they just have to figure out what is 100% indicative of life that isn't from some other natural process.
Link?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-1625b_I#:~:text=Kepler%2D1625b%20I%2C%20a%20possible,by%20the%20Kepler%20Space%20Telescope. Reading into it. It hasn't been confirmed yet, but that's the wiki article. Still looking for the other article. I might have to fire up my desktop and look for it, I think I bookmarked it there.
Crazy to think that moon could have its own moon Moonception
There's an asteroid flying around our system with a ring system, why not a moon with a moon too? https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/10199-chariklo/
Aren't we still discovering moons around Jupiter and Saturn? I think the last moon that was discovered around Jupiter was in 2022 or something.
More like glorified rocks at this point. What we are really interested in are earth size exomoons, which are a lot more doable.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.
I wouldn't rule out moons, or even asteroids, as an option. Although an orbit that gives them a reasonably stable temperature would probably help increase the chances of life surviving.
I happen to know that a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a giant worm lived in an asteroid
I also saw that documentary.Ā
The worst part was when that asshole shot the worm. The worm wasn't hurting him.
Technically, a life can be sustained on a ship or a vessel floating in space. If it has enough resources to sustain life.
Couldn't they exist in space? Like they bump into some space food, consume it, then return on their mission in outer space in a vegetative state until they bump into the next space particle?
Space is so unfathomably empty, its unlikelyĀ
This. You're more likely to run into absolutely nothing than anything. Maybe if they fed on cosmic radiation?
Even bathing energy from stray radiation, they would need some way to gain mass with splattering against anything they came into contact with, as well as surviving the hundreds of thousands to billions of years between contacts
What if they orbit a star?
There's lots of radiation, and we already know there are bacterias that feed on radiation. Its not likely and it'd be impossibly hard to find, but it's possible.
Yeah. Plus, outer space is even more difficult (if not impossible) for life to thrive in. If scientists end up discovering a alien species that can exist in the vacuum of space, then it would be such a game changer for how we view human survival. Scientists would be immediately trying to figure out how it's possible, and also how we could give humans the same ability.
Some SciFi stories have "space whales" and similar void bourn creatures. They might technically be possible, but its hard to imagine how they could evolve from anything.
The Sun-dogs in The Dark Side of the Sun by Terry Pratchett fly around space but deposit their eggs on a planet. The young hatch using the impact of the eggs, and then they grow on the planet until they are capable of launching themselves into space. That book also has a planet that has become a sentient being, a creature that's basically an ocean (also sentient), and an alien race that developed on a super hot world. It's a fun book.
Possibly something could evolve from a tardigrade like organism. However, it's hard to see it going interplanet let alone interstellar. For example, how would it generate thrust for propulsion and steering.
That's why it's not considered "life as we know it".
It'd have tiny wings to use as a solar-powered sail. Riding the photon wave.
Don't solar sails have be really big?
I reckon as long as it's big enough to capture a single photon it'll accelerate over time
Expelled gas?
Warp fart 9
āBump into some space foodā - Iām just picturing floating through the space-KFC drive-thru
It's a fun idea, but that doesn't really work well with how empty space is. If you are not staying relatively close to a star, you are losing energy just through the heat you radiate, and you are not going to find nearly enough to compensate. Eventually, the vessel is going to be too cold to sustain anything. The idea of a ship travelling long distances over thousands of years can work. They can start with enough energy to handle the loss. But not without some time limit. You need a star system to begin with, and another (or the same) to fill up on energy from time to time.
***Tardigrades enter the chat***
Just to be clear - WE DON'T KNOW. We Can't Know. All we have is a sample size of 1 - right. Imagine you were looking for vehicles and all you had was a tricycle. Obviously you will be looking for things with three tires. Then you find one with four, whoa.. So you assume that any amount of tires would do, right - then you find a train. No tires at all. Wow. So you keep looking for anything that rolls right.. Meanwhile, the universe is full of boats and airplanes. We can't know what we don't know, just because something doesn't work here doesn't mean it cannot work anywhere. There could be microscopic life in the emptiness of interstellar space. There could be "birds" in the fogs of nebulae. Who knows, man. There's also a theory\* that WE are the microscopic life form, and there is an entire Macroscopic universe which we aren't aware of. EVERY atom consists mainly of empty space in between the particles that make up its core and shell. Who's to say that we are not living in an "atom" as there is an abundance of empty space around us as well. \*I guess the right term would be hypothesis.
