2
$\begingroup$

I'm working on the following premise: outer space, or at least our solar system, is littered with creatures akin to "sea monsters". Is it possible/plausible for a creature to evolve in such a way as to have as its natural habitat outer space?

Obviously, it wouldn't be anything like life as we know it, but I don't see a reason why alien life should be in any way related to how we know it.

What would be some of the parameters/determinants of evoluiton here? Would there be a difference between the ones living around (and just maybe, on) Venus and the ones around Mars? Would the creatures need to eat or just absorb energy from sunlight? How big would they grow and why - would they get big enough to cause gravitational trouble when they move around? (Imagine one as big as a planet freely moving around the solar system, would that be safe?) How would they propel themselves/move? Flap a pair of wings? What if they were snakelike?

I'm working on a short story with this premise, and I don't intend to go deep into the mechanics of things; if it's implausible or impossible I'll just pretend otherwise. However, some of these answers may help me better present the notion and make it more consistent. Is there some similar idea developed elsewhere? Thanks.

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
4

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1
$\begingroup$

Biological experiment went wrong

Or went forgotten.

I will use creationist arguments to show you why such life should be created rather than evolved: The argument is, that even when you are given "perfect" conditions for life to naturally occur (alias, the Earth), it is really low probability for abiogenesis to happen.

Put away perfect scenario and replace it with environment which is most hostile against life (my personal opinion). Probability of life occurring here naturally is several orders of magnitude lower than in normal scenarios. It is even so low, that it is beyond plausibility.

For short story, though: Such life could be created artificially by aliens

At our current tech level, if you wanted to create space elevator, you would use carbon nanotubes to do so.

But imagine extremely evolved alien race which solved this by bio-engineering to a level which goes beyond our imagination. And they crafted a construction in space using such bio-engineering.

Such construction would be "alive" by our standards: Using sun light (or light of star at given solar system) and maybe even using radioactivity to change it for "goods" being sent back to planet.

I will leave the details to your imagination, but basically:

TL;DR

  • Localised life structure which was crafted by mighty race
  • Such structure goes beyond our current level of knowledge about genetic engineering
  • It is alive by definitions of life, but it's intelligence is not plausible (it just is and lives. No communication)

Race creating it may be long gone and such structure can be there as "monument" reminding to anyone how awesome such race once were...

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .