Life as we know it?

[Rhapsody]

I don't think we've limited ourselves for exploring possibilities... I think we've limited ourselves for exploring likelihoods. 

All you have to do is look at shows like Babylon 5 and various Star Trek incarnations.  In B5, the Vorlons are beings composed of pure light.  Star Trek offers us Tholians, Crystalline Entities and the wormhole aliens known as the Prophets, as well as fluid-space dwellers and subspace denizens whose physiology is composed entirely of photons.

It might be fiction, it might be entertainment, but I think science fiction shows go a long way towards proving that, no matter how unlikely we think an alien species might be, our imaginations can still dream of them and wonder if they're out there.

[LdDk]

This occurred to me a long time ago, when i was looking up information on Titan, and various other outer solar system moons.  Do you think that our own bias by earth standards for life, limit the places we look for life?  I mean Chemotrophes can survive in the absence of light entirely.  There are compounds on earth that when heated to certain temperatures will generate light that could support autotrophes.  Couldn't life survive in deep space if it was on a large enough body, such as a dead star's core, or large gas giant that was ejected from its star's influence?  What do you think?

Interesting.  I would have to say that even though we understand how life works here on earth, at least to a degree, we can still leave options open for other ways of life to form and evolve.  Just because you know the rules doesn't mean you aren't allowed to break them.  In short, the limitations of our knowledge doesn't necessarily limit our imaginations, or at least our acceptance that we don't understand everything. 

I think it would be cool to discover other creatures that live in deep space.  It'd be amazing to study and experiment to find out how they survive and perhaps apply that knowledge to our own survival in space.  As of yet no such creatures have been found, at least to my knowledge.  But hey, that doesn't mean we can't dream. 

I like to think about how life may survive in other dimensions, say the 2nd or 4th dimension.  In the 2nd dimension there is no depth, only width and height.  How would one survive in that environment, how would one perceive their environment.  What senses would be available in an area that has no depth.  Or what about the 4th dimension?  In the 4th dimension another is added to width, height, and depth.  That is in fact Time.  How do beings that live at the point of birth, the point of death, and everything in between survive?  What extra senses do they have?  Can they fold the 3rd dimension from their realm in the 4th dimension to move through time?  Can we even contemplate what it would be like to live in the realm of time?

I dunno, food for thought.  Great topic by the way :)

[Oniya]

Technically, if you define the fourth dimension as Time, everything that exists has existence in that fourth dimension. 

To quote the best explanation of this that I have ever come across:

‘I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.’      
  ‘That is all right,’ said the Psychologist.      
  ‘Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence.’      
  ‘There I object,’ said Filby. ‘Of course a solid body may exist. All real things—’    
  ‘So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?’      
  ‘Don’t follow you,’ said Filby.      
  ‘Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?’    
  Filby became pensive. ‘Clearly,’ the Time Traveller proceeded, ‘any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.’

In fact, until the invention of balloons, we only had freedom of motion in two dimensions - along the surface of the Earth.  True, we could jump a little and climb trees (or fall), but only birds, bats and flying insects have a truly three-dimensional existence.  In a similar way to our unassisted jumping and climbing, we can and do make brief excursions into the fourth dimension.  We remember that birthday party when our older brother smeared cake in our face.  We look forward to an upcoming vacation.  And at present, we have just about as much control over these things as pre-aviation Man had over travel up and down.

[Vekseid]

...no.

We have some slight understanding of how the passage of time can be different for two separate points. There is no equivalent, however, of climbing a tree or cliffdiving. We can't cease to exist for a moment and appear in the future, likewise, we have no means - not even conceptually - of going back in time. Using relativity to create causality issues ignores the fact that much of the math involved is quite clearly undefined, and even then violates many other laws of physics (above and beyond causality).

[Defiance]

Just about everyone here presents knowledge in fields that I know very little about.

But with everything the universe has shown us so far, I think it incredibly naive to assume that something as simple as life (which our planet is teeming with, complex or not... we might end up being the "simple life form" when held up next to whatever's out there) is on Earth alone.

I don't think life is something that really has to be defined, nor do I think human beings the pinnacle of it. Our bodies are interesting, our make up is fascinating, and there's many a thing that we still don't even know.

But it's a little ridiculous to think that "we" as human beings are "it".

While understandable, because it's the entire stream of logic behind our scientific method... the way we rule out possibilities based on what we see on our planet and what little we know of the other bodies around us... as a map for all the others...

It's pretty silly.

[LdDk]

Hmmm well there are things I agree with and disagree on the first two reply's to my topic.  As far as I have witnessed 3 dimensional life forms do not possess the ability to physically move through the forth dimension.  The idea that a dream or memories is a subconscious way of slipping through the fourth dimension is a hypothesis that I think has some probable ground but not enough factual evidence to constitute it as a scientific theory.   I do enjoy the idea though, and as bending the 2nd dimension through the third dimension objects in the 2nd dimension can basically telleport from spot to spot, ideally the same is possible from the forth dimension to the third.  But this is only speculation. 

As for us moving in the third dimension, I think we have that pretty much down.  Now we are not able to fly no, and yes birds have more freedom in three dimensions without the aid of technology, but we still move in all three dimensions.  Width, Height, and Depth.  Even if we didn't move at all, lets say if we were a rock, we would still exist fully in the third dimension.  Birds simply aren't as confined by gravity as humans, in space (and the lack of gravity) we would have the same amount of freedom of movement.

Life: an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.

*chuckles* but in all seriousness I get what you are saying "Defiance".  It is silly to think that we are the only creatures living in the universe.  I think it's silly to think anything in absolute, personally, though I accept many concepts on majority acceptance and repeatability.  I think that basing our search for life on what we experience here on earth is a decent strategy though.  We understand how life works here to a degree, how it survives, reproduces, and evolves.  From deep underwater volcanoes that support life in even the harshest of circumstances, to insects that have to live within only a small varying degree of temperature.  This is not to say we shouldn't think outside the box, but life here on earth gives us a good foundation to base in the searching and defining of new life discoveries. 

[Will]

For all the talk about extremophiles, they had to evolve from somewhere.  I think odds are against life springing into existence near a thermal vent and then traveling up to the prehistoric shallows to eventually create us, for example.  That being the case, you could still say that life has worked its way into nearly every square inch of the planet.

However, the only place complex life has evolved is where water and/or oxygen are prevalent.  So, while I think that it might be possible to find life in less than hospitable locations, it would probably be harder to find, and be closer to bacteria than anything else.  We are much better off looking for earth-like planets.