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Rather than just carbon-based organisms confined to rocky planets, I am more interested in the possibility of how life might look outside of that viewpoint. Fo

Rather than just carbon-based organisms confined to rocky planets, I am more interested in the possibility of how life might look outside of that viewpoint. For example, how about interplanetary scale lifeforms akin to boltzmann brains, where each analogue to a human neural impulse takes minutes or even days to zoom across empty space? What about dark-matter based life? If dark matter composes of 95% of our universe, could there be a whole different set of dark matter based physics, life, and technology, where the intelligent dark-matterians speculate about the mysterious 5% of the universe which interacts with these strange oscillating electric and magnetic fields? I know it's unlikely and that given our sample size of n=1 we can only be confident about organic lifeforms, and it's our best bet to search for similar life -- but I like to imagine that thousands (millions?) of years in the future when we find other kinds of life, it'll be obvious to everyone that life exists in all possible ways and they'll laugh at us 21st century folks for believing that just carbon could self replicate and think.

mr_mitm 3y ago
One of the defining properties of dark matter is that it interacts only weakly at most, or else we would see an entirely different distribution. Ordinary matter can dissipate heat because of electromagnetic interaction and thus collapse into galaxies. Dark matter can't, so it only forms diffuse, homogeneous halos. The idea of "dark chemistry", whole not whacky enough to be immediately discarded, is highly exotic. https://www.space.com/21508-dark-matter-atoms-disks.html https://www.space.com/21508-dark-matter-atoms-disks.html
pixl97 3y ago
Lots of people try to jump on the "silicon based life isn't possible", but even on that I take a different viewpoint. As we are watching AI with concern on our own planet, what if that is a common bootstrap. Carbon based life creates silicon/metallic 'life'. And if that is possible, who knows what that would bootstrap itself into in the future.
ordu 3y ago
> the intelligent dark-matterians speculate about the mysterious 5% of the universe which interacts with these strange oscillating electric and magnetic fields? They would have a hard time figuring out the existence of electic and magnetic fields. They wouldn't feel them. And their devices wouldn't feel them. They would be able to notice 5% of mass by gravitational interactions only. They wouldn't be able to see how magnetic fields reconnect on a surface of a star and conclude that it means there is some unknown field at work. So to think, they probably have their own dark versions of magnetic and electric fields.
tekla 3y ago
Dark Matter based life is probably impossible. Dark matter doesn't interact with electromagnetism so have fun with that.

mr_mitm 3y ago

One of the defining properties of dark matter is that it interacts only weakly at most, or else we would see an entirely different distribution. Ordinary matter can dissipate heat because of electromagnetic interaction and thus collapse into galaxies. Dark matter can't, so it only forms diffuse, homogeneous halos. The idea of "dark chemistry", whole not whacky enough to be immediately discarded, is highly exotic. https://www.space.com/21508-dark-matter-atoms-disks.html https://www.space.com/21508-dark-matter-atoms-disks.html

pixl97 3y ago

Lots of people try to jump on the "silicon based life isn't possible", but even on that I take a different viewpoint. As we are watching AI with concern on our own planet, what if that is a common bootstrap. Carbon based life creates silicon/metallic 'life'. And if that is possible, who knows what that would bootstrap itself into in the future.

ordu 3y ago

> the intelligent dark-matterians speculate about the mysterious 5% of the universe which interacts with these strange oscillating electric and magnetic fields? They would have a hard time figuring out the existence of electic and magnetic fields. They wouldn't feel them. And their devices wouldn't feel them. They would be able to notice 5% of mass by gravitational interactions only. They wouldn't be able to see how magnetic fields reconnect on a surface of a star and conclude that it means there is some unknown field at work. So to think, they probably have their own dark versions of magnetic and electric fields.

tekla 3y ago

Dark Matter based life is probably impossible. Dark matter doesn't interact with electromagnetism so have fun with that.