Who thinks that life could be based on something other than air and water?

Question

For example, on some very hot planet there could be a life existence based on some liquidized material (due to planet's temperature), which on our planet existing in a hard form, or doesn't exist at all. Like water could be hard in lower temperatures; you see what I mean? It all depends on temperatures. Like, sun might have life on it, that we might not even understand, because we think that in order to support life we need air and water, and it's too hot for anything to survive there. What if there life for which plazma is like water to us. What if the wole sun is a living organism, like where is the limit to the size of a living form? Can we open our minds a little bit? Don't you think that we know very little about the universe and there are many things that we don't understand, and it's hard for us to imagine them, because we never seen them before, and we base/focus our opinions strictly on what we know? But do we know a lot?
So, who thinks I'm crazy? And what do you think?

Answer 1

Why, ET, while he phone home.

Now, seriously, we must first come with a very good definition of "life", one that does not involve only the life conditions from Earth, and one that does preserve the difference between "being alive" and simply "being". When it comes to life forms that are essentially different from what we know now (which, btw, does not necessarily involve water or air - but it does involve carbon), if they exist, I think that detecting them would be quite a tricky business.

Answer 2

I answered your other question on this subject, and it is, indeed, an irresistible idea. What if life could be based on silicon compounds instead of carbon? Or stable life completely in the gas phase? It doesn't just depend on temperatures; it would also depend on the other matter/atmosphere variables: pressure, volume, mass, as well as temperature. It is conceivable that life could emerge in a much larger format if gravity were less; or if gravity were greater on a given planet, the lifeforms on that planet would evolve as compact, squat forms to compensate for the difficulties of moving about in higher gravity. In space perhaps, a sun-sized intelligence might be able to exist, since there, a greater mass would be enabled to achieve stability without collapsing in on itself as it might in an atmosphere situation.

You're not crazy, just speculating. Science fiction authors do this all the time. Read Stanislaw Lem's novel "Solaris" and you'll see just how alien a human can conceive a lifeform to be; the humans in the story can only gather evidence and observe, but the lifeform is so far outside human experience that it drives some of them to private madness, kills others and inspires the others...

Not crazy, just open-minded. Keep thinking along these lines! It is thinking like this that allows you to avoid being trapped in dogmatic or narrow patterns of thought. Not crazy at all! Cheers!

Answer 3

Life on Earth is in no way based on air, and no, "we" do not think air is neccessary to support life. Only the higher life forms on this planet need air. The earliest life forms existed only in the waters, and it took many millions of years before the first blue-green bacteria started making use of the chemicals in the Earth's atmosphere, so the simple answer to your question is no.

As for water, all primitive life forms have to exist in a fluid of some sort, but not neccessarily water.

Answer 4

Unfortunately, as we have only encountered life on earth, we have no idea what the limitations on life are. This question has no answer.

Answer 5

Organic matter is needed for life to be generated as we know life to be.

Answer 6

who knows?
we sure dont know much.