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Is There A Giant Life Form Lurking In Our Solar System? Possibly, Say Scientists

111 points by Articulate 13y ago

losethos 13y ago
God says... C:\TAD\Text\WEALTH.TXT bsistence. The work which is performed in this manner, it has already been observed, comes always much cheaper to market than that which is the principal or sole fund of the workman's subsistence. The fine manufacture, on the other hand, was not, in those times, carried on in England, but in the rich and commercial country of Flanders; and it was probably conducted then, in the same manner as now, by people who derived the whole, or the principal part of their subsistence from it. It was, besides, a God says... 64-6221541 Thailand sweetlyvain destroy beam_me_up fragments resist chastenest end cold sweetnesses payments
stcredzero 13y ago
It's our biases that show in our implicit assumption that life must operate on the spatial and temporal scales of large animals on Earth. Cryogenic life might well be a lot slower than the typical animal on Earth. It's a lot colder on Titan. Energy is a lot more diffuse. Why wouldn't it be much larger and slower? (Or for that matter, smaller and slower?)
Charos 13y ago
To be cynical, a lot of things are possible. It's possible that anaerobic bacteria still live in small pockets beneath the surface of Mars. It's possible, if unlikely, that extremophiles survive on the sweltering surface of Venus, or floating in its sulphurous clouds. Of course, the fact that these things are possible is still incredibly cool. While this article lacks much technical substance, this is the kind of thinking that gave us Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot. I hope enough people retain this author's sense of scientific curiosity and excitement for discovery. While cold logic, expected-value calculations, and cynicism are important in a research setting, outside of the lab it's important for people to be able to get excited about little (or big!) things like this. We can have scientific progress and childish glee coexist. Thank you for posting this.
- jerf 13y ago
  Floating in the clouds of Venus, sure. There's some semi-Earthlike zones in the cloud layer. On the surface, very probably not. It is unlikely that there is any structure that could pump entropy out of the cell faster than the horrific surface environment of Venus would be pumping it in. (More conventionally known as heat, but I find this formulation helps focus on the fact that "too hot" really is an intrinsic problem for life, not merely an incidental one that might be overcome by more chemistry.) I'm not even 100% convinced that a technological solution is possible that could work over geologic time frames, let alone adding the restrictions of abiogenesis on to the structure. (Though on the topic of abiogenesis, it's difficult to see how to apply any of the current thoughts on that to an atmospheric environment; Venusian extremophiles would also probably be immigrants from Earth.)
  - unclebucknasty 13y ago
    It has always intrigued me that we consider the possibility of other life forms in a manner that is largely relative to our understanding of life on earth and, hence, biology. But, even our understanding of DNA need not be applicable to other life forms. I don't see why there has to be any real limitation on conditions or otherwise. As the article mentions, we have been surprised to find extremophiles near thermal vents right here on Earth (which reach temperatures roughly equivalent to the Venusian surface). There we find, for instance, bacteria that rely upon hydrogen sulfide vs sunlight for energy. This is what we consider a "harsh" environment of chemicals, heat, pressure, etc. However, when we attempt to remove organisms from that environment to study them, they usually die pretty quickly. In other words, ours is the harsh environment as far as they are concerned. Elsewhere, we have found organisms whose DNA was thought to be composed of arsenic vs phosphorous. While this was ultimately refuted, for a period we once again thought we'd discovered something that, in an instant, completely changed our understanding of life. So, I guess my point is that we assume life must conform to certain requirements and/or conditions until we find life forms that violate our assumptions. Given a Universe as vast and diverse as our own, I sincerely believe that anything is possible and perhaps even likely.
    - 13y ago
rgbrenner 13y ago
The entire article is based on this sentence "Thus, life on Titan could involve huge (by Earth standards) and very slowly metabolizing cells, in which case biomass densities would be higher than calculated above." which the author interprets as "a life form in our solar system that's not a puny, dumb little thing, but a huge dumb thing. Like dog-sized. Or maybe Volkswagen-sized." I'm sorry.. but a "huge by (earth standards) cell" doesn't mean dog sized. It means a few times an earth sized cell. Otherwise, why compare it to a cell at all?