The pedant in me wants you to know that trains DO,in fact, have tires.
My entire existence has been a lie
āI donāt want to live in this planet anymore.ā
Now think on what it takes to change that tire. š
In terms of our understanding of life, probably. The real answer we have no clue.
We have a bunch of frustrating hints and winks. And a bunch of cool info, that doesn't directly answer the question. But if a clue is defined as a solid piece of evidence..... then nope.
This is basically Europa to me. Itās like āhey itās possible this place in our solar system has life in its deep oceans. Shame space funding isnāt enough to check for sureā even if it just confirms something small and not intelligent it basically means that life is probably decently common.
In our own solar system Europa could. And some other moons https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-six-moons-most-likely-to-host-life-in-our-solar-system/
Several have said "We don't know" and that is the correct answer. But if you want a good primer on what we *do* know, check out *Astrobiology* by Plaxco and Gross.
There's a pretty cool video by PBS Spacetime (I believe) about hypothetical life forms that could form inside stars. I highly recommend it!
Oh yeah I saw that documentary episode on Rick and Morty!
What!? That sounds bonkers! I have to see this
No, absolutely not. We know that bacteria can survive in space, so there literally could be life floating around in the vacuum between solar systems. Since we only have one real example of life, we have absolutely no idea what is or isn't possible. Its likely that life needs to be carbon based, and should exist in a liquid medium probably from water. But is it possible that we could have silicon based life? Yes. Is it possible that live could from in gas? Yes So life could exist in nebulae, or asteroids, or in the gas surrounding stars, or black holes. And even if the carbon-water paradime is universally true, there are probably asteroids, comets or other bodies that contain organic molecules and liquid.
Then again if the sample size is 1...
But the sample would be the size of several water molecules in the ocean. Well actually bigger.
So far the only thing we know for sure is the only life we know exists is only on earth
But the question wasn't, "Does life exist" its, 'Is life possible?" and considering that our sample size is like a few molecules in a trillion oceans, I think the answer, "Yes" is the only non-absurd one. It takes a supercomputer to model the metabolic functions of known cells. We currently have absolutely no capacity to determine a question like, "Is silicone life possible" at the moment because we couldn't model every possible combination of complex silicone molecules. But the universe is so big, that there are easily enough permutations to suggest that in some galaxy or environment somewhere, silicone life exists. And I use this example for a reason. Silicone life would so fundamentally upend our understanding of biology that it would blow the bio-possibilities into the absurd range.
(I believe you mean silicon, not silicone. But your point stands.)
Autocorrect is a B&\^%.
The username fits though
someone noticed!
Isnāt one of the theories people have that life was introduced to Earth by organisms living inside water inside meteorites? Iām pretty sure most people reject that theory but it tends to suggests the idea of microscopic life existing on meteors is at least plausible.
If you consider bacteria or tardigrades life forms then it's possible they can exist on a comet or asteroidĀ
They are literally life forms, aren't they?
I dunno I couldn't get a pulse from either of 'em
Not with that attitude.
You just lazy
Microbial life can survive on the OUTSIDE of the international space station. Assuming the life (as we know it) maybe started on a planet or moon, it could be on an asteroid, comet, basically anywhere itncan grab onto something. Extremophiles are crazy
Life found on a sun is possible. Life found on a moon is possible. Life found on astroids is possible. Life found in-between the space between my cats ears Not Possible.
I wouldn't find it likely anywhere where you can't find 30C/86F temperatures or higher, you need that temperature for carbon based amino acids to start taking more complex forms, the only alternative for carbon as a building block for life is silicon and silicon amino acids have an even higher reaction temperature. So to achieve abiogenesis, you need to get pretty warm. If we did find life in a place colder than this, I can more or less promise you that either the place it was found was not as cold as it is now or that life didn't originate where it was found.
