Would life exist if ice and snow were explosive?

Question

Now, I completely know that nothing about ice and snow makes it flammable, this question is purely hypothetical. Me and some of my friends were debating this and I would like to see what some other people's opinions were, thanks.

Answer 1

Not a problem. During Carboniferous Period about 300 million years ago there was a high density of life, and there wasn't any snow or ice back then, so nothing to threaten life. A trickier question is what about life on some frozen moon? Assuming that conditions were stable before there was life (otherwise we wouldn't be talking about a frozen moon), it would depend on whether life could generate gases or chemicals that could react explosively with snow or ice (never mind how difficult it would be to even that!). Bacteria, for example, could evolve into only those life forms that won't react so negatively with the present snow or ice. It's hard to imagine that ANY bacterial life would generate chemicals that will unfailingly cause the snow or ice to explode, so life should be possible, ultimately. As a pratical example, bacteria only generating H2S, or hydrogen sulfide, should do fine on Titan, which has frozen methane.

Answer 2

Oxygen is explosive.

So I think the answer to your questions is - an explosive tendency in a chemical compound necessary for life does not mean that the explosive quality will cause life not to exist IF there are other factors that minimize the harmful tendency of the component in question.

In the case of Oxygen - I think PURE oxygen is highly flammable. But because air contains a mixture of oxygen with other gases, those other gases cause air not to be so flammable.

Or something.

Also, I think you and your friends smoke too much weed.

Answer 3

definitely. Life would probably have evolved to deliberately create ice in small amounts to disperse seeds and the like.

Answer 4

Well...life would exist in Florida cuz it doesn't snow here =D
But what a random question lol