Evolution for space

[NavajoEverclear]

i cant remember how and why i started think about this, but could and would life ever evolve to temporarily go beyond the atmosphere? First there'd have to be some reason why being able to do so would be advantageous, like some food source that none else could reach. But that'd probably be something small, and what energy source would that feed off of to keep from freezing? Could it have an outside shell, then a way of keeping warm inside? How would this form on a microscopic organism level? I guess i'm as well to answer my own questions on this kind of subject, since it doesn't exist.

 

I think it could be possible, so if possible, no matter how improbable, is it not inevitable? Thats a base theme in the birth and evolution of life. Revolutionary evolution of life is improbable, but inevitable given right the conditions.

[NavajoEverclear]

I think you could evolve an engine powered by photo synthesis, to travel farther beyond the earth. This organism could return for to earth for food then build colonies farther out, allowing something to go farther that evolves from it.

 

----- and i just thought - - - - these organisms would be at more risk of melting or something than of freezing. Cause places without atmosphere are hot temperatures in sun, and freezing in dark, so the same should apply to the organisms. But since they are much smaller than planets and moons, would they experience less dramatic temperatures (thus making it easier for them to survive).

 

Also maybe it would be possible for them to go dormant in absense of light and heat, then reanimate when exposed to light and heat again? Would this be possible dealing with such dramatic temperature differences?

[admiral_ju00]

I think you could evolve an engine powered by photo synthesis' date=' to travel farther beyond the earth. This organism could return for to earth for food then build colonies farther out, allowing something to go farther that evolves from it.

[/quote']

 

i believe you've either just or recently have read Star Wars novels which include the Sci-Rukk characters and bio-technology

 

but an engine powered by photosyntesis? this brings a picture in my head that in order for such a vessel to reach say the moon, it has to be the size of a '69ww beetle and the engine be the size of titanic to the power of 10

 

biologically, this is impossible. life can't live in a vacum.

hypothetically, not even if some species evole the ability to withstand the explosive decompression, extreme heat and cold, extreme bombardment of massive doses of radiation, gravitational forces, etc, etc, it would find no food other then perhaps turn to religious canibalists, which in the end lead to it's extinction - unless ofcourse munchin' on rocks is it's idea of a delicious and nutricious feast.......

[Guest mistaswizzle]

The way I see it, the first kind of species that would evolve this way would be plant-like: this species would launch some ridiculous number of "space spores" out in random directions and once in a blue moon, one would land on a decent planet. Just like on Earth, these seeds or spores or whatever can withstand extreme conditions, and don't require any nutrition whatsoever. They're only active once they reach an environment in which they can strive. So, i think it's very much possible.

So has it happened yet? One of the most interesting hypotheses about the beginning of life on earth has been organic material on meteorites and asteroids. Alien spores? That would be awesome.

[NavajoEverclear]

I have not and have no desire to read such books, so i don't know what you mean. Come to think of it the only movement mechanism would have to be propulsion, and it would always need enough to return to earth to refuel. But i talked about that--- one generation could deposit atmosphere in colonies so it doesn't have to return to earth, then other generations would evolve from that that could go even farther. Of coarse this would have to be a massive quantity, and on terms of nature would take millions of years to evolve--- as all evolution.

 

I think it could evolve to be resistent to extreme temp and radiation, and probably would use the radiation maybe to develop a different type of photosynthesis. ---- I think i mentioned the topic of food--- as it built colonies there would be deposits of food, it would have to return to earth to get more for the deposits, but the new enviroment accumulates, other species could evolve that go farther than the colony and only have to return to the colony (instead of earth).

 

Along that plant idea, an organism be out aways and have roots reaching back to earth.

 

It does sound funny, but depending on how you explain various stages of evolution on earth, it sounds pretty unlikely too. Space evolution may possibly be inevitable. With genetic engineering, we could probably speed up the process.

[Hades]

a cell, if able to overcome the associated problems with radiation, pressure, and extreme variances of temperature, is still faced with the fact that the water molecules in it would freeze forming crystals that would essentially puncture thru the wall, or outermost cell membrane.

[Latios]

What about an organism that can absorb materials from space and convert them into energy for biological processes? It seems that space is full of yummy inorganic materials, if an organism were able to convert these inorganic stuff into energy, I don't see why it can't live in outer space.

 

And about the water freezing problem, these organism can, in theory, convert inorganic material to heat, which prevents it from freezing.

 

This creature seem too unlikely to be true.....

[Hades]

it would require a large amount of energy to keep the organism from freezing. While doing so, would also have to prevent itself from losing the water due to evaporation from high temperatures. Either way, water is a problem.