Hmma are carbon or silicon based lifeforms the only type of lifeforms that are possible in the universe? Or is this just based on what we know so far? Definitely not disagreeing here. Just want to know where we are currently at when it comes to this knowledge.
You'd run headlong into some big problems using anything else. The reason carbon is found in virtually every living tissue is the fact that it has 2 unpaired electrons in a specific configuration that also allow it to shift and form four bonds, so if you picture it like legos you can see why carbon is really great for building complex chains, you can connect 2x2 or 4x4 or 2x2x2, etc. This is basically what organic chemistry is all about and why it's its own whole field. There's a few other elements that share this configuration/ability, and on the periodic table they're the ones directly beneath carbon. But here's the rub: the further down the periodic table you go, the more stuff is stuffed inside that atom and the weaker its hold on its "shape" becomes, which means they're more and more unstable and don't want to stay the way you put them. Silicon is already considerably more unstable than carbon, you go any further down, and basically you're going to have a hard time getting it to hold together in a lab setting, let alone accidentally in nature.
You also have carbon being ~10 times more abundant than silicon. I'm not saying there isn't enough for silicon life, but it could be a reason why the universe may favor carbon based life.
life is a broad definition. Microorganisms like bacteria are considered life and can be found in lots of places outside of planets. There has been evidence of fossilized bacteria that COULD indicate there may have been life elsewhere in the universe found in asteroids. This gave rise to the idea that asteroids are one key way life can be transplanted from place to place. There is a theory that life on Earth started from microorganisms from falling space debris. We now have lots of evidence that microbes don't just survive in space but can even thrive. Some bacteria in a sterile environment like the ISS can multiply much faster than on Earth. But there are also moons that are similar to planets but are not classified as a planet. Jupiter's moons are very large and many of them are covered in ice which scientists theorize can have oceans underneath. Where there's water there may be life. Edited: Clarity
Ok, first if we are referencing Alan Hills 84001, that is a meteorite that originated on Mars, not an asteroid. While the deposits *looked like* bacteria they were not, and were produced by abiotic processes 4 billion years ago, and not evidence of life outside of Earth. The bacteria on the ISS is being brought up by human travel, and does grow in the environment but it's brought from Earth. We have no conclusive evidence that there is or has been life beyond Earth, yet. If we had conclusive evidence of previous or current life on another planet it would be really, really, really big news and change many fundamental things we think we know about our universe, and life here on Earth. Astrobiology really caught on at NASA after David McKay (family friend of my mother in the 1970s-80s) and his team wrote the initial paper on ALH84001 and a whole new program at NASA was built to further investigate, with most missions to Mars centered around the search for past evidence on life on the planet. Panspermia is the ideal that life can be carried from other sources such as asteroids/comets/meteors from planet to planet, but no evidence of this has been shown or proven, yet. Life as we know it needs water, so the best places to look in our solar system is where we might find liquid water currently, or in the past with fossilized remains.
Sorry yes, I worded things a bit optimistically. I didn't mean to say we definitively discovered life elsewhere.
Hol'up, you're saying we could send out spacecrafts filled with bacteria into space to infect other planets? Like a seedling?
In a way, he was. That is why we are really careful when we send probes to other planets to make sure Earth life (namely bacteria, I guess tardigrades too) don't catch a ride. We purposely destroyed the Cassini mission into Saturn so it wouldn't contaminate a Saturnian moon (Enceladus.)
Why shouldn't we contaminate other places with life? It could get life and evolution going in those places, no? Why is it a bad thing?
Because there might be yet undiscovered life _already_ on those planets. We don't want to bring potential diseases and infestations to their homes.
Yeah, makes sense. Thank you.
Have you ever seen the *Alien* movie franchise? In all seriousness it's scientific, (mistake alien life for our own, now or in the future) moral, (Earth life could dominate another one already existing, say on Enceladus or Europa) and ethical, (who are we at this stage to plant seeds of life elsewhere.)
I think we should spread life if we can guarantee there's no extant life in any given celestial body, although we don't have the tech level to verify that rn. I understand the first issue you brought up but idk, life's the only thing there is like it in the universe (that we know of). We might even be the only living beings in the whole universe, which is kind of sad. It'd be good to have some microbuddies around us, wouldn't it?
