Life on cold planets, and moving to warmer planets [closed]

Question

I want to create an alien species that inhabits a planetoid outside the solar system and tries to attack Earth.

They would be somewhere between as close as pluto or as far out as the oort cloud. I could handwave in an atmosphere and water ice if needed, but is it feasible that intelligent life could survive on a planet with extremely cold temperatures and little sunlight? (It can get as cold as -220C and as far away as 100000AU)

Assuming that intelligent life developed on this planet and the aliens were able to build space ships, how would they survive as they move to planets that are closer to the sun? Since they've adapted to survive in extreme cold, they would overheat as they get closer (and dissipating heat in space is difficult.) They would need to artificially cool the interior of their ships to stay alive, but what can be used to refrigerate the ship to ~-220C?

Answer 1

I want you to know before I say this, I am sorry for this answer.

But the simple answer is no.

Problems with unwanted solutions

For life to evolve it needs to start on a planet the exists in the habitable zone. A star that has a habitable zone that is that far away would be massive but would only live for a few millions years(unless a god created your species this won't work for even the simplest creatures to evolve). Lets say that by using some handwavium that there is liquid water there. The creatures that live there would not be sapient, mollusks like clams and barnacles might live but a sapient creature doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell.

What if it worked?

So lets add another cup of magic hand waving to this cake of a question and say that gods(or god like creatures) indeed created these creatures, they would only want to explore planets for mining and depleting resources(sounds evil to me). I imagine they would have suits of dry ice and other extremely cold things to prevent overheating, since dry ice expels Co2 they will need a hardy respiration system.

I didn't have time to write a full answer but I hoped this helped.

Answer 2

You're jumping to quite a few conclusions and asking a lot of questions which simply contradict one another.

Is it even feasible that life could survive on a planet with extremely cold temperatures and little sunlight?

Yes. No problem. We have microscopic life on Earth which survives in vacuum, on the ocean floor, in the arctic, etc. (the same species).

If so what special considerations should I make for how the aliens look and function?

This is purely opinion based. No one could tell you how such an alien would look, because we have never met such aliens.

Assuming that intelligent life developed on this planet ...

Hold on a second. There's a pretty big difference between "life" and "intelligent life". And while we're at it, chimps are pretty intelligent - just, you know, not as intelligent as us. And we certainly can't build a space ship that would carry us (alive) to the edge of the solar system and back.

...what motivations would these aliens have to move to planets that are closer to the sun?

Again, this is blind speculation - you've given us nothing to go on other than that they're "out there" and want to "come hither". Since we don't know what kind of world they might live on, what they survive or thrive on, or what their cultural or economic needs might be how could we answer this?

Since they're adapted to survive in extreme cold, they would overheat as they get closer ...?

If they're smart enough to build space ships out of the "scraps" available on the edges of our solar system then they'll be more than able to deal with the heat from the Sun.

They might also be blinded by the additional light they would see if they have optical eyes like ours.

"Additional light"? "Optical eyes"? See above.

There would have to be some compelling reason for them to get close to the sun and risk being blinded and boiled alive.

Yes, there would be, if they were that stupid. But they can build space ships more advanced than ours while having significantly less to go on than we do, so they probably aren't stupid at all.

Conclusion:

You're asking for idea generation while providing little to no direction, or parameters. Please rethink your post.

Answer 3

I don't know about the life in those temperatures bit. probably not, but we don't know everything.

Two options

1. They developed out there (somehow) They would probably want to be cooled with liquid helium, and their ships might have a double hull with vacuum in between for insulation. Like a dewar flask.
   They wouldn't like it here.

2. They come from somewhere more habitable and were just living out there for a while, supported by their technology. Insert standard alien story here.

As to why they are suddenly coming in, they finally decided to retire to somewhere warm?
Or maybe they are being chased by someone else from outside.

If aliens decided to visit our solar system, anyone living in the Oort cloud would be the first to know...

Answer 4

Is it even feasible that life could survive on a planet with extremely cold temperatures and little sunlight? Well, life could potentially survive but that would probably mean it's not native to the planet (planetoid).

As far as we know, and as far as we can imagine, life requires liquid water. There are some theories that life might arise in liquid methane, but on a world that far out where everything is frozen solid, it's very unlikely that life will develop.

If so what special considerations should I make for how the aliens look and function?

With the planet being that far from the Sun it's likely that there are prolonged periods of low energy (when the planet is further away from the Sun), so the species will have to survive that somehow. A common strategy on Earth is to go in hibernation.

...what motivations would these aliens have to move to planets that are closer to the sun? The same as any intelligent specie - exploration, expansion, domination of the surrounding space.

Since they're adapted to survive in extreme cold, they would overheat as they get closer ...? Their native environment being so different than what they'll find on Earth can not be a good thing. Not only the heat, but the intense light, the stronger gravity will probably make it very challenging for them. Of course they might have the technology to survive... but then how would we feel on Mercury? It's far for optimal environment for them.