News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien by Koshkin on Monday August 02, 2021 @03:59PM (#28041850)
> What creatures would form

On the one hand, the conditions under which some lifeforms are thriving here on Earth are already pretty extreme.

On the other hand, indeed, we may not yet be in a position to be able to imagine, realistically, all that we would (eventually) agree to call a lifeform. (Life built from phonon "particles" in a planet-size crystal, anyone?) Sure, there may be constraints, such as life, in a meaningful sense, may only be realizable based on polymers, in which case the conditions must be such that they allow polymerization of simple substances to take place.

Re:Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien by titzer on Monday August 02, 2021 @04:36PM (#28042288)
> On the one hand, the conditions under which some lifeforms are thriving here on Earth are already pretty extreme.

Not really. They are all within +/-5km of the planet surface, live under 1g of gravity, as a rule, are not exposed to X-rays, gamma rays, cosmic rays, strong magnetic fields or nuclear radiation, or extreme temperatures. There's nowhere on Earth that receives more than about average solar radiation or gets much above 100C where life survives.

Life generally has access to ample oxygen, though a few anaerobic organisms exist. They're all DNA-based, have access to ample amino acids, aren't bathed in thousands of completely toxic chemicals, have liquid water (and not, e.g. liquid methane). The list goes on and on.

Yeah, there are a few extremophiles, but they are by far the minority, and are clearly adapted incrementally from other organisms that evolved in non-extremophile environments. In essence, there's a large reservoir of easy-pickins living that generates biodiversity to cross over into extremophile environments.

Now imagine 5x the gravity, 100-1000x the solar irradiance, the lack of magnetic field (and thus direct exposure to solar winds), no atmosphere, or atmosphere entirely composed of a toxic gas, extreme exposure to X-rays, etc. The universe is full of many places where Earth life, even extremophiles, would have no chance of survival. And such places don't have reservoirs of biodiversity from which to adapt to these conditions. They're just dead.

Re:Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien by ncmncm on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @07:18PM (#28055455)
Extremophiles are in no sense rare. They constitute the most diverse collection of branches of the tree of life. We are on one of those.

This is not accidental. There is more genetic variation in humans in Africa than the whole rest of the world, and more variation in English dialects in England than the whole rest of the world. We -- everything we knew existed until recently -- evolved from extremophiles. They came first. The world changed around them. Some changed to match, eventually giving rise to us, while others found places more like what they were used to. The latter are still to be found in those places, and in many others they have also adapted to.

Common types like us are adapted to currently common conditions. When the environment changes radically, and all the life we knew of up until recently is extinct, the extremophiles will radiate a new ecosystem adapted to new conditions.

Re:Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien by rendall on Monday August 02, 2021 @04:51PM (#28042466)
> They're just dead.

We have exactly one example of an environment that nurtures life. It does not logically follow hence that it is the only environment where life can thrive (unless we choose to define life as that which thrives in an Earth-like environment)

I do agree that probably most of the Universe is hostile, not only to Earth-like life, but to life of any definition. But we cannot be certain. We have never visited nor sent a probe to a 5g planet "100-1000x the solar irradiance, the lack of magnetic field (and thus direct exposure to solar winds), no atmosphere, or atmosphere entirely composed of a toxic gas, extreme exposure to X-rays".

Re:Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien by titzer on Monday August 02, 2021 @05:03PM (#28042601)
I'm actually in agreement with you. Those places I mentioned probably do not have DNA and amino-acid based life that looks anything like Earth, particularly because those environments eviscerate the delicate chemistry necessary for that particular system to work. So life would look totally different.

I'm more of the "Boltzmann Brain" persuasion. Life might take the form of electromagnetic waves or metallic structures that are respirating, self-replicating, information-processing things. In my more paranoid days, I think the internet is alive, as it is kind of like a life-form growing our the substrate of our collective digital actions.

Re:Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien by collaborative on Monday August 02, 2021 @06:24PM (#28043453)
Didnt they find life where no one was expecting it to be? (Dark bottom of the sea, under intense pressure and surviving on vents). Deep sea creatures also look really alien. Might be a clue of the "weirdness" we might find out there
Re:Why extraterrestrial life may not seem alien by coffeecat on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @01:21AM (#28045930)
> (Life built from phonon "particles" in a planet-size crystal, anyone?)

It seems unfathomable to me that life could be composed of bosonic particles, since Pauli exclusion seems to be one of the most important reasons why matter (never mind living organisms!) has the property of spontaneously structuring itself in a rich and complicated way.