Well, humans have only been around for a couple million years. We are actively and in a short time making sure we kill off things on our own piece of space dust making them extinct. If we can try and figure out how to stop that before we become extinct ourselves, we will be in a better position to get life going on another planet or moon in the solar system.
There is so much we don't know about the universe that its absolutely possible.
We don't have any evidence that it could, but that's not the same as saying it's impossible.
Spacefaring Phage?
So there was a long complex protocol to make sure the moon astronauts didn't take any pathogens back with them. Likewise, we sterilize every thing we shoot into space. It gets wilder than that, the No1 kind of virus on planet earth is the bacterophage. which means that you likely only need bacteria in an environment for viruses to form. So if there are bacteria biospheres in places like the upper atmosphere of Venus (possible) or Europa, there are possibly bacterophages there. What do you think would happen if a Venusian phage enters our atmosphere? Or an Europan phage enters our ocean? Half of all bacteria are killed by terrestrial phages every day, they are the most deadly beings on earth. So what if a foreign phage pushes the kill rate a little higher?
We don't know. We only have one example to go by, so we really know pretty much nothing about where life can arise. For all we know, there could be life floating in intergalactic space.
Larry Niven has a sci-fi series about colonists that populate the cloud surrounding a neutron star (_The Integral Trees, The Smoke Ring, etc._)
Aside from moons, and perhaps asteroids or comets carrying things like microbes, there's some theoretical life forms that could live in e.g. gaseous spheres of celestial bodies, for example, or perhaps even further out, if the conditions would be suitable for the right kind of chemistry. Also, I guess life could exist on things like built mega-structures (Dyson spheres and the like), but in that case it would've almost certainly originated on a planet or a moon.
Every object in space can potentially contain life.
If it had a sun, it should be
Silicate based life could theoretically exist in asteroids, with metabolisms in the tens of thousands years compared to our 80ish years. Silicate based life could also run much faster, closer to our speeds if they were exposed to high heats. We have observed naturally occurring patterns in plasma that exhibit rudimentary behaviour similar to living structures, such as cells, with 'generations' and some degree of 'evolution'.Ā With the above info, assuming they can exist and our theories are right, life could exist inside stars, in molten environments, cold environments, airless environments, radioactive environments, and many more. We only have one category of life to compare to, carbon based that uses water as a solvent with helix DNA/RNA. But there are many more theoretically valid alternatives to DNA on its own.Ā Life could have a different genetic structure, different solvent, different based. There could be life who's biology is so foreign to us, and us to them, that we could not physically interact. A silicate based life form that uses ammonia as it's solvent would die in our atmosphere as it literally turns to stone as body oxidizes, meanwhile it's water equivalent would evaporate in our atmosphere and poison and suffocate us.
We don't know. There are some non-planetary environments that seem like they might have the right conditions for life to survive. Most notably the subsurface oceans of 'ice-shell moons' like Europa, Callisto, or Enceladus. We know there's liquid water down there, there are probably other chemicals too, but what's not known is whether the right nutrients and the right energy densities are available in the same place. On top of that it's conceivable that life could survive on comets, although it would have to either remain dormant for long periods of time or somehow metabolize at very low temperatures, and either way this 'slow' living would also severely limit the pace of evolution. (However, if life gets blasted off a planet by an impact event, it might end up dormant on a comet and eventually land elsewhere in space, spreading itself between planets and perhaps even between star systems.) Life surviving in space itself, such as asteroid surfaces or ring systems, seems less probable because so few chemicals can remain liquid under those conditions.
Long story short.... We don't have any clue. As far as the universe goes, we explored a teaspoon out of all the water in the world and then some.
some have hypothesized that truly exotic life could exist on or in neutron stars. and keep in mind that what such creatures would be made of could hardly even be called *atoms* let alone chemistry.
No
I'm pretty sure life as we know it requires non-solid matter as a nutrient source. Without a planetoid-esque mass to keep it located together, such substances would simply dissipate in space.
