Life in vacuum?

[Zixinus]

Does anybody know about anything about hypothetical aliens that live in vacuum? I myself would like the idea and curious. For example, how would such creatures communicate?

[Patrick Degan]

Does anybody know about anything about hypothetical aliens that live in vacuum? I myself would like the idea and curious. For example, how would such creatures communicate?

If such creatures developed bioluminecence, they could communicate through light pulsations, though they'd have to be in relatively close range to one another, of course. They'd probably float together in herds.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Does anybody know about anything about hypothetical aliens that live in vacuum? I myself would like the idea and curious. For example, how would such creatures communicate?

Bioluminescence would be the path of least resistance for such a creature. Though, as there seems to be no feasible natural path for a multicellular form of life to transition to living in vacuum . . . aliens living in vacuum probably would've been engineered to have internal radio sets.

[Eris]

The problem with living in vacuum is that, by definition, there's nothing there. Complex organisms require huge quantities of material, and lots of heavy elements (by which I mean pretty much everything beyond hydrogen). However, all hope is not lost, depending on how flexible you'd be about your desired organism.

There could be complex alien life that survived in vacuum. That is, they wouldn't die in a few minutes time. They would require ways to chemically crack CO2, seals to protect themselves from dehydration, high resistance to incident radiation, and so on. And due to the high energy requirements of doing all this, they couldn't live there normally, since there isn't enough material out there to support such a life form long term.

The other possibility I can think of is if you had some forms of gram-positive archaea, adapted to zero pressure, that survive by photosynthesis or similar radiation capture on the surface or interior to asteroids. I couldn't say if they could have evolved there, although I doubt it, but we could probably at least breed a species that did that given some arbitrary research into the field.

[Zixinus]

What about life that adopted to diminishing atmosphere?

This is for a setting I have in mind and I want some vacuum-living aliens.

The idea is that they developed on a rich planet that had its atmoshpere mostly wiped away but life survived on it to create a sentient species. They communicate trough a brief wavelength of radio signals and metabolically quite slow (we all seem like mad rats to them).

It's sorta to show that aliens may not even share the air we breath, but these creatures can survive living in our air as they don't breath it in.

[Junghalli]

A major problem with vacuum-dwelling life is that water doesn't stay liquid in a vacuum. It's kind of hard to imagine a lifeform without some kind of liquid solvent. You'd probably have to use some kind of heavy organic oil instead.

[Junghalli]

It's sorta to show that aliens may not even share the air we breath, but these creatures can survive living in our air as they don't breath it in.

I don't know if vacuum-adapted life would necessarily take well to our environment. There'd probably be issues with higher pressure than they're used to, and there's also the issue of oxygen, which would be a poison to anything not evolved to deal with it (yeah, they don't breathe, but what about soft membranes?).

[Lord of the Abyss]

How about something that evolved on a water filled ice moon, like some of the gas giant planets appear to have ? Life could start in the watery core, and work it's way out through the ice ( using natural antifreeze like some fish ). When it reaches the surface, it could eventually evolve photosynthesis and spread just under the surface like some microorganisms do with Antarctic rocks, and eventually grow it's own hard shell so it can grow out into the vacuum ( to compete for light, like Earth plants ).

A major problem with vacuum-dwelling life is that water doesn't stay liquid in a vacuum. It's kind of hard to imagine a lifeform without some kind of liquid solvent. You'd probably have to use some kind of heavy organic oil instead.

If it's hard shelled, it could maintain internal pressure, keep it's water liquid.

[Quadlok]

Not naturally evolved, but in the book 'The Ghost Brigades' by John Scalzi, there are a group of heavily genetically modified human soldiers created to survive unaided in asteroid belts and planetary ring systems. They sort of look like turtles, have large photosynthetic patches and an internal waste recycling mechanism to allow them to subsist with minimal nourishment, and communicate through an internal computer and transmitter entwined in their brain.

[Darth Raptor]

What about life that adopted to diminishing atmosphere?

That's really not the kind of change a species can adapt to via natural selection, no matter how gradual.

[Junghalli]

That's really not the kind of change a species can adapt to via natural selection, no matter how gradual.

Oh it could adapt to the diminishing atmosphere (by a combination of bigger lungs, more red blood cells, and dwarfism), but sooner or later you'd reach a point where nothing bigger than an amoeba would survive. By the time you reached vacuum all that'd be left would be a few survivors (by which I mean bacteria) in the deep crust, and maybe some more bacteria living under rocks or something.

Yes, that was totally pedantic.

[CaptainChewbacca]

I believe there was a star wars species that evolved on a planet where tidal forces were so strong that periods of the surface would go for days or even a few weeks without any atmosphere.

[Patrick Degan]

The problem with living in vacuum is that, by definition, there's nothing there. Complex organisms require huge quantities of material, and lots of heavy elements (by which I mean pretty much everything beyond hydrogen). However, all hope is not lost, depending on how flexible you'd be about your desired organism.

There could be complex alien life that survived in vacuum. That is, they wouldn't die in a few minutes time. They would require ways to chemically crack CO2, seals to protect themselves from dehydration, high resistance to incident radiation, and so on. And due to the high energy requirements of doing all this, they couldn't live there normally, since there isn't enough material out there to support such a life form long term.