- joshuahedlund 13y ago
  Yeah with "giant" and "lurking" I was hoping for hints of a planet-sized creature existing in dark matter or some interdimensional plane or extreme wavelength or something. Title is a bit link-baity.
  - Articulate 13y ago
    it hadn't even crossed my mind that it would be something that big... but now that you say that, I wish that it had been some gigantic solar-system sized being... now I am totally let down- damn you Robert Krulwhich... damn you.
  - leishulang 13y ago
    same here. I was thinking that it might be a "lurking" magic bit in all particles that are working together to form a super-super intelligent...
  - sciguy77 13y ago
    I agree. I was thinking the exact same thing.
  - pasquinelli 13y ago
    i imagined space whales eating asteroids.
  - aufreak3 13y ago
    This is exactly what I thought as well. An interesting twist is to think whether we'd consider our entire universe to be alive - perhaps like an egg with an embryo in it. There you go, you have the "hugest" thing possible :)
anigbrowl 13y ago
I feel like I've been trapped in the corner at a cocktail party by someone who insists on showing me bad drawings on a cocktail napkin. This guy's writing style is so annoying that I couldn't even make it to the end of the article. Attempting to parse this has left me feeling slightly dumber than 5 minutes ago.
- rpupkin 13y ago
  If you think his writing is bad, you should hear him talk. Excruciatingly dumbed-down drivel.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    If I heard this on the radio I could (somewhat) appreciate it as semi-comedic and semi-educational, but this chatty style really doesn't resonate with me in written format. Oh well, I'll know next time I see his byline.
- sciguy77 13y ago
  I see where you're coming from, but I rather enjoyed the novelty of his style. I wouldn't necessarily want to read any more of it, but it wasn't all that bad.
- Articulate 13y ago
  Well depending on your background, & education it may have felt dumbed down but I have a lot of respect for Robert Krulwhich his RadioLab co-host won a McArthur "genius" award, and they have done (in my opinion) an excellent job of bringing science alive for people that either don't have the aptitude or didn't cross paths with the type of people that can inspire you to learn more about the universe.
  - Articulate 13y ago
    This commencement speech that he gave had a major impact on me http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2008/jul/29/tell-me-a-story/ http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2008/jul/29/tell...
Yaa101 13y ago
It doesn't mean we can't get sick from it, I think we need to be very careful with extra terrestrial life.
- Ihmahr 13y ago
  Not to mention the minus 180 degrees Celsius.
  - tghw 13y ago
    Yeah, that tends to be much more harmful than any infection.
- jff 13y ago
  According to Wikipedia, the surface of Titan is around -180 degrees C. Do you expect a life form to exist in that environment but ALSO be able to flourish in the human body, a creature of a sort never seen on Titan, 200 degrees warmer and full of entirely different chemicals?
6thSigma 13y ago
I expected this to be from The Onion with that headline.
droogie 13y ago
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE I think I'll stick to Arthur C. Clarke's half tree, half animal lifeform in Europa which is better than a single-celled blob.
Navarr 13y ago
"We have all been scientists at one point or another in our lives." - Cecil Baldwin
dm2 13y ago
I'm still having a hard time contemplating the fact that WE exist. Sitting in front of our flat monitors with access to nearly all information which is stored all around planet Earth. Phones that connect us to billions of people. Brains large enough to hypothesize the creation of the universe. We can create rockets that send probes to other planets and even the edge of our solar system. We regularly travel around in amazing personal vehicles that allow us to travel at over 100 mph in about 10 seconds. The fact that each one of us had about one quadrillionth percent chance of even being born, yet here we are. The fact that we can even talk and communicate effectively is amazing. We can imagine future technologies and have goals to work towards such as immortality, brain-computer interfaces, teleportation, and mining asteroids. We have so much to be thankful for. Everything is amazing. WTF. [0] I have a dog that can't do anything but eat, pee, poop, and play fetch. What kind of activities do other organisms do that humans can't do? Other than telepathy, and flight, and breathing without oxygen, and energy creation through sunlight. Yet we still make fellow humans and animals suffer daily. We eat shit food and get depressed and some people even try to kill themselves. We have concepts like good and evil and actually hate other humans just because they are