[admiral_ju00]

I have not and have no desire to read such books, so i don't know what you mean.

that's a shame. those are great books and a definite plus as it no longer has the empire as the main enemy -- but i didn't mean to hijack the thread

[NavajoEverclear]

Sorry for getting defensive admiral Ju . . . I still probably wouldn't like the books, there are several popular phenomenons that i stubbornly refuse to embrace- such as anime, video games, technology . . . . and the list grows everyday. I'll learn to have a less negative view on it, still opposing-- but not so negative. My beliefs are still evolving.

 

. . . . suppose someday i'll have to overcome these prejudices and choose how to deal with those influences. Cause soon they'll have AI people and i'll be called a racsist not to accept them. . . . . oh boy i'm going to have my say for the future. My say may be drowned, but i'll go down fighting . . . . maybe--- depends on what the purpose of fight would be--- if i thought i could shatter the mentalities that are leading us closer to the Matrix, i would try. Or if i could at least make a few chips in the window of modern blindness.

 

Technology isn't nessicarily our enemy, except that all its components are manufactured by the corporate world, which cares much more about making money than the consequences of the slavery they persuade people to choose, to secure their incomes. Its really the psychology of society that is the problem them . . . . and i just realized i'm wasting my time on a soapbox not actually doing anything to help that problem so i'm going to shut up.

 

. . . . but just one more thought about the rising of our slavery to our money fuelled addictions ----- i don't think it can last much longer, something will go wrong, and due to lack of mental diversity, brainwashers and brainwashees will go extinct. This is my hope, and belief that all this idiocy is causing strain that will deplete resources, and eventually put us back in our humble place. ---- hopefully we will find a way to choose that safe place instead of being compelled to it

[NavajoEverclear]

Maybe you should hijack the thread--- as you can see i am a very scatterbrained pilot

[Sayonara]

The "no it can't happen because..." comments in this thread are based on biased assumptions about what life actually is.

[NavajoEverclear]

Amen, thats what i've been tryin to say (i realize its probably hard to see what i'm trying to say through all my rambling) -- one of the definitions of life is that it is not what you think it is. Evolution, if you believe in it, is the concept that what ever works best survives, doesn't matter how unlikely, over time it is inevitable if it is possible-- not to say what is inevitable WILL ever happen, just that saying it is highly improbable, means nothing, evolution is all about high improbabilities thriving.

[ydoaPs]

biologically, this is impossible. life can't live in a vacum.

 

not true. the waterbear can survive extreme heat and cold, vacuum, and radiation.

[NavajoEverclear]

oh yay this ones back. The way i pictured it, the organism would have a large shell, and the biological creature in its center, or perhaps a protected colony. It could even use radiation or whatever that the shell picks up to power its processes.

 

However, what hades said is very true. It would require a whole friggen lot of energy to keep all the systems working in such an enviroment.

 

But i as i was thinking about the shell just now, i got another idea, dont the solar panels of sattelites get extremely hot in space? And then you know that the moon is thousands of degrees in sunlight, negative hundreds in darkness---- something like that anyway. So saying that things freeze in space is absolutely not true in the right circumstances. Maybe this organism could evolve to have a shell of the optimum surface area (i imagined it to be a disk like shell, maybe even like a sea shell) and the perfect shade of reflectiveness so as to keep it not too hot, not to cold. Along with the capability to go dormant when its cold (cause these organisms would orbit , so they'd be in the dark half the time right?)

[Martin]

i cant remember how and why i started think about this, but could and would life ever evolve to temporarily go beyond the atmosphere? First there'd have to be some reason why being able to do so would be advantageous, like some food source that none else could reach. ...

 

sometime in the 1980s a math/physics celebrity named Freeman Dyson

 

proposed using genetic engineering to create trees that could grow and reproduce on comets

 

dyson was a close friend of Feynmann and helped with the math on Quantum Electrodynamics ("QED") that Feynmann/Schwinger/Tomonaga shared Nobel for. Many think prize should have been split 4 ways include dyson.

 

Let us say he thought of genetic engineered trees growing on comets back in 1984. Now Everclear is apprentice at having creative ideas. By herself, unaided, she arrives at ideas 20 years behind Freeman Dyson. It is a very good apprentice work. A plus. it is not usual to get such good ideas.

 

----------

dyson's point was living space.

only a few stars have planets like earth but every star has a cloud of comets

comets contain water and minerals and carbonbase chemicals,

it is the normal thing

a species that had domesticated a tree which could grow on comets could live at any star, in the Oort cloud of 100s of thousands of comets around the star.