The other possibility I can think of is if you had some forms of gram-positive archaea, adapted to zero pressure, that survive by photosynthesis or similar radiation capture on the surface or interior to asteroids. I couldn't say if they could have evolved there, although I doubt it, but we could probably at least breed a species that did that given some arbitrary research into the field.

One could posit the notion of creatures who would feed by consuming material from asteroids. They might cluster around the body as it follows its orbit because it's their "food" source but also takes them near the sun when they might absorb heat to sustain themselves. They would have to have some sort of organ which could store heat, and a large part of its internal processes would be devoted to generating heat to keep its fluids in at least a viscuous state.

[Darth Ruinus]

I believe there was a star wars species that evolved on a planet where tidal forces were so strong that periods of the surface would go for days or even a few weeks without any atmosphere.

Yeah, Star Wars has some pretty cool space creatures. Some of which are pretty ridiculous, like these guys or this wierd fish looking thing.

[loomer]

How effective would photosynthesis be for a plant based species in vacuum, assuming that they're inhabitating an area rich in water ice and can utilize it for that side of things?

(As an aside, this is a species for my D20 future. It's got an interesting life cycle that originates on a small moon, to which they return in order to breed and mature before flying off. By virtue of being low density and quite small as well, they can just reach escape velocity by flying.)

[B5B7]

In Dougal Dixon's 'Man After Man' there are vacuumorphs - humans engineered to live in vacuum.
L.M. Bujold's quaddies in 'Falling Free' aren't vacuum species, but are adapted for free fall, which can be considered a useful step.
Some of the human variants in the Xeelee novels may be possibilities for this category.

[Winston Blake]

A major problem with vacuum-dwelling life is that water doesn't stay liquid in a vacuum. It's kind of hard to imagine a lifeform without some kind of liquid solvent. You'd probably have to use some kind of heavy organic oil instead.

If it's hard shelled, it could maintain internal pressure, keep it's water liquid.

Or elastic-skinned, like a space activity suit. Elasticised plants could leach water from icy asteroids or comets, and then the elasticised animals could feed on the plants.

How effective would photosynthesis be for a plant based species in vacuum, assuming that they're inhabitating an area rich in water ice and can utilize it for that side of things?

At least twice as efficient as on Earth, because of night-time. There's also no twilight or atmospheric scattering. However, they'd also be exposed to cosmic rays and solar particle radiation (particularly dangerous during events like flares).

[loomer]

Would inhabiting a planetary system with about 20 moons (some with their own, smaller moonletss. It's a pretty bizarre system, rationalized only by some extremely dense moons, but that's what I get for random dice generation) provide some shielding from the cosmic rays and radiation, at the expense of a loss of sunlight for some periods? Would atmospheric stripping from the smaller bodies produce a thin sort of nebula around the planets?

[Winston Blake]

Would inhabiting a planetary system with about 20 moons (some with their own, smaller moonletss. It's a pretty bizarre system, rationalized only by some extremely dense moons, but that's what I get for random dice generation) provide some shielding from the cosmic rays and radiation, at the expense of a loss of sunlight for some periods?

Yeah, the dark side of a moon should plenty of shielding for solar radiation. However they still have to face the sun sometime, so they'll still get damaged. Also, cosmic rays come from all directions, so if it's exposed to space, it'll get hit.

What they could do is grow new cells faster than they're being killed. And/or have very good DNA redundancy and repair mechanisms.

Would atmospheric stripping from the smaller bodies produce a thin sort of nebula around the planets?

I don't know. My guess is no.

[Eris]

Ha! I knew I was right about archaea surviving this. Not only could they, but they do: Deinococcus radiodurans is resistant to not only ionising radiation (I already knew that), but also vacuum and extreme low temperature. If they were buried in the surface of a carbanaceous asteroid with some relatively high water content, I'm pretty sure that some variant of D. radiodurans could survive in space. For things like solar flares, they could even have endospores that would increase viability of the colony. This is, however, a far cry from anything exciting in the normal sense. (Although I think it's pretty effing cool.)

One could posit the notion of creatures who would feed by consuming material from asteroids. They might cluster around the body as it follows its orbit because it's their "food" source but also takes them near the sun when they might absorb heat to sustain themselves. They would have to have some sort of organ which could store heat, and a large part of its internal processes would be devoted to generating heat to keep its fluids in at least a viscuous state.

Well, such creatures could probably exist, although I suspect they would not have evolved naturally. Once they were there, the species would have to have a rigid or elastic body to retain their fluids, and a supply of frozen water on the asteroid. And even that might be problematic since there wouldn't be much of a way to regenerate lost food stock. They wouldn't probably store heat directly, but they would have thick fat layers to store energy for thermal regulation, of which they'd have to have a lot, since there are both cold and hot extremes in space.