not exactly like our culture or have more stuff than we do. We have enough nuclear missiles in the ocean to eradicate life on earth. Terraforming mars will be fun. I hope that I live to see the start of that adventure. The next 100 years in general will be very fun. I'm extremely glad that I get to be a part of this awesome world at this extraordinary time in human history. Please, nobody fuck it up too bad. My point is, regarding the article, ANYTHING is possible. God is possible, ghosts are possible, flying spaghetti monsters are possible but until I see a video with convincing explanation or accredited scientists agree that something is very likely, is there really any point of just making up stuff? Mars having a thriving self-sustaining human-like civilization underground is possible. Aliens living among us for several years is possible. No scientist will say that either of those hypothesis are absolutely impossible, but there is no point in proposing it unless you're writing a science fiction novel/movie/comic book.
- rodly 13y ago
  It did take us a long time to get here though. Luckily things build on each other and we're good at patterns.
Sommer 13y ago
Coincidence or clever irony that the second drawing of the woman inspecting the little life looks a lot like Felisa Wolfe-Simon (of arsenic based life fame)?
Eliezer 13y ago
Rarely have I wished so much for a downvote button on top-level posts.
- derpitation 13y ago
  Let's at least turn this into a teachable moment by drawing attention to Nick Bostrom's "great filter" argument. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GnkAcdRgcI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GnkAcdRgcI
sciguy77 13y ago
That would make me very happy.
jostmey 13y ago
Evolution. It is why native alien life is unlikely to exist in our own solar system. You see, once life gets started, this process we call evolution takes place. Life takes on a myriad of complex forms. It covers the planet, gradually adapting to survive and thrive on nearly every patch of land. And behold, the planet is transformed. There is only one planet in our solar system where this has happened. If life had started on some other rock in our solar system, it too would be visibly infested with lifeforms.
- tghw 13y ago
  Not necessarily. Evolution does not mean improvement, just adaptation. Unless there's some sort of biological pressure, such as a predator or an environmental risk, change won't happen or will happen much more slowly. The time scale is also important. In very cold environments, such as the ones described, everything happens at a much slower pace. Consider it this way: heat is a proxy for energy (technically it is energy, but it's not all the energy). Energy is required for change. Very cold environments mean less energy, which means less change over the same time period.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  That's ridiculous. There is no law that says evolution can optimize itself out of any constraint. And even if it does, it might not look like much. For example there are tons of bacteria in the sky just floating in the wind, but unless you look closely you'd pretty much never know. And for most of Earth's history you wouldn't have seen multicellular life. It took a long time for the giant forests you see to evolve. And even then, you don't have that kind of massive biomass in places like Antarctica or deep underground. Evolution is a pretty tricky thing. If some improvement can't easily be reached through iterative random improvements, then it won't be. And it easily gets stuck in local maximas where little or no improvements are made for ridiculously long periods of time. It's like getting to the top of the hill. There might be a mountain in the distance, but there is no path that leads to it without first going down off the current hill.
lutusp 13y ago
Why do articles like this always overlook the key scientific and historical issues? If there's life on Europa, and if it is not based on DNA, that would mean Europan life evolved along a separate path from ours. That would lend support to the idea that life is common in the universe. If Europa's hypothetical life was based on DNA, it would lend support to the "panspermia" idea, because it's hard to imagine how Earth's life could get to Europa, implying that Earth's life, and Europa's life, both arose somewhere else and traveled to separate destinations. There are several other possibilities, none of which are discussed in the article.
6d0debc071 13y ago
Dirk Schultzs-Makuch and David Grinspoon said if one day methane eaters are found to exist on Titan, .5 and if they swim around in very, very cold ethane lakes or oceans, .5 and if those oceans don't have the pressure or weight of water, .5 ---------------- * .5 .5 .5 0.125, under stupidly generous assumptions. Have you paid your complexity tax today?
Houshalter 13y ago
I like the illustrations. Especially the woman pushing the alien in a shopping cart.

