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Life

Revelationz

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Do you think that the elements which brought about life on Earth are universally a requirement for any life to develop? Water, carbon, amino acids etc?

Or do you think life can come about in ways we can't even imagine yet?
 

stephenf

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I believe there are universal rules of life,some of which we have some understanding and probably are the same, or at least smiler, elsewhere. 500 hundred years ago the Idea of mobile phones ,colour t v or heart transplants did not exist in anybodies head, but are now commonplace , so who knows, what we don't know?
 
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Mr Flibble

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Do you think that the elements which brought about life on Earth are universally a requirement for any life to develop? Water, carbon, amino acids etc?
Maybe, maybe not. Difficult to say really. I certainly believe it's possible that lifeforms could evolve without things we think are vital.

Or do you think life can come about in ways we can't even imagine yet?

I'm sure it can.
 

Dark Cyril

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Do you think that the elements which brought about life on Earth are universally a requirement for any life to develop? Water, carbon, amino acids etc?

Or do you think life can come about in ways we can't even imagine yet?

Easily. Life is a wonderfully adaptable little gem. I could see a life form evolving on a planet with no water that has developed an organ to draw the nutrients we receive from water from another source, or having a sophisticated root system to draw water from below the surface of the planet.

Think about it this way. If all the water on the planet were to slowly become irradiated, what would happen? Many would die, but some would survive. Over the course of the next few thousand years the human genome would change to be able to survive off the irradiated water. What's to stop life from developing this way from the beginning?
 

small axe

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Do you think that the elements which brought about life on Earth are universally a requirement for any life to develop? Water, carbon, amino acids etc?

Or do you think life can come about in ways we can't even imagine yet?

Well, they claim the "laws of Nature" are the same across the Universe, but I doubt anyone should presume that the "laws" only work in ways we imagine.

The ONLY conclusions any human can state about "Life" or "how Life works" can only be based upon ONE EXAMPLE: life as we know it on one insignificant speck of a planet in one unimaginably hufe Universe.

That's trying to draw a "LINE" but only having a single known "POINT" to start with. :) Who can plot a line (a graph of what Life can be) based upon a single data point? Can't.

Ultimately, even if we rule out "spiritual" or "soul energy" possibilities (and science CANNOT do so, intelligently) ... LIFE seems to be mostly "organization" of something, whether energy or matter or some thing unknown.

Can "life" be some form of organized energy living in the maelstrom of a STAR?
Some form of EM radiation, independent of a biological body?
Can it simply be based upon other chemistry?
Can we be living in other dimensions without knowing it, our consciousness "nourished" or "organized" by gravity bleeding in from other Universes?

If Space/Time can curve in simple ways ... can it curve in ways complex enough that it becomes a self-aware LIVING creature spun of Time and Space in 11+ dimensions ... as we think WE are only spun of bio-electrical interactions in a mere 4 dimensions?

There was a fascinating TV show on (THE UNIVERSE) that spoke of our limitation of the "lightspeed horizon" -- how there are parts of the Universe we can never see, because all of Space/Time is EXPANDING faster than the light from it can reach us.

It's not that the Universe isn't BIGGER than 13.7 billion light years across ... we'll just never see beyond that bubble because the light coming TOWARDS US from it is ... retreating from us ... as Space expands AWAY faster than the light APPROACHES (um ... I think I understood that)

So ... yes, LIFE is probably complex and alien to our notions, and beyond our wildest dreams and fantasies.
 

Guffy

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The limitations of physical life as we know it are the elements that make it up, Hydrogen Oxygen and Carbon. With out any one of these three life would not exist on this planet.

One of the most interesting discoveries about life on our planet was the discovery of the tube-worms and giant crabs that live off volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean. Until then we believed that all life got its energy from the sun. But the worms and other animals are still based on these three elements.

It is now believed that life based on our three main elements could have developed on planets or moons far from the sun’s life-giving rays. Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons is believed to be a place where life could exist under the conditions that exist at the bottom of our oceans. Several space missions have been proposed to investigate this.

Now as to our three main elements their location on the periodic table are crucial to their characteristics. Elements within each group in the periodic table have very similar characteristics and it is conceivable that life could be based on different elements with in the same group. Lithium or Sodium substituting for Hydrogen, Silicon or Germanium for Carbon and Sulfur or selenium for oxygen. Science fiction including an episode Star Trek (Terror in the Dark) have based life on Silicon.

Life as we know it is based on the bonding and un-bonding of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon to pass energy from its source (the sun in our case) to the living organism.

All physical life must be based on some process of energy transfer within the basic elements.
 

Nivarion

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what life needs a chemical that is liquid, and polar (in our case water) a gas that violently reacts (in our case, oxygen) and a element that can form complex chains for storing energy (carbon) its not that there aren't other things out there that can do this, its just that these chemicals and compounds are the most abundant and best at what they do.