Questions tagged [origin-of-life]
For questions about how a species, or life in general, was created.
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Could two planets located in the habitable zone create life and in turn intelligent life around the same time?
I have two planets located in the habitable zone of a 1.02-mass Star(Class: G1.7V).
The first planet is located 1 AU away from the Star and the Sun is 1.08 times brighter than our sun to anyone on the ...
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Abiogenesis ocurring inside an organism
Some time ago I pondered about where does our gut microbiome come from, and upon research it apparently comes from outside, of course, but then in a speculative biology kind of way I envisioned an ...
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Would human intelligence evolve if humans had access to infinite food?
In a world with infinite food (each organism had access to an infinite amount of food/energy from another universe), would human intelligence develop through some evolutionary mechanism?
If resources ...
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Will our creator terminate us when the reason of our existence is no longer needed or completed? Let's take example of AI [closed]
TL;DR :
Let's say we are created to do one thing and we completed that, what will our creator do with us then? terminate / eliminate us?
Example of Artificial Intelligence :
Let's say we made a AI ...
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When is the earliest that the Universe could support planets with long-lasting biospheres?
It took Earth ~ four billion years to go from molten rock to multicellular life. Let's take that as an absolute minimum requirement of time for organic life to evolve and produce sapient species (I ...
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Why Would New Greek Gods Create Humans and Olympus?
So I'm setting up a setting for Genesys that I have placed in a alternate dimension inhabited by humans from ancient Greece that would build their own world according to how they perceive their ...
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How would multicellular organisms evolve in a microgravity ocean?
How would living organisms develop/evolve in a very-low g ocean environment?
The environment would be a small radioactive core surrounded by a small mass of water, less than 100 km in diameter, in the ...
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World with low amount of oxygen like Everest dead zone: can life be complex?
Imagine an Earth-like world with oceans, some complex vegetative and animal life, but with an extreme low amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, let's say one third of what we are accustomed to, like the ...
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Could intelligent life arise on a planet that isn't 'tethered' to a star, just drifting near to one? [duplicate]
Earth's movement in space is obviously linked to the Sun, as are many other planets. But what I'm asking, is could intelligent life develop on a world that is merely 'passing by' and basking in a ...
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Appropriate liquid/solvent for life in my underground environment on Venus
Partly inspired by this question
My Venusians are happy in their cloud top city when a small group somehow (with lots of handwaving) crashes to the surface, falls underground, and ends up in a hidden ...
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Would life be possible on a planet that has an axis of rotation that always "pointed" directly at the sun? [duplicate]
Preface: I'll be calling call the orbit described in the question title a "solar-oriented orbit" for the sake of convenience, as "a planet that has an axis of rotation that always pointed directly at ...
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Asteroids with an atmosphere
What would be the likelihood of an asteroid developing a thin layer of gas? If an asteroid is capable of having an "atmosphere", then how likely would be be for primitive plant life, such as a moss, ...
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Origin of life on a waterworld
Take a planet like Gliese 1214 B, which has no land, an ocean 100s of kilometres deep and a seabed of Ice VII. For the purposes of the question, let's assume that the pressure and/or temperature near ...
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Getting energy in the oceans
We know that as a planet increases in size, its surface gets covered by oceans (more water is captured by gravity and shape is more spherical). Therefore, a planet larger than Earth can not have a ...
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What was life like on Theia [closed]
In a reality where life on earth had originally arrived on this planet due to the effects of a collision between Gaia and Theia, which later formed the earth and moon as we know them today, what would ...
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Advice on establishing a magical ecosystem? [closed]
A huge cataclysm struck the world several thousand years ago, in which debris from magical meteorites basically screwed up the whole planet, altering its ecosystems to include creatures that evolved/...
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What would a life form that evolved in deep space and without gravity look like? [closed]
Somehow the following hypothetical life form evolved in deep space with a long lifetime. It lives in a low orbit around massive stars, reproduces by eating interstellar gas and dust and uses the ...
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Planet and Moon with life [duplicate]
I want an earth-sized planet with a moon-sized moon to both have complex, possibly intelligent, life. Would it be more realistic for life to develop separately on each body or for life to transfer ...
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How would an alien race that seeded life on a planet let their presence be known at a certain point in time?
Imagine an advanced alien race that seeded a planet with species capable of written communication. While the alien race is on the planet for a few generations it wants to remain mostly hidden from the ...
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Can life arise on a brown dwarf?
Brown dwarfs are celestial bodies in the gray area between planet and star.
They're huge, gaseous, hot compared to planets, and come in all different kinds.
(1) Is it possible for life to develop in ...
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Life from a dead space whale
Let's take our regular "Great Blue Star Whale", with a mass of about 10 000 tons.
That poor, poor whale is reaching the end of its life for whatever reasons. (Damn you! Space whale hunters!). It will ...
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What would be the consequences of a world that has only one dominant species of non-oceanic animal life?
I have a world that has unexpected lifeforms detected. There are to-be-revealed reasons for it, but the way the ecosystem is set up is:
Microbial life is abundant everywhere
There is a single ...
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Would you shoot out DNA onto baby planets if you planned to visit it someday?
The question popped into my mind when I read this.
Since we know our scientists are searching for planets which might be capable of supporting life; most of them many light-years away, could the ...
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Roots of an intelligent alien digital life form [closed]
A fully intelligent digital life form that does not have a "body" directly; but live inside a very complex datacenter network; and communicate other life forms via robots, terminals, computer screens, ...
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The first vampires [closed]
How would the 'vampire virus' come about? Assuming vampires can turn others into vampires with a literal infection. How can the origin of the virus be explained considering that is in a viruses best ...
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Can life be powered by thermal conduction?
I have a world in mind that is essentially a planet-wide underground ocean. The planet doesn't have a strong magnetic field, so radiation on the surface is too high to allow life, but what I'm ...
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A planet made of iron
Our planet has a surface full of silicates and a core made of iron. It's due to this that Earth is the way it mostly is - most rocks and many minerals contain some form of silica. But what about a ...
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Planetary Habitability at twelve to seven billion years ago
Following this question, I had additional question of habitability.
Assuming that life could exist on planet formed roughly twelve billion years ago, allowing complex life to exist as of seven billion ...
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Life under the surface of Ganymede
Inspired by this article about the recent discovery of a subsurface ocean.
So now we know it has a liquid water ocean and a magnetic field. The subsurface ocean is also protected from radiation by ...
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Could intelligent life on Earth have been seeded by precursor aliens?
This idea comes up quite frequently in science fiction, but there has not been a question about it yet on Worldbuilding.SE. Is it possible that intelligent life was brought to Earth by an alien ...
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