111 points by Articulate 13y ago

God says... C:\TAD\Text\WEALTH.TXT bsistence. The work which is performed in this manner, it has already been observed, comes always much cheaper to market than that which is the principal or sole fund of the workman's subsistence. The fine manufacture, on the other hand, was not, in those times, carried on in England, but in the rich and commercial country of Flanders; and it was probably conducted then, in the same manner as now, by people who derived the whole, or the principal part of their subsistence from it. It was, besides, a God says... 64-6221541 Thailand sweetlyvain destroy beam_me_up fragments resist chastenest end cold sweetnesses payments

stcredzero 13y ago

It's our biases that show in our implicit assumption that life must operate on the spatial and temporal scales of large animals on Earth. Cryogenic life might well be a lot slower than the typical animal on Earth. It's a lot colder on Titan. Energy is a lot more diffuse. Why wouldn't it be much larger and slower? (Or for that matter, smaller and slower?)

Charos 13y ago

To be cynical, a lot of things are possible. It's possible that anaerobic bacteria still live in small pockets beneath the surface of Mars. It's possible, if unlikely, that extremophiles survive on the sweltering surface of Venus, or floating in its sulphurous clouds. Of course, the fact that these things are possible is still incredibly cool. While this article lacks much technical substance, this is the kind of thinking that gave us Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot. I hope enough people retain this author's sense of scientific curiosity and excitement for discovery. While cold logic, expected-value calculations, and cynicism are important in a research setting, outside of the lab it's important for people to be able to get excited about little (or big!) things like this. We can have scientific progress and childish glee coexist. Thank you for posting this.

jerf 13y ago
Floating in the clouds of Venus, sure. There's some semi-Earthlike zones in the cloud layer. On the surface, very probably not. It is unlikely that there is any structure that could pump entropy out of the cell faster than the horrific surface environment of Venus would be pumping it in. (More conventionally known as heat, but I find this formulation helps focus on the fact that "too hot" really is an intrinsic problem for life, not merely an incidental one that might be overcome by more chemistry.) I'm not even 100% convinced that a technological solution is possible that could work over geologic time frames, let alone adding the restrictions of abiogenesis on to the structure. (Though on the topic of abiogenesis, it's difficult to see how to apply any of the current thoughts on that to an atmospheric environment; Venusian extremophiles would also probably be immigrants from Earth.)
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  It has always intrigued me that we consider the possibility of other life forms in a manner that is largely relative to our understanding of life on earth and, hence, biology. But, even our understanding of DNA need not be applicable to other life forms. I don't see why there has to be any real limitation on conditions or otherwise. As the article mentions, we have been surprised to find extremophiles near thermal vents right here on Earth (which reach temperatures roughly equivalent to the Venusian surface). There we find, for instance, bacteria that rely upon hydrogen sulfide vs sunlight for energy. This is what we consider a "harsh" environment of chemicals, heat, pressure, etc. However, when we attempt to remove organisms from that environment to study them, they usually die pretty quickly. In other words, ours is the harsh environment as far as they are concerned. Elsewhere, we have found organisms whose DNA was thought to be composed of arsenic vs phosphorous. While this was ultimately refuted, for a period we once again thought we'd discovered something that, in an instant, completely changed our understanding of life. So, I guess my point is that we assume life must conform to certain requirements and/or conditions until we find life forms that violate our assumptions. Given a Universe as vast and diverse as our own, I sincerely believe that anything is possible and perhaps even likely.
  - 13y ago

rgbrenner 13y ago

The entire article is based on this sentence "Thus, life on Titan could involve huge (by Earth standards) and very slowly metabolizing cells, in which case biomass densities would be higher than calculated above." which the author interprets as "a life form in our solar system that's not a puny, dumb little thing, but a huge dumb thing. Like dog-sized. Or maybe Volkswagen-sized." I'm sorry.. but a "huge by (earth standards) cell" doesn't mean dog sized. It means a few times an earth sized cell. Otherwise, why compare it to a cell at all?

joshuahedlund 13y ago
Yeah with "giant" and "lurking" I was hoping for hints of a planet-sized creature existing in dark matter or some interdimensional plane or extreme wavelength or something. Title is a bit link-baity.
- Articulate 13y ago
  it hadn't even crossed my mind that it would be something that big... but now that you say that, I wish that it had been some gigantic solar-system sized being... now I am totally let down- damn you Robert Krulwhich... damn you.
- leishulang 13y ago
  same here. I was thinking that it might be a "lurking" magic bit in all particles that are working together to form a super-super intelligent...
- sciguy77 13y ago
  I agree. I was thinking the exact same thing.
- pasquinelli 13y ago
  i imagined space whales eating asteroids.
- aufreak3 13y ago
  This is exactly what I thought as well. An interesting twist is to think whether we'd consider our entire universe to be alive - perhaps like an egg with an embryo in it. There you go, you have the "hugest" thing possible :)

anigbrowl 13y ago

I feel like I've been trapped in the corner at a cocktail party by someone who insists on showing me bad drawings on a cocktail napkin. This guy's writing style is so annoying that I couldn't even make it to the end of the article. Attempting to parse this has left me feeling slightly dumber than 5 minutes ago.

rpupkin 13y ago
If you think his writing is bad, you should hear him talk. Excruciatingly dumbed-down drivel.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  If I heard this on the radio I could (somewhat) appreciate it as semi-comedic and semi-educational, but this chatty style really doesn't resonate with me in written format. Oh well, I'll know next time I see his byline.
sciguy77 13y ago
I see where you're coming from, but I rather enjoyed the novelty of his style. I wouldn't necessarily want to read any more of it, but it wasn't all that bad.
Articulate 13y ago
Well depending on your background, & education it may have felt dumbed down but I have a lot of respect for Robert Krulwhich his RadioLab co-host won a McArthur "genius" award, and they have done (in my opinion) an excellent job of bringing science alive for people that either don't have the aptitude or didn't cross paths with the type of people that can inspire you to learn more about the universe.
- Articulate 13y ago
  This commencement speech that he gave had a major impact on me http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2008/jul/29/tell-me-a-story/ http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2008/jul/29/tell...

Yaa101 13y ago

It doesn't mean we can't get sick from it, I think we need to be very careful with extra terrestrial life.

Ihmahr 13y ago
Not to mention the minus 180 degrees Celsius.
- tghw 13y ago
  Yeah, that tends to be much more harmful than any infection.
jff 13y ago
According to Wikipedia, the surface of Titan is around -180 degrees C. Do you expect a life form to exist in that environment but ALSO be able to flourish in the human body, a creature of a sort never seen on Titan, 200 degrees warmer and full of entirely different chemicals?

6thSigma 13y ago

I expected this to be from The Onion with that headline.

droogie 13y ago

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE I think I'll stick to Arthur C. Clarke's half tree, half animal lifeform in Europa which is better than a single-celled blob.

Navarr 13y ago

"We have all been scientists at one point or another in our lives." - Cecil Baldwin

dm2 13y ago

I'm still having a hard time contemplating the fact that WE exist. Sitting in front of our flat monitors with access to nearly all information which is stored all around planet Earth. Phones that connect us to billions of people. Brains large enough to hypothesize the creation of the universe. We can create rockets that send probes to other planets and even the edge of our solar system. We regularly travel around in amazing personal vehicles that allow us to travel at over 100 mph in about 10 seconds. The fact that each one of us had about one quadrillionth percent chance of even being born, yet here we are. The fact that we can even talk and communicate effectively is amazing. We can imagine future technologies and have goals to work towards such as immortality, brain-computer interfaces, teleportation, and mining asteroids. We have so much to be thankful for. Everything is amazing. WTF. [0] I have a dog that can't do anything but eat, pee, poop, and play fetch. What kind of activities do other organisms do that humans can't do? Other than telepathy, and flight, and breathing without oxygen, and energy creation through sunlight. Yet we still make fellow humans and animals suffer daily. We eat shit food and get depressed and some people even try to kill themselves. We have concepts like good and evil and actually hate other humans just because they are not exactly like our culture or have more stuff than we do. We have enough nuclear missiles in the ocean to eradicate life on earth. Terraforming mars will be fun. I hope that I live to see the start of that adventure. The next 100 years in general will be very fun. I'm extremely glad that I get to be a part of this awesome world at this extraordinary time in human history. Please, nobody fuck it up too bad. My point is, regarding the article, ANYTHING is possible. God is possible, ghosts are possible, flying spaghetti monsters are possible but until I see a video with convincing explanation or accredited scientists agree that something is very likely, is there really any point of just making up stuff? Mars having a thriving self-sustaining human-like civilization underground is possible. Aliens living among us for several years is possible. No scientist will say that either of those hypothesis are absolutely impossible, but there is no point in proposing it unless you're writing a science fiction novel/movie/comic book.

