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Spaceborne Life Forms

Kaziarl

Kaziarl

Commodore
Commodore
I'm sticking this here because, well, it covers a wide variety of sci fi but what I'm really looking for is if anyone's had in theories about if it really could happen.

In various Sci Fi's we see many life forms that can live in space. I know they talk about single celled organisms being able to survive, but I'm talking bigger. Gomtu, or the Farpoint Jellyfish from Star Trek, the Taelon Mothership, Moya, etc are all huge, complex living organisms. I know it's one of those sci fi tropes, but I'm curious if it's actually possible. It's probably not, but an interesting question.
 
Anything is possible, given the right conditions. The probability, though, would seem quite small.
 
Kaziarl said:
I'm sticking this here because, well, it covers a wide variety of sci fi but what I'm really looking for is if anyone's had in theories about if it really could happen.

In various Sci Fi's we see many life forms that can live in space. I know they talk about single celled organisms being able to survive, but I'm talking bigger. Gomtu, or the Farpoint Jellyfish from Star Trek, the Taelon Mothership, Moya, etc are all huge, complex living organisms. I know it's one of those sci fi tropes, but I'm curious if it's actually possible. It's probably not, but an interesting question.
Click to expand...

There are some planets and moons with harsh surfaces that are often postulated to have life forms...Europa, Titan, Io in our own planetary system. Lot's of them occur in SF. Brin has hydrogen breathers as a whole class of advanced life forms. Stephen Baxter has a war between baryonic life forms (basically normal matter) and dark matter life. Gregory Benford has AI and sentient machines living at galactic center, feeding off nourishing emissions from a super massive black hole. Hard to imagine a more harsh living condition, but like we have found on Earth at the bottom of the sea near black smokers or Antarctic cold, life seems to be able to flourish just about anywhere.

http://www.algebralab.org/passage/passage.aspx?file=Biology_VolcanoVents.xml

This link has some interesting info on astrobiology in SF:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=possibility%20of%20spaceborne%20life%20forms%20in%20science%20fiction&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CC8QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Flibrary.thinkquest.org%2FC003763%2Fpdf%2Fscifi02.pdf&ei=XvvCTsXtI8KltwevlZGqDQ&usg=AFQjCNFvFakAM7Lil78bquq7cCBiC43zXQ&cad=rja
 
There are, in fact, microscopic lifeforms from Earth called Tardigrades that have been tested to survive the vacuum of space. I don't know if there are any others specifically that are known to be able to though.
 
The Dominion said:
There are, in fact, microscopic lifeforms from Earth called Tardigrades that have been tested to survive the vacuum of space. I don't know if there are any others specifically that are known to be able to though.
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Complex, naturally evolving life forms may be more difficult. I can think of two cases where these life forms just may be more possible than with normal evolution: 1) Most examples brought up by the OP are engineered, spaceborne organic life forms. Even if they now exist independently they were created by other life forms at one time. 2) Same goes for the Benford mechs and similar spaceborne sentient machines...they were engineered first by organics then developed by other machines before they advanced their own evolution.

RAMA
 
Rama is correct, most of the ones I mentioned were created. The only one we don't know for sure one way or the other is likely the Farpoint Jellyfish, but if it evolved naturally then why did it have corridors?

And as I said, I know there are microscopic organisms that can survive in extreme environments, but I wanted to know if it was possible for something bigger on the scale of these bioships to evolve naturally. How could they sustain themselves if there isn't much in space? Would they be like whales? filter feeding on the micro organisms? Some sort of photosynthesis like process where they feed on the ambient radiation? I know it would all be theoretical, but what can I say, I'm curious.
 
Kaziarl said:
Rama is correct, most of the ones I mentioned were created. The only one we don't know for sure one way or the other is likely the Farpoint Jellyfish, but if it evolved naturally then why did it have corridors?

And as I said, I know there are microscopic organisms that can survive in extreme environments, but I wanted to know if it was possible for something bigger on the scale of these bioships to evolve naturally. How could they sustain themselves if there isn't much in space? Would they be like whales? filter feeding on the micro organisms? Some sort of photosynthesis like process where they feed on the ambient radiation? I know it would all be theoretical, but what can I say, I'm curious.
Click to expand...

It could be a photoelectric effect, electrons are emitted from matter (metals and non-metallic solids, liquids or gases) as they absorb short wavelength EM radiation like visible or ultraviolet light. They can feed on solar winds, trace matter, heat. Machine life might live on hard radiation like gamma rays, infrared, etc. "Junior" in STNG fed off of the Enterprise's fusion reactors.

Apparently the jellyfish life in EAF was a shapeshifter, and had some incredible energies inside of it. It converted energy into matter by some natural process...going one step further than a transporter...if we are to buy that technology.
 
I could see creatures living in an asteroid belt using the belt for materials (food) while absorbing energy from what ever star it orbited. Not sure what kind of evolutionary path would lead to this situation though.
 
