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I'm talking about ionized gas not the plasma in our blood. I have been reading science articles about plasma and they keep hinting at the idea of plasma based life.
Here is my first example and an added second. Apparently plasma can arrange itself into cell-like structures that even "transfer information."
I would like to create a plasma based life-form. What obstacles to staying alive would this lifeform experience? What would such a being look like?
That article is very.........
I think it would be exciting to be in the laboratory when when a spherical blob of matter diverged into two spherical blobs of matter, sure. But, without being a scientist myself, I think that the scientist described in the article is jumping the gun if he actually claimed to have discovered something akin to a life form. It sounds more like a "bubble" than a "cell". Is a rain drop "reproducing" if it breaks into two rain drops? It hasn't replicated any information. If it doesn't replicate information, then how can it evolve?
In order for there to be life, there would need to be some kind of internal structure or information system that can reproduce itself. As far as I know, plasma cannot provide this because it does not allow for any chemical interactions or bonding. It is, and always will be, a homogeneous swirling mass of particles.
Edit:
If there were non-plasma dust particles inside of the plasma, then the plasma might be able to work as a catalyst for chemical reactions and organization. It could be like the cytoplasm inside of a cell, allowing for life without water. That is a far more interesting thought not mentioned in the referenced article.
Boiling the problem down to it's most basic premise... life is a system by which matter can be assembled into complex, self-replicating structures. You might think of it as a computer that runs on chemical reactions and molecular sized mechanics rather than circuits and transistors. It requires software (DNA) containing information on how to replicate those structures (including itself) and hardware that is able to read and follow those instructions.
Despite the stigma attached to any anti-evolutionary sentiment, it remains a legitimate philosophical question as to whether the hardware needed to synthesize DNA AND the DNA needed to synthesize the hardware can both simultaneously apparate out of exited particles. One of many mysteries of science.
The problem with plasma is the high temperature needed to achieve ionization and the electrical repulsion of the charged particles within the plasma tend to cause plasmas to rapidly expand and dissipate. This is hardly conducive to anything resembling life, since information storage, reproduction or replication and other facets of life processes would also be impossible. (This is also why plasma would make a crappy weapon...)
The only ways we know to overcome this is through powerful magnetic fields, such as in Tokomaks or other experimental fusion reactors, or to pile on gravity, such as in a star. Trying to corral plasma with magnetic fields has proven to be frustratingly difficult, which is why fusion energy has been "20 years away" for about the last 50 years.
If self organizing plasmas can exist, then they will be confined to very extreme environments such as the photospheres of stars, accretion discs of black holes and perhaps the "atmosphere" of a neutron star. As you can imagine, locating and recognizing life in that sort of environment will be quite difficult, not to mention how would you interact with it?