rodly 13y ago
It did take us a long time to get here though. Luckily things build on each other and we're good at patterns.

Sommer 13y ago

Coincidence or clever irony that the second drawing of the woman inspecting the little life looks a lot like Felisa Wolfe-Simon (of arsenic based life fame)?

Eliezer 13y ago

Rarely have I wished so much for a downvote button on top-level posts.

derpitation 13y ago
Let's at least turn this into a teachable moment by drawing attention to Nick Bostrom's "great filter" argument. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GnkAcdRgcI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GnkAcdRgcI

sciguy77 13y ago

That would make me very happy.

jostmey 13y ago

Evolution. It is why native alien life is unlikely to exist in our own solar system. You see, once life gets started, this process we call evolution takes place. Life takes on a myriad of complex forms. It covers the planet, gradually adapting to survive and thrive on nearly every patch of land. And behold, the planet is transformed. There is only one planet in our solar system where this has happened. If life had started on some other rock in our solar system, it too would be visibly infested with lifeforms.

tghw 13y ago
Not necessarily. Evolution does not mean improvement, just adaptation. Unless there's some sort of biological pressure, such as a predator or an environmental risk, change won't happen or will happen much more slowly. The time scale is also important. In very cold environments, such as the ones described, everything happens at a much slower pace. Consider it this way: heat is a proxy for energy (technically it is energy, but it's not all the energy). Energy is required for change. Very cold environments mean less energy, which means less change over the same time period.
Houshalter 13y ago
That's ridiculous. There is no law that says evolution can optimize itself out of any constraint. And even if it does, it might not look like much. For example there are tons of bacteria in the sky just floating in the wind, but unless you look closely you'd pretty much never know. And for most of Earth's history you wouldn't have seen multicellular life. It took a long time for the giant forests you see to evolve. And even then, you don't have that kind of massive biomass in places like Antarctica or deep underground. Evolution is a pretty tricky thing. If some improvement can't easily be reached through iterative random improvements, then it won't be. And it easily gets stuck in local maximas where little or no improvements are made for ridiculously long periods of time. It's like getting to the top of the hill. There might be a mountain in the distance, but there is no path that leads to it without first going down off the current hill.

lutusp 13y ago

Why do articles like this always overlook the key scientific and historical issues? If there's life on Europa, and if it is not based on DNA, that would mean Europan life evolved along a separate path from ours. That would lend support to the idea that life is common in the universe. If Europa's hypothetical life was based on DNA, it would lend support to the "panspermia" idea, because it's hard to imagine how Earth's life could get to Europa, implying that Earth's life, and Europa's life, both arose somewhere else and traveled to separate destinations. There are several other possibilities, none of which are discussed in the article.

6d0debc071 13y ago

Dirk Schultzs-Makuch and David Grinspoon said if one day methane eaters are found to exist on Titan, .5 and if they swim around in very, very cold ethane lakes or oceans, .5 and if those oceans don't have the pressure or weight of water, .5 ---------------- * .5 .5 .5 0.125, under stupidly generous assumptions. Have you paid your complexity tax today?

Houshalter 13y ago

I like the illustrations. Especially the woman pushing the alien in a shopping cart.