starship-design: Re: Aliens

[TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

Antonio wrote:

>... near sulforous vents on the sea floor - possibly
>also exist _somewhere_ on Venus and/or the gas giants.

If that is so, than indeed life is much more likely to exist there. A stable
environment and energy source seem to be the key factors in all the places
where we think microscopic live evolves.
I used to think that Venus was too hot to have a usable liquid, but then
again there are many liquids at a temperature of say 300C.

>    Gas giants present growing pressures towards their centers, to the
>point where the "gas" possibly liquefies and then solidifies. Conditions
>at some "altitude" might resemble the above sulfurous vents or even the
>surface of Venus itself.

When gas-planet was mentioned I assumed that the gas was meant to be the
medium where live evolved.
Indeed the likeliest place would be somewhere at the border between solid an
liquid gasses. I think though that the enormous pressures will favour
certain chemical reactions over others in a very unequal way and thus limit
the possibilites significantly.

So in the gas zone the environment is too unstable for new life to get
stronger before it is killed.
The liquid zone also is too unstable, unless it is near a solid environment,
where it can "settle" in a "pool".
The solid and liquid environments likely favour specific chemical reactions
and thus limit the amount of different possibilities.

! I'm not 100% certain about high pressure favouring certain chemical reactions.
Is there someone who has more knowledge about this, and who can acknowledge
or disaffirm my speculations?


Timothy