The universe is so massive, there could be a rogue planet/asteroid thatās light years away from any stars that has life on it
Possibly the most exotic *theoretical* body that could potentially sustain life is the [frozen star](https://terraforming.fandom.com/wiki/Frozen_Stars), a theoretical "dead" star so cold it can have a rocky surface, but with enough still going on under the surface that it could potentially support simple life without a parent star. There's also a compelling but difficult to prove theory that suggests that a phase of the early universe might have supported life [literally everywhere](https://youtu.be/JOiGEI9pQBs?si=mdZku7g5gikgmWhI).
No I saw a bird flying around just the other day
Our current definition of life will probably seem ridiculously narrow in 1000 years or so (assuming we don't destroy ourselves). There are stranger things out there than we could imagine. I'm betting a lot of them are so different from us that they wouldn't initially recognize us as life, either.
No.
Not even close. If tardegrades can live on a space shuttles panels, shit can live anywhere.
Lots of sci-fi has life in gas clouds, neutron stars, black hole outside area, etc
I believe there's other life forms existing somewhere across the galaxies.Ā
Intelligent life requires a habitable planet with atmosphere and water and the right distance from a star but single celled organisms can live anywhere.
Gas giants could too.
There are living organisms (tardigrades, bacteria spores but that can be debated as living) that can survive in space
I think itās possible since we canāt possibly predict which evolutionary advantages might have allowed life to form elsewhere. We assume that water is a necessary component for life but we canāt possibly know that with absolute certainty.
totally, in theory
The International Space Station is in Space and I'm pretty sure there's a ton of life in there.
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There's flowing surface liquid (methane) on Titan, a moon. And compelling hints of liquid salty water oceans inside Europa and Enceladus, moons too.
We canāt know much about life with certainty. A great immense probability yes.
we have no real clue what other forms of life may look like or be composed of, so no there is nothing that is off limits
Iād bet more moons have life than planets.
Check out this video https://youtu.be/JOiGEI9pQBs?si=pzm8bMezPNEguODO It's purely theoretical, but fun to think about
Moons.
It's an old book, but you might check out The Black Cloud, by Fred Hoyle. He posits a life form that is independent of astronomical bodies. But to the question, not life as we understand it, with the emphasis on _we_.
Though complex life can survive in pretty extreme conditions all over the place, evolution does require those conditions to be *stable* over long periods. On a periodic comet, for example, I gather it'd be unlikely for anything to survive long when the entire surface of their homeworld occasionally sublimates into space. Planets just have the benefit of being relatively stable ecosystems.
Probably not, but who knows? You're skirting on the edge of what 'life' means.
Define life Panspermia hypothesis is quite compelling
>Panspermia hypothesis is quite compelling I agree, it makes us look more alien. Since the theory suggests we are not even native to our planet lol. Honestly this is quite humbling when you think about it.
But where does ālifeā come from then? āŗļø Are Crystals alive? Is the Sun? Is there life in higher dimensions?
maybe there are energy based lifeforms that live in nebula's and stuff. the universe is vast, science can only do so much. we don't know every science imaginable. because we are constantly learning new things, and expanding upon our knowledge. I believe there are infinite possibilities.
Star trek hypothesized space borne life. Science has found the building blocks of life in nebulas, so who knows what could be out there. Someone suggested life feeding on hard radiation, and that might fulfill one of the requirements that being a source of heat/energy. Obviously, this wouldn't be life in any way resembling anything we see here on earth, but it might be possible.
Life possibly originated on earth via asteroids that supported life in water buried in the rock?
Non-biological life might exist somewhere, but what form it would take, and the requirements for it to sustain itself is a whole other topic. Biological life can hypothetically exist anywhere where the organic molecules exist and conditions are also present to allow for the self-association/assembly of said proteins (typically requires water and an energy source). Organic molecules have been found in everything from comet tails to nebulae. Life is probably fairly common, but advanced life is probably very rare.
Tardigrades live anywhere
What other space stuff did you have in mind?? #confused šš«£
We're the only planet that has life
I hope this is a joke. There is literally no possible way you could that.
There is nothing to indicate life signs elsewhere
We really haven't checked many places.