Do you believe in extreme life on unthinkable planets?

[TheEaterofSouls]

I was watching a show about our universe and they were talking about how life needs to be part of a habitable zone in order to survive.
However we have yet to find any other life to compare with other than ourselves. When I hear about life on something as extreme as say a gas giant people always seem to say "The pressure and conditions are too intense. Atmosphere is all over the place, too close or far from its sun, etc"

But we have absolutely no idea on how other life forms, just theories about us and our creation. My question is do you think life can or has formed on planets who's conditions are unthinkably extreme compared to us?

Does life need a temperate rock to survive or is this just the way some of it forms. Can martians exist elsewhere? Maybe our solar system's life is just weak when it comes to how life forms compared to others? For that matter what if other life found our planet as being uninhabitable?!

thoughts?

[Flaks]

I've always held the belief that, while there may be extraterrestrial organisms similar to us, it's more likely that true extraterrestrial beings are not perceivable by our 5 senses. Obviously there's no backing for this claim and it can be argued that we should be able to see things through other wavelengths of light etc. But what if our understanding of the physical world isn't vast enough to comprehend that there truly are greater wavelengths of sound. Or that there are senses outside of sight touch sound etc. which the human mind simply is unable to grasp.

[Laize]

There are plenty of scientists who've postulated life in previously unthinkable parts of the universe.

For instance, some life forms wouldn't even need water to survive. It's theorized that liquid methane could work just as well although life would be extremely sluggish due to lack of energy in such an environment.

The possibilities are practically endless.

[Reubane]

I believe it may be possible but I don't believe in it, no.

[Dreyen]

We never know, there are bacteria that breathes CO2 instead of oxygen, why not actual living beings?

[Kathandira]

I was watching a show about our universe and they were talking about how life needs to be part of a habitable zone in order to survive.
However we have yet to find any other life to compare with other than ourselves. When I hear about life on something as extreme as say a gas giant people always seem to say "The pressure and conditions are too intense. Atmosphere is all over the place, too close or far from its sun, etc"

But we have absolutely no idea on how other life forms, just theories about us and our creation. My question is do you think life can or has formed on planets who's conditions are unthinkably extreme compared to us?

Does life need a temperate rock to survive or is this just the way some of it forms. Can martians exist elsewhere? Maybe our solar system's life is just weak when it comes to how life forms compared to others? For that matter what if other life found our planet as being uninhabitable?!

thoughts?

Without proof i can't say with certainty. But if you are just asking for what we would speculate, then sure! I like to believe that anything is possible. we have a decent scope of the Universe, but what we can see out there is minimal compared to the actual size. There are plenty of Galaxies that we are only aware of their existence, and not so much about what they are made of. There could possibly be elements out there that we have never even imagined.

[TheEaterofSouls]

I've always believed in life on gas giants. Ones that drinks the liquid fluids that we find as being poisonous. Maybe even an entire civilization that exists in it's dense core and had developed cloud cities. I could even go as far as to say that our planet would be considered extremely hazardous to their health.

I don't seem to get why scientists always assume life needs to be similar to ours or it doesn't work. Heck! We find fish underwater at pressures far greater that we can survive!

[Deleted]

http://www.ehow.co.uk/list_6856349_l...-bacteria.html

Barophile bacteria survive in extremely high gas or liquid pressure. These organisms live over 7,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, where pressure exceeds 3,160 pounds per square inch. Extremely low pressure extremophiles can be found in clouds.

Some interesting stuff on that page, pretty much assures us that there will be life (albeit extremely basic forms) of some sort out there. We have just yet to find it. Remember absence of proof is not proof of absence.

[TheEaterofSouls]

Remember we haven't learned much about life outside our solar system. Maybe life forms in far more ways than what our earth science can conceive!

We are using theories WE came up with for things like life's existence. We don't have an alien to help us understand their concept of the universe.

[fidelm]

One look at that deep space picture from Hubble, where every point of light is a galaxy tells me that there is certainly a possibility where life that we cannot possibly understand right now could exist. I'm not saying it does, but there are so many galaxies containing countless countless stars, even more countless planets, that surely there must be something that we cannot even imagine.