 

dyson wrote articles about the kind of tree

I remember seeing some drawings

it was not your usual tree

(it had been engineered to live in vacuum with very dim sunlight)

 

this sounds impossible, but I didnt dream it,

he really did advocate that geneticists should ARTIFICIALLY EVOLVE

life forms so they could live in some very common environments out in space.

this is not too far from Everclear's idea. so bravo E.

[NavajoEverclear]

thanks for the props, but navajoeverclear is not a she. However this point is forgivable.

 

I was a little skeptical about that tree idea until you said they dont look like regular trees, i ought to check it out.

 

I hereby patent the idea about evolving the perfect shade of reflectiveness. That dude can create his trees, and i'll have my . . . . things.

[Thales]

The main problem I see with the idea is that you need a surface or common point of origin for the creatures to initally evolve on. That and in order for them to be in free space they must somehow leave this surface, at a slow rate, such that evolution has a means to catch up to the changing environment.

 

For a complex organism to evolve, be it a bit of bacteria or a tree, there needs to be a certain thershold of stability in order for the organic molecules to bond and actuate the different possibilites, 'testing' which ones are suitable and which are not. It cannot be too stable an environment, however, as the lack of dynamics in the environment robs the evolutionary process of its need and indeed process by which mutuation can arise to futher the biology of the system. That is not to say that life cannot evolve in the vacuum of space more that it would need a solid surface to adhere to and for that surface to have a sufficiently low gravity so that the critters(or plants) can escape it gradully enough to evolve to the new state of independence. There is also the problem of nutrients. All biological processes consume nutrients of one form or another and unless such an organism, 'ate' solar wind(which is not impossible) it would be more of a complex chemical reaction rather than a living entity.

 

Of course then one enters into the debate about what constitutes 'life' and when a complex chemical reaction becomes a living organism.

[zeroth]

What if a plant life form was edible to the animals at the time. And the plant used a form of evolutionary adaption we haven't seen on earth. Floating. Plants already have a rigid cell structure with cell walls. If the plant ballooned out it could keep a near vaccum of air inside of it. The cell walls would keep it from getting smashed flat. It would be like a steel zepplin. This would be a vary advantagous adaption if this was a pre-flight evolution. The balloon plant would be free of prey and could slowly obtain minerals from dust and particles in the sky. Some of the dust would inevitably be dead cells from other life and decomposed plant life in the form of top soil eroding. Rich in minerals. Also water can be absorbed during rain storms. Now the balloon plant dominates the skies for a few million years until flying creatures begin evolving. Now there is a need to get above the hieght primitive birds can go. The balloon-plants with the biggest balloon thrive. But in the higher altitude means reduced access to air for respiration. So the balloon-plants adapt an new unseen (to my knowledge) metabolism. They keep a balance of CO2 and Oxygen in their system at all times. Never breathing. It's like those biodomes only its contained within one plant. Now we have a non-breathing plant living off sunlight in the upper atomsphere (or maybe spending only part of their life in the upper atomsphere). Now I think its stretching things to think that any natural life can on it's own can escape gravitational pull, but what if this planet had some strange situtation. Like a moon on an elliptic path gets close enough to this planet to pull some of the air away from the planet on every rotation. Say this only happens on the night side of the planet. The air gets very cold as it is pulled out and mostly falls back to earth but when the balloon plant is gets cold it's density doesn't change (rememeber this balloon is a near vaccuum with a solid container) and it doesn't fall back as fast as the air. Maybe every lunar cycle a 1000 balloon plants are pulled out into space into a stable orbit. Until one evolves that doesn't die from the cold or the heat. Maybe it has grows an insulating membrane of dead matter like we grow hair and it can also shield it from the radiation if nessecary. While enough light still filters through for photosynthesis. It even has billions and billions of dead balloon-plants to feed on for nutrients to create offspring. About the problem of water crystals puncturing things that is a problem for humans, but some life can be safely frozen and thawed. Some frogs for example. I don't remember why, maybe something like higher glucose levels in blood made the crystals rounded. Another adaption might be that the balloon-plant could hibernate on the dark side and awake on the day side like trees do with the seasons now.

 

I'm not an expert. In fact I'm not even good at biology, but it seems like this could possibly happen. I eagerly anticipate your comments.

[Rekkr]

I don't think it's possible for anything to evolve for living in the actual vacuum of space itself, but I think it is possible for them to adapt to it. For example: if humans ever become a space going civilization, perhaps we would lose our legs because we won't need them in the zero gravity of space.

[Eskay]

I don't think it's possible for anything to evolve for living in the actual vacuum of space itself, but I think it is possible for them to adapt to it. For example: if humans ever become a space going civilization, perhaps we would lose our legs because we won't need them in the zero gravity of space.

 

I think if humans were to become a space going civilization, we'd just become midgets.

