General > Biology

Fluid

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Zelos:
Life have to be in a fluid to work. And im pretty sure it doesnt need to be water. And that it shall be polirized, like water. How many liquids is like that? I know:
H2O (water)
NH3 (ammoniak)

shvarz:
You are not being logical.  Life as we know it depends on water.  If you are talking about "life that we don't know about", then it can be anything, from crystals to ionized plasma...

Numsgil:
Let's assume you mean life constructed from bilipid like membranes.

Then yes, the medium would need to be polarized, and the interior of the cell would be, well, not.

But there are alot of assumptuions going into that.  Like:  life is only constructable via lipid-like membranes.

Really I think anything that can replicate and has a clear boundary between self and non-self can eventually become complex enough to be life.

shvarz:
Well, see - that's the problem.  If you bring in known substances and mechanisms, then you impose the limits of those substances.  I am pretty sure that lipid membranes as we know it cannot exist in pure ammonia.

Numsgil:
Probably not, but could something that had similar properties exist in a liquid ammonia environment?

Really a lipid is basically a polar head and a non-polar tail.  So it's not inconcievable that some sort of lipid-like substance could form at the incredibly chilly temperature of liquid ammonia.

Thing is the chemistry of non-standard temperature/pressure is largely unexplored compared to the room temperature stuff (for obvious reasons).

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