Does alien life need a planet to survive? Scientists propose intriguing possibility

[Admin]

While such organisms may or may not exist in the universe, the research has important implications for future human endeavors in space.

Does alien life need a planet to survive? Scientists propose intriguing possibility : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

This article seems to be missing the main ingredient, which is abiogenesis and evolution.

The closest if gets is assuming that life somehow started on an asteroid and went from there to being able to live off that asteroid, in free space.

To do that, life not only needed to start, but to develop all of those biochemical physical capabilities to create a shell, regulate its internal temperature and pressure, recycle its nutrients, etc. Plus, not mentioned, it would need some means of repair, because it is going to be hit by meteorites.

So, it isn't just a problem of life somehow starting, it would need to last long enough to evolve all of those capabilities.

If I were to try to make it sound more plausible, I would have suggested starting on a comet, rather than an asteroid. And, I would suggest that the initial source of energy be the active chemicals created by the ionizing radiation from nuclear decays. At least, that could start in pockets of liquid water inside an icy body like a comet at the absolutely perfect distance from its star (for a long time without totally evaporating and disintegrating). Perhaps that initial life form could evolve into some kind of slime form that could coat the asteroid/comet's surface after some amount of evolution, and become more stable.

But, I think you then have a slimy asteroid, not a free-in-space life form with no celestial body at all to call it an asteroid or comet. It would then take some sort of impact to send a separate blob of the surface slime into free space, and that would have to be able to survive there without its home asteroid.

Possible? Who knows. Probable, I don't think so. Unless, perhaps, the result of some extraterrestrial society's "class room experiment" to demonstrate abiogenesis to its children for their schooling. (But they would need to be an extremely long-lived species.)

Anyway, I don't think such a floating blob of slime would ever develop into a technological species. So if humans traveling in space ever found such a life form, we would probably soon be asking "Is it edible?"

 

[Helio]

This article seems to be missing the main ingredient, which is abiogenesis and evolution.

Yes. Even if there were a rock with enough prebiotic material there must be some natural mechanism that would put things together to make a protective shell.

This is another example of Steve Martin's joke on "How to make a million dollars tax-free". "First start with a million dollars...."

IMO, it's like having a mountain then expecting a train tunnel to be made but without the boring equipment. The purpose, as I understand, of liquids, especially water, is to allow zillions of molecules to contact one another to allow passive progress. Liquids don't exist in space, though some can last quite a while like mercury and certain silicon compounds, apparently. I see no mechanistic answer to make their idea plausible.

 

[Space Seeker]

This is likely a significant consideration. Humans migrating to the Moon or Mars reminds me of the ancient lungfish and salamanders that migrated from one water area to another over land. Just as fish evolved into land creatures, the time may be approaching when humans will evolve into space creatures.

 

[Helio]

This is likely a significant consideration. Humans migrating to the Moon or Mars reminds me of the ancient lungfish and salamanders that migrated from one water area to another over land. Just as fish evolved into land creatures, the time may be approaching when humans will evolve into space creatures.

Yes, there is a sense of evolution that seems inevitable over time. The animals benefited and adapted to mostly favorable environments. We won't have hardly anything favorable but our evolution, unlike other species, is active. Passive evolution (ie Darwinian) takes hundreds of millions of years, but we are already seeing some adaptation (e.g. spacesuits, spacecraft, etc.).

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Adapting to zero gravity might be the first necessity. I doubt we will ever adapt to zero pressure, (near) zero temperature, and zero food. We are going to have to take most of our habitat with us.

 

[Space Seeker]

Yes, there is a sense of evolution that seems inevitable over time. The animals benefited and adapted to mostly favorable environments. We won't have hardly anything favorable but our evolution, unlike other species, is active. Passive evolution (ie Darwinian) takes hundreds of millions of years, but we are already seeing some adaptation (e.g. spacesuits, spacecraft, etc.).

True. And the rate of evolution of living creatures seems to have accelerated since ancient times. Considering the coronavirus pandemic and global warming, the human population on Earth has increased to near saturation, which may push humans to migrate to space. In addition, the evolution of AI is also accelerating, and even if deep learning is insufficient for space development, newer AI technology may make it easier to advance into space.

 

[24launch]

I skimmed the actual source and admittedly didn't read it all in-depth, but I don't think the authors are proposing the genesis of life off planet but rather can life survive off planet. So in our searching for life elsewhere, though it may have evolved on a planet, it could reside elsewhere and thus are we limiting ourselves in our search? The abstract does a good job setting the premise:

Abstract: Standard definitions of habitability assume that life requires the presence of planetary gravity wells to stabilize liquid water and regulate surface temperature. Here the consequences of relaxing this assumption are evaluated. Temperature, pressure, volatile loss, radiation levels and nutrient availability all appear to be surmountable obstacles to the survival of photosynthetic life in space or on celestial bodies with thin atmospheres. Biologically generated barriers capable of transmitting visible radiation, blocking ultraviolet, and sustaining temperature gradients of 25-100 K and pressure differences of 10 kPa against the vacuum of space can allow habitable conditions between 1 and 5 astronomical units in the solar system. Hence ecosystems capable of generating conditions for their own survival are physically plausible, given the known capabilities of biological materials on Earth. Biogenic habitats for photosynthetic life in extraterrestrial environments would have major benefits for human life support and sustainability in space. Because the evolution of life elsewhere may have followed very different pathways from on Earth, living habitats could also exist outside traditional habitable environments around other stars, where they would have unusual but potentially detectable biosignatures.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

"unusual but potentially detectable biosignatures" seems to be one of those ideas that nobody is going to be able to prove wrong, but is not really useful for finding anything.

For instance, we already have detection of some evidence of life on Mars from one of our rover's chemistry experiments on a sample of Mars soil, but no proof that it could not have occurred from abiotic chemical processes.

This article is simply the same as previous discussions about how life might have evolved on Mars in the past and might still be alive there, today.

So, other than sending an actual human to take a good look and bring back samples for good analyses, how do we prove that some data that is unusual and unexpected is evidence that something is actually alive, now?

And, on the other extreme, maybe some planet developed a technological society that extended beyond its home planet, and still persisted of-planet even after its home planet catastrophically became abiotic - maybe by warfare or stellar evolution. So, maybe somewhere there is a self-sustaining spacecraft orbiting a white dwarf star or a red giant star. It would necessarily be doing its best to conserve resources within itself. So, how do we detect that?

I just file this type of article in the "We don't really know much about what is out there" folder, and pull it out when somebody tells me that we can design a robot to find out for us. If we don't know what to look for, we can't design a robot to look for it. Until we can design an AI that does better at looking at the "big picture" than humans can do, using the science version of situational awareness and critical thinking , we are going to need to involve humans in scientific discovery missions.

 

[Coconutwater]

And all these conditions for life on earth was pure happenstance. A sun at the precise point in space to support life a we know it. A moon at the right point to support tidal activity and agriculture. Of course, the article cannot answer the question as to how life started.

 

[Classical Motion]

They believe we are a product of these things.