 

Most of our muscles wouldn't be used nearly as much as on a planet, and we'd start to shrink. Having to live in confined spaces would aid the shrinking process, I'm sure?

[AzurePhoenix]

I've seen docs saying that humans would probably want to replace our legs with extra arms if we became purely spacefaring.

 

And yes, certain low/high latitude and high altitude frogs flood their cells with a variety of glucose that acts as an anti-freeze during the cold period, which is also why their meat tastes sweet around this time. Well, I think they're sweet tasting. Mokele would probably know.

 

Hi Navajo !!

[AzurePhoenix]

Oh, and Admiral, the Yuuzhan Vong use biotech, the Ssi-Ruuvi use entenchment to power their technology with the souls of sentient beings. No big, I just though you should know . I'm a huge fan of Star Wars myself.

 

And don't even try to convince Navajo to read them. I know, I've tried, and he's hopeless. Guess he just doesn't have the refined taste in literature that you and I share.

[AzurePhoenix]

Okay, here are some of my thoughts. Keep in mind, I'm a sub-adult rookie with an education limited to discovery science, a few books, and a coupla highschool college-bio course, so you professionals with doctorates, don't be too tough on me. Deep breath, here I go

 

As for the balloon things, i doubt it could happen. Photosynthesis is breathing, so you can't avoid variations in gas quantities. Anyway, i doubt any spores would survive falling back to the planet (maybe as charcoal) no matter how well armored. And besides, to evolve that way at all, the spores would have to be pre-evolved for the plunge and burn the first time around, or else no generations would be selected for to continue in the first place. Something might be able to create a similar life cycle in the upper atmosphere, but little more than that, and they would have to be very lightweight to be pulled so high in the first place. If your vacuum balloons were going to be pulled out by the moon, they'd probably have to be very light as well, and so would be iradiated before they could ever hope to build up a thick, protective shield.

 

If life were to evolve in open space it would probably have to be in the Oort cloud, as someone already pointed out with the Dyson reference (the same Dyson who thought up the preliminary ideas for Dyson Spheres?) And anyway, it would probably have to originate in the environment for which it evolved, rather than on the surface of a planet or moon. Comets have plenty of water and carbon, and far less solar radiation, the problem is, they're frozen solid, and we're confident that life would not normally evolve under such conditions (we can never be positive, not until we literaly search every square inch of the universe with electron microscopes once a year, just to be sure something doesn't start up just after we pass by.) Anyway, I think that maybe, possibly electricity might be a component of the genesis of life, and I'm not sure if such a phenomenon occurs in open space, or the oort cloud.

But supposing it did, it would probably have to be very slow growing, with a metabolic rate so slow we might not even recognize it as alive, even with years to study it. Eventually, after many billions of years, it might become macroscopic, if their was some advantage, but it would probably remain within the comet's crust, limited to a crystalline root-type structure, except to bud, and send spores careening into the clouds to someday infect new comets. Definately asexual. Sadly, sex would just waste too much energy in such a cold environment. And I imagine the energy needed to launch the spores would have to be stored up over centuries, or even millenia, and by actually letting it go might kill the parent organism, or just as easily do no harm to its insenstive structure, and so would just slowly start budding all over again. The launch tubes might possibly be a crystalline structure simialr to certain sponges, using small packets of hydrogen gas to launch the spores out from the comet, igniting the gas with an electric spark.

 

Finally, I doubt anything would evolve on a comet with a solar orbit. Sure, the environment of the comet would heat up and provide a rich broth of gasses and water that life could certainly thrive on, but remeber that as it careens through its orbit, it's very likely to actually get pulled into the star, or strike a gas giant, or even a little rocky world. And then, even if it wasn't obliterated, long before life could even start to evolve, the comet would be back in the cold zone, frozen over again. Nothing could have evolved in such a brief period anyway,and even assuming it did, and assuming it wasn't shed with the comet's ejecta as it neared the star, it would almost certainly not be adapted to deal with the cold after the first circuit was completed, and so would freeze into extinction, unless small pockets of heat could somehow surive in the interior of the comet. I doubt it, but i suppose it might be possible. Wait, none of this orbiting comet stuff matters, cause even if it did happen, the life would be evolving in an atmosphere, not open space. Look at me, being all cute and stupid.

[Kygron]

if some hypothetical creature were to evolve a nuclear engine, perhaps after millenia of fierce competition on its home world, suddenly the idea of fuel is changed completely. It would have so much free time (not spent collecting energy as most creatures do) that it would probably jump from world to world on a whim!

 

 

 

 

 

 

-- until its hatch opens and a human walks out... lol, but I really was being serious.