As the Vulcan saying goes: "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations"

[Laize]

I've always believed in life on gas giants. Ones that drinks the liquid fluids that we find as being poisonous. Maybe even an entire civilization that exists in it's dense core and had developed cloud cities. I could even go as far as to say that our planet would be considered extremely hazardous to their health.

I don't seem to get why scientists always assume life needs to be similar to ours or it doesn't work. Heck! We find fish underwater at pressures far greater that we can survive!

In fairness, the outer core of most gas giants is thought to be metallic hydrogen. Degenerate matter is not really what we consider conducive to formation of any kind of life.

If life existed on gas giants I'd imagine it to use the atmosphere like fish use our oceans.

[Archangel Tyrael]

I've always held the belief that, while there may be extraterrestrial organisms similar to us, it's more likely that true extraterrestrial beings are not perceivable by our 5 senses. Obviously there's no backing for this claim and it can be argued that we should be able to see things through other wavelengths of light etc. But what if our understanding of the physical world isn't vast enough to comprehend that there truly are greater wavelengths of sound. Or that there are senses outside of sight touch sound etc. which the human mind simply is unable to grasp.

Sounds very much like what Neil Tysson (sorry, don't remenber how to spell his name) said in an interview.

[Deleted]

There is a Cthulhu out there in the universe.

[Lothaeryn]

Until a few years ago, scientists didn't believe any plant life could live in an atmosphere without sunlight.

Then we find plants that live off of thermal exhaust from underwater volcanoes in trenches that never see a speck of light at all.

Anything is possible when it comes to survival of a species.

[Runeforged]

Yes, beyond a doubt. People don't seem to think that life could be anywhere that isn't similar to Earth. I believe they've found bacteria that live hundreds of miles in the ground, where there's no oxygen, or sunlight, just methane and extreme pressure. I don't remember where the article for that was though.

[ptwonline]

While it's possible, I don't think it makes much sense to look for it. It's hard enough trying to find life on planets we are pretty sure can support it, never mind trying to find it places where we have no idea what it would be or if it can even be there.

[Deleted]

I actually think that the scientists are too closed in their view of where life could be born. We barely know anything about our planet and our moon, let alone about our solar system, if we go even further, to galaxy size, life could look like something we've never seen.

This is like living on an atol island in the middle of the Pacific then finding Asia and saying life can't be there because there aren't the same factors as on your island. It's stupid. Let alone the fact that we're trying to contact aliens with radio signals and trying to get theirs when they could be communicating telephatically or through vibrations of crystals or who knows what crazy thing and we wonder why we can't find anything.

[Beavis]

We only have one example of how life operates. Even extremophiles on our planet operate under the same basic principles as life forms living in other environments. So, while there's no evidentiary reason to preclude organisms that live in the crushing depths of a gas giant or on the dark, frozen wastes of an ice dwarf, thinking about the conditions those organisms may or may not exist in is pure fantasy, not science. With that in mind, it makes a lot more sense to think about what conditions life as we know can arise rather than imagining what conditions might create an alternate type of life.

[Stir]

If you consider that the Earth is a pretty volatile place to begin with, and its current shape is only possible because LIFE actually created our (current, survivable) atmosphere to begin with...

Yes; there will be life on places that seem unthinkable to us. Earth might likely be a place that seems fully unthinkable to contain life from an alien's point of view, after all.

[TheEaterofSouls]

I actually think that the scientists are too closed in their view of where life could be born. We barely know anything about our planet and our moon, let alone about our solar system, if we go even further, to galaxy size, life could look like something we've never seen.

This is like living on an atol island in the middle of the Pacific then finding Asia and saying life can't be there because there aren't the same factors as on your island. It's stupid. Let alone the fact that we're trying to contact aliens with radio signals and trying to get theirs when they could be communicating telephatically or through vibrations of crystals or who knows what crazy thing and we wonder why we can't find anything.

I agree science is too down to earth and has too many boundaries. Maybe having a better mindset and believing in the impossible can help us on our journey. We can't always rely on earth-like plants to tell us if life exists. It could show up where we least expect it.
How can some fish survive in depths we can't even reach without dying?