If we're willing to step back into almost vacuum dwellers, an ecology on Europa might not be entirely out of the picture, and it only has an extremely thin atmosphere. The massive amount of water around would solve the biggest problem, that and gravity lets things adhere. Let's pretend there's plenty of C, P, N, etcetera to be found on Europa (O and H being obviously present). The basis of the food chain would be snow inhabiting photosynthetic bacteria. Without soil, the bacteria would hugely outmass everything else, and the remainder of the life would be largely small grazers, maybe eating bacteria like whales eat plankton. (Albeit very very small whales.) The apex carnivores might be something like blubbery mice-sized predators that feed on the bacteria-eating snow snufflers. Everything would be small and blubbery and very sedate, given the state of near-vacuum, and most energy would be dedicated to maintaining homeostasis, leaving predators very scarce indeed. Certainly there would be no sapient life, but it'd be an awesomely cool ecology none the less. Doubly so if it naturally evolved.

[Rye]

What about life that adopted to diminishing atmosphere?

That's really not the kind of change a species can adapt to via natural selection, no matter how gradual.

A species of spider migrates on the winds, frozen at the edge of the vacuum, and tardigrades can survive the extreme low pressure of a vacuum, as well as ridiculous pressures beyond what you get at the bottom of ocean trenches. If I were to depict a vacuum-dwelling organism, it would probably be some sort of nomadic swarm of tardigrades; spreading between moons round a gas giant or perhaps chunks of ice in the kuiper belt or something.

[Nyrath]

There was an amusing vacuum life form in Fred Hoyle's THE BLACK CLOUD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud

A somewhat more implausible one was featured in Sir Arthur C. Clarke's CHILDHOOD'S END.

Then, without any warning, they were on a gallery high above a large circular chamber, perhaps a hundred metres across. As usual, there was no protective parapet, and for a moment Jan hesitated to go near the edge. But Vindarten was standing on the very brink, looking calmly downwards, so Jan moved cautiously forward to join him.

The floor was only twenty metres below - far, far too close. Afterwards, Jan was sure that his guide had not intended to surprise him, and was completely taken aback by his reaction. For he had given one tremendous yell and jumped backwards from the gallery's edge, in an involuntary effort to hide what lay below. It was not until the muffled echoes of his shout had died away in the thick atmosphere that he steeled himself to go forward again.

It was lifeless, of course - not, as he had thought in that first moment of panic, consciously staring up at him. It filled almost all that great circular space, and the ruby light gleamed and shifted in its crystal depths.

It was a single giant eye.

...His heart was still pounding violently as he stared down once more at that monstrous eye. Of course, it might have been a model, enormously enlarged as were microbes and insects in terrestrial museums. Yet even as he asked the question, Jan knew, with a sickening certainty, that it was no larger than life.

Vindarten could tell him little: this was not his field of knowledge, and he was not particularly curious. From the Overlord's description, Jan built up a picture of a cyclopean beast living among the asteroidal rubble of some distant sun, its growth uninhibited by gravity, depending for food and life upon the range and resolving power of its single eye.

[Teleros]

What about the creature's lifespan and the speed at which it lives, moves etc? If you wanted something capable of reaching other star systems (let's assume we've got our vacuum-dwelling creature already) then the ability to almost completely shut down all bodily functions would be a key asset. Perhaps this would be determined by the intensity of light striking it: as it drops (ie towards the edge of a solar system / outside it), the creature would enter hibernation, then wake up as the light intensifies.
In line with the timescales such a thing would have to live on, it might also experience time very differently to how we do: human lives might seem like brief sparks of activity besides its own lifestyle.

As for what a creature would be like, well I think there are three key problems that would have to be overcome:

-Lack of nutrients. Perhaps something that lived off asteroids, interplanetary dust and the like, or that was able to leech gases from the upper fringes of some atmospheres (although this might require a more powerful "engine" to lift the creature out of orbit, and will consequently be more energy intensive).
-Protection from the vacuum, radiation, micrometeorites and such. A thick shell or skin would be ideal, moreso if the thing never has to lift its way out of any significant gravity well(s). It may even be possible to have something relying on such radiation for "fuel". Many bacteria are also thought to survive radiation by repairing their DNA etc much more rapidly than humans and the like can, although this may be too energy-intensive. It also needs some way of keeping at least most of any chemicals it needs from escaping into space.
-Energy generation. The ESB space slug has some sort of nuclear reactor inside it to provide energy, as well as heat from the waste (see the Technical Commentaries site). Alternatively there's always sunlight (and other radiation or particles from the sun), but without some sort of energy the creature will eventually radiate away its internal heat to the point where any chemical reactions will grind to a halt.

[Zixinus]

There seems to be a more-or-less common error: you all assume that the creature lives on its own entirely, as opposed to living in a ecosystem that already grows plenty of life on its own.

[Swindle1984]

The Outsider aliens in Larry Niven's Known Space series have liquid helium for blood and communicate with bursts of radio static. They're quite capable of surviving in a vacuum.

Then again, if one of the Man-Kzin Wars short stories is canon, then the Outsiders may have been engineered by another species, which in turn was engineered by yet another, extra-dimensional species. And the Outsiders themselves, while they may not have engineered the Puppeteers, certainly gave them much of their technology and developed a business relationship with them. Until it's contradicted by something Niven himself writes, the story stands.