Other locations for intelligence (Fermi Paradox Question)

tomBitonti · Jul 22, 2015

Forking this from: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?462203-Alien-Intelligence

Was wondering what other locations might support intelligent life.

A starting point is to wonder what other locations would provide more real estate, which I suppose should be called state space, than our single planet.

That lead me to catalog locations which have been used in science fiction, and to compare the available real estate with that of the earth. Then:

* Stars, either, in a volume, or on a boundary.
* Gas giants, either, in the clouds, or in the solid core -- taken as a very large computing substrate.
* Asteroids and other near solar orbit small bodies
* Oort cloud and Kuiper belt and other far solar orbit small bodies.
* Interstellar clouds

My thesis is that if any of these supports intelligent life and provides a significantly larger amount of space to inhabit, then intelligent life might inevitably migrate to one of these locations, and the reason that we aren't detecting other intelligent life is that we communicate to beings in these locations only with great difficulty. Far orbit creatures might be converse on a different time scale. Computational beings living in the core of a gas giant? Not even sure how we would converse with those.

Thx!

TomB

Umbran · Jul 22, 2015

tomBitonti said:
Was wondering what other locations might support intelligent life.

In part, this depends on what you call "support".

* Stars, either, in a volume, or on a boundary.

This one is highly questionable. In order to support intelligence, the environment must allow for the persistence of complex structures - a "chemistry", not necessarily in the sense of terrestrial chemicals, but in the sense of a dynamic system of things that can combine, break down, and recombine in complex forms.

With the forces we currently know about, stars are a poor candidate for such. Too much energy present breaking things down to allow structures to persist.

Morrus · Jul 22, 2015

Best chance for life is in watery oceans like Europa. Unfortunately, those are exactly the places where fire won't develop, so tool users are less likely.

Tonguez · Jul 22, 2015

I think complex life is going to be limited to terrestial bodies - so moons and asteroids (Ceres has geysers of water vapour so we know Asteroids can have water and if might even capture an atmosphere and most of us know about Jupiters Moons).

Stars have too much energy and gas giants at best might carry single celled organisms or perhaps even something jellyfish like.

(I have RP'd a Cnidarian - an asteroid sized colony of space coral - featuring a biosilicate exoskeleton, ionosynthetic Zooxanthellae for energy and ionising tentacles that use ionic vaporizers to dissolve minerals which it then absorbs to build its exokeleton.
Cnidarians are conceived as having been originally seeded into the atmosphere of a gas giant before gaining sentience, psionics and the ability to self propel via ionic thrust. I even got to co-opt Flumphs in as the Cnidarian Polyps, budded off from the main Reef to explore and gather minerals

)

For OP of course, the debates that arise are not just Will we recognise Intelligence different to our own? and What is Intelligence? but also What is Life? Would a Cnidarian be recognised as alive without the addition of psionics?

Would a cloud of charged particles suspended in plasma be able to self organise to the level of intelligence?

Kramodlog · Jul 22, 2015

From an anthropocentric perspective, I'd go looking for a planet or moon with water and a magnetic field. Without a magnetic field the planet or moon is just bombarded by radiation. Look at Mars. It probably had one at some point, but lots it and now it is a desert.

Ganymede, one of Jupiter's bigger moons, has both water and a magnetic field. It is the only moon in the solar system with one. It is also a bit bigger than Mercury. That is where I'd look first.

tomBitonti · Jul 22, 2015

Hi,

Yeah, for finding beings similar to us, we would want to look in locations similar to the surface of the earth. Or at least, to finding similar life forms, although not necessarily intelligent ones.

And some of the locations that I listed are extreme. Active stars, certainly, don't seem very hospitable for complex structures. But maybe very cold dwarfs might work. Or might work eventually. As I understand it, the cores of gas giants may be a solid hydrogen metal, but are also very very hot. They too seem to be very extreme locations in which to envision complex structures.

You could add to the list: the neutron star surfaces, or "the dynamic topology" of event horizons. My list is informed by popular science fiction, which includes even more extreme examples.

But, if any of these *could* support complex forms, and they offer very large* areas, they might be where intelligent life goes after a short time as meat creatures such as ourselves.

*You would need to factor in scale changes. The surface of a neutron star seems small, but if creatures that lived there were correspondingly small, the scale factor could even out. Similarly, a complex structure in a solar interior might be very large, making the apparently large volume which is available not really that big.

Thx!

TomB

Umbran · Jul 22, 2015

Tonguez said:
For OP of course, the debates that arise are not just Will we recognise Intelligence different to our own? and What is Intelligence? but also What is Life? Would a Cnidarian be recognised as alive without the addition of psionics?

Quite likely - "life" has a couple of highly recognizable traits we can generalize over various platforms of life:

Homeostasis: Regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state; for example, electrolyte concentration or sweating to reduce temperature.
Metabolism: Transformation of energy. Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.

Basically, the giant coral reef that is "alive" is thermodynamically not the same as a rock.

Would a cloud of charged particles suspended in plasma be able to self organise to the level of intelligence?

Um, a cloud of charged particles *is* plasma.

The answer, however, isn't that deep - barring exotic forces mankind doesn't know about, that cloud of charged particles has electromagnetic forces to work with. So, we are basically talking about chemistry. There isn't a whole lot of chemistry to plasma, because it is so energetic, it doesn't form lasting bonds between its particles. No lasting bonds, no life, and no intelligence.

Janx · Jul 22, 2015

have we determined if whales are sentient (or whatever we are that monkeys aren't)?

Seems like if we can't do that, we can't really tell if any of these other weird things are alien life or not.

Morrus · Jul 22, 2015

Janx said:
have we determined if whales are sentient (or whatever we are that monkeys aren't)?

Seems like if we can't do that, we can't really tell if any of these other weird things are alien life or not.

Whales certainly can't use tools or develop technology. Sentience is one thing, but the Holy Grail would be an advanced, technological civilisation. And that means fire, which means it won't be water-based.

Umbran · Jul 22, 2015

Janx said:
have we determined if whales are sentient (or whatever we are that monkeys aren't)?

Seems like if we can't do that, we can't really tell if any of these other weird things are alien life or not.

Determining sentience and determining life are two entirely different things.

Other locations for intelligence (Fermi Paradox Question)

tomBitonti

Adventurer

Umbran

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Morrus

Well, that was fun

Tonguez

A suffusion of yellow

Kramodlog

Naked and living in a barrel

tomBitonti

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Umbran

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Janx

Hero

Morrus

Well, that was fun

Umbran

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