Exotic Life

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Ah yes, “Life on a neutron star”. 100% not making it into Thrive.

[fralegend015 (Shroudmaster)]

@fralegend015

The classic electromorph of all time remains, however, astronomer Fred Hoyle’s Black Cloud – a kind of intelligent comet. (Being a lifeform of the dimensions of a solar system, it is also a macromorph.) In the novel, a great patch of ionized gas, which enters our solar system and engulfs Sol, is found to be alive when efforts to predict its movements using the simple laws of mechanics fail. Says the astronomer-protagonist in The Black Cloud: “All our mistakes have a certain hallmark about them. They’re just the sort of mistake that it’d be natural to make if instead of the Cloud being inanimate, it were alive.”
It turns out that the biochemistry of this amazing organism is plasma physics instead of molecular chemistry. Memory and intelligence are stored on a conductive substrate of various solid materials, and are controlled, operated and manipulated purely by means of electromagnetic forces. Ionized gases carry substances to wherever they are needed, like a bloodstream. The Cloud must therefore be recognized as alive, at least in the sense of possessing intricate structures, a capacity for regeneration and energy utilization, and a complex behavior.

Basically this?

I think that the idea is interesting even if dubious.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

I think a thing that big would just be shredded if it came so close to a star

[Deathwake (i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)]

You can use solar wind and light pressure to keep your distance, plus if you’re big enough a star is just endless fuel.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

…Until the fuel runs out. Then I guess these gas organisms are doomed to die.

[Deathwake (i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)]

I mean, we’re doomed to die. That isn’t really an issue. I think not being doomed to die is banned by the second law of thermodynamics.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

All are doomed to die

Little want all to die

And there is a good reason for that…

---

Just how much more heat resistant would be silicon-based lifeforms when compared with carbon-based lifeforms?

[Deathwake (i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)]

if you ask an ultra-cold gas lifeform we are as heat resistant as gods. A sillicon based life form that lives in lava i really very heat resistant, but if you bring it to a desert or throw it in a hot tub it’ll freeze to death. All life forms have a maximum and a minimum. Will the difference between them be wider if you aren’t carbon based? Probably, carbon is really reactive, silicon tends to be less dumb in that regard. Will it be super strong? nah.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Are we sure silicon lifeforms can be that extreme? Surviving in literal lava?

[willow (they/her or yours are was/were)]

Depends on the melting and combustion points of their proteins and lipids, if they’ve got lipids with a silanide head and a siloxane tail, those will probably take a lot to melt, and things with them will need to live very close to that melting point, so they’ll have to be very heat resistant

However if they use lipids like ours with siloxane chains on the ends instead of CO chains, they’ll probably need temperatures that humans are only just barely unable to survive

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

So they’d need to live in lava flows or they freeze to death?
Would Venus be hot enough for them or still freezing cold?

[Deathwake (i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)]

It really depends. Some biochemestries are for lava worlds, some make sense on a high pressure acidic hellscape like venus, some on titan, and a lot more on a normal, pleasant place like earth.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Most of these biochemistries are extremely speculative. How would a silicon-based lifeform even emerge?

[Deathwake (i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)]

Dunno. Lava world ones could emerge in a nutrient flow in a lava sea like our world’s hydrothermal vents. Vision wouldn’t work a sunlight would be a relatively useless power source but it isn’t impossible.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

@Deathwake

Vision wouldn’t work a sunlight would be a relatively useless power source but it isn’t impossible.

You mean that a creature needs to use sunlight as a powersource before evolving vision?

[Deathwake (i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)]

oh no sorry that was a typo. I meant “Vision wouldn’t work and sunlight would be a relatively useless power source, but life isn’t impossible.”
though honestly a major reason vision wouldn’t work is because sunlight wouldn’t be bright enough to outshine the general glowyness of lava.

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

What is the most sane type of exotic (i.e. non carbon-based) life?

[TristanMisja (DoubleU)]

I forgot this forum existed for a while until I got a reply to an almost 2 year old message here lol

[aah31415 (The maker of SitF, Radiostrocity, The Lifenote and TGBing; The Second Ascended...; And just maybe a security warning come alive...?)]

Good for you to have come back here!

[Deathwake (i nuked zenzone and will never let him forget it)]

@aah31415

What is the most sane type of exotic (i.e. non carbon-based) life?

Alternate chirality, nucleic acid, and amino acid carbon based life is by FAR the sanest alternate biochemistry. The sanest non-carbon based? Errr, I dunno, maybe silicon? large silicon molecules tend to behave very differently than their carbon equivalents, but what other options are there? Boron is way rarer. Maybe a reducing hydrocarbon based life form could exist on titan based life, but that doesn’t seem to be any better of an idea than silicon.

@TristanMisja

I forgot this forum existed for a while until I got a reply to an almost 2 year old message here lol

Hi! Welcome back!