4 ms·

Why would you assume these organisms would breathe?

jerf 12y ago
Because all organisms need to expel entropy to survive, and expelling solid entropy is a fairly non-trivial engineering problem vs. the life that we do know expelling it via liquids and gasses. Heck, it's not even all that clear how to do that just as a machine... nothing is coming to mind that does that today. (Examples welcomed. Also note that for today's discussion execrement is solids suspended in a liquid, not a "solid". Silicon is a solid, you know, rock-solid, literally.) The idea that we have "no idea" what life could look like out there in the universe is grossly oversold. We actually can put a lot of bounds on them, using rigorous mathematics, and discuss them despite not necessarily knowing all the chemical details.
- torrente 12y ago
  The idea that we have "no idea" what life could look like out there in the universe is grossly oversold. We actually can put a lot of bounds on them, using rigorous mathematics, and discuss them despite not necessarily knowing all the chemical details. Do you have any sources that discuss this?
- ars 12y ago
  > Heck, it's not even all that clear how to do that just as a machine... nothing is coming to mind that does that today. That's basically ash, think of a coal burning plant and how they deal with waste. Or iron smelting, how they leave the waste slag behind.
  - redler 12y ago
    Or a Horta.
  - jerf 12y ago
    Bingo. Thanks. I knew there had to be something. It's difficult to see how this could be made to work for a life form, because this is a very macroscopic process. On a microscopic level, well, we're all just ugly bags of mostly-water so we do it by suspending things in our mostly-water. As I understand it there are few to no good candidates for a silicon-friendly liquid base when you work through it. (Interestingly, I have seen some suggestions that there could be other liquids that carbon-based life could be based on, such as ammonia. That said, it may not be coincidence that water is still almost certainly the best (accounting for the possibility that it's just the observer effect), and that's what all life forms reading this for the forseeably future are based on.)
    - ars 12y ago
      It might be like how the body builds bones. The alien could do the same with a glass bone, and excrete it every so often. If they are like humans they would emit a 1 to 2 KG bone every day. Glass is pretty inert though, I wonder how it would decay/decompose.
      - serf 12y ago
        >> Glass is pretty inert though, I wonder how it would decay/decompose. into beautiful alien beaches, around tidal oceans of ammonia.
        ars 12y ago
        That would be like you enjoying a lake made of urine. To this alien the glass would be gross and icky.
deleted 12y ago
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Gravityloss 12y ago
Matter exchange is quite necessary for life, and exchanging gases can be a lot easier than exchanging solids.

jerf 12y ago

Because all organisms need to expel entropy to survive, and expelling solid entropy is a fairly non-trivial engineering problem vs. the life that we do know expelling it via liquids and gasses. Heck, it's not even all that clear how to do that just as a machine... nothing is coming to mind that does that today. (Examples welcomed. Also note that for today's discussion execrement is solids suspended in a liquid, not a "solid". Silicon is a solid, you know, rock-solid, literally.) The idea that we have "no idea" what life could look like out there in the universe is grossly oversold. We actually can put a lot of bounds on them, using rigorous mathematics, and discuss them despite not necessarily knowing all the chemical details.

torrente 12y ago
The idea that we have "no idea" what life could look like out there in the universe is grossly oversold. We actually can put a lot of bounds on them, using rigorous mathematics, and discuss them despite not necessarily knowing all the chemical details. Do you have any sources that discuss this?
ars 12y ago
> Heck, it's not even all that clear how to do that just as a machine... nothing is coming to mind that does that today. That's basically ash, think of a coal burning plant and how they deal with waste. Or iron smelting, how they leave the waste slag behind.
- redler 12y ago
  Or a Horta.
- jerf 12y ago
  Bingo. Thanks. I knew there had to be something. It's difficult to see how this could be made to work for a life form, because this is a very macroscopic process. On a microscopic level, well, we're all just ugly bags of mostly-water so we do it by suspending things in our mostly-water. As I understand it there are few to no good candidates for a silicon-friendly liquid base when you work through it. (Interestingly, I have seen some suggestions that there could be other liquids that carbon-based life could be based on, such as ammonia. That said, it may not be coincidence that water is still almost certainly the best (accounting for the possibility that it's just the observer effect), and that's what all life forms reading this for the forseeably future are based on.)
  - ars 12y ago
    It might be like how the body builds bones. The alien could do the same with a glass bone, and excrete it every so often. If they are like humans they would emit a 1 to 2 KG bone every day. Glass is pretty inert though, I wonder how it would decay/decompose.
    - serf 12y ago
      >> Glass is pretty inert though, I wonder how it would decay/decompose. into beautiful alien beaches, around tidal oceans of ammonia.
      - ars 12y ago
        That would be like you enjoying a lake made of urine. To this alien the glass would be gross and icky.

deleted 12y ago

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Gravityloss 12y ago

Matter exchange is quite necessary for life, and exchanging gases can be a lot easier than exchanging solids.