Perhaps an extreme form of plant life that can perform photosynthesis with whatever light or radiation it gets from a star, while being externally tough enough to withstand space.
 
Spoilers of Michael Crichton's novel The Andromeda Strain:

In the novel The Andromeda Strain, there is a report drawn up by the Wildfire project, called Vector Three, to address the question of where extraterrestrial bacteria might originate. There are three sources.
  1. From another planet or galaxy, traveling through space as spores. This possibility is recognized as technically feasible, but assessed as unlikely.
  2. The second possibility to me is the most interesting one: from the Earth. Bacteria from before the first fish may have circulated through the upper atmosphere into space and adapted to survive on direct sunlight. Evolving at that point completely independently of planet-bound life, the space germs could become radically different over eons.
  3. The third possibility is also from the Earth, but on inadequately sterilized spacecraft. Once in space, they might mutate due to exposure to radiation or other factors.
 
I don't see how a life would form in open space. Life needs some sort of body, because any environment that would support life would also become a celestial body. This means that I don't see life forming in nebulas, or at least in another trillion years.

With that in mind, a spaceborne life form has the following difficulties.
1. Escape velocity – spaceborne life should either form on an asteroid that's not too massive, or it should get ejected from another body and reach an asteroid to evolve further. Not too implausible.
2. Dealing with many environments – the spaceborne life should be resilient and able to switch environments at a whim, and it shouldn't be too fussy when it comes to food. Some microbes on Earth already seem to have this property, so if the asteroids are very similar, it might work, but I have my doubts.
2. Surviving jumps space trips – the spaceborne life should be able to survive a space trip by either going into some form of hibernation, or by having an enormous amount of storage tissue, or by using solar energy outside of an atmosphere. Our technology can do that, so can life – all you need are conditions that would help the evolution here. This one seems easy, I think that even some of our complex life forms would be able to handle it, even without evolving any special abilities.

So, I'd say maybe. If the life is exposed to the space environment on an asteroid, some of it will evolve to survive in it for shorter or longer periods of time. If the access to space is as easy as the access to air for our aquatic species, some sort of space survival ability will be present. So if it finds itself on another asteroid, and finds nutrients, it will continue its life cycle there. But this idea of a space armada of lifeforms jumping asteroids seems improbable – too few will reach another asteroid, they won't evolve space navigation, and many of the reached asteroids will be too deadly.

But then, improbable means that it is happening somewhere in the universe!
 
Thanks to all who answered. Especially RAMA and YellowSubmarine. Plenty to think about now, I love it :D
 
The Black Cloud, the title character of a or novel written by Fred Hoyle, is an intelligent cloud of interstellar hydrogen about 150 million kilometers in diameter. Its brain is composed of countless small asteroids covered in carefully arranged layers of molecular chains, which are connected by the electromagnetic field in the cloud. I've never read the book (I only know about it from an illustration in "Barlowe's Guide To Extraterrestrials), but given the author's background, a lot of the science should be pretty sound.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud
 
I believe alien life is fairly similar to what we have on earth, bilateral symmetry with the same number of limbs and sensory organs on each side, that makes sense in evolution. And nothing but carbon-based life is possible, carbon is special in its ability to bond with other elements in an almost infinite number of chemical compounds. You need such a great number of them to run the even simplest organism. On the other hand, life here is sometimes stangely inefficient as well, plants take carbon from the atmosphere and nitrogen from the soil, should be the other way around. Maybe the inheritance of the earliest creatures.
 
Kai Winn said:
I believe alien life is fairly similar to what we have on earth, bilateral symmetry with the same number of limbs and sensory organs on each side, that makes sense in evolution. And nothing but carbon-based life is possible, carbon is special in its ability to bond with other elements in an almost infinite number of chemical compounds. You need such a great number of them to run the even simplest organism. On the other hand, life here is sometimes stangely inefficient as well, plants take carbon from the atmosphere and nitrogen from the soil, should be the other way around. Maybe the inheritance of the earliest creatures.
Click to expand...

That's not necessarily true: nitrogen/phosphorous and silicon based life has been theorized. You also don't require liquid water as a solvent, strictly speaking. You could use hydrocarbons or liquid ammonia.

There are examples of asymmetric and radially symmetric organism on earth. It's certainly not beyond possibility that they could be the dominant pattern of life on an alien planet.
 
Only nitrogen is less abundant than carbon on earth amongst the elements you mentioned, and there is 1,000 times the mass of silicon compared to carbon. They missed their chance, and under circumstances when the earth wasn't friendly yet to carbon-based life.
We complain that intelligent aliens in SF look mostly like humans, but most other creatures ever seen in SF are also modelled on animals that exist or have existed on earth. The number of species here is so vast, and some are so bizarre, that they even top the imagination of SF writers.
Why do we assume that physics and chemics are the same all over the universe, but biology can be fundamentally different?
 
^Because there's room in physics and chemistry that allows for biology to be fundamentally different.
 
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