Life On Every Planet In The Solar System (Hypothetical)

[KAL 9000]

Here's how life (bacterial or otherwise) could / possibly does exist and thrive on every planet in the Solar System, even the gas giants.

Mercury:

Life here exists in the bottoms of craters that never see sunlight. It is adapted to cold temperatures and lives in the ice. (Yes, it's Mercury, but you know, craters that never see sunlight)

Venus: 

Here, life lives in the upper atmosphere, absorbing organic compounds directly from the atmosphere. The wind blows the bacteria around, and they die if they get close to the hot, corrosive, crushing surface.

Earth: N/A

Mars: Life here lives on/in the polar caps. Most of the time, they hibernate in endospores, but when, once in several thousand years, a very warm summer occurs, a tiny bit of the ice melts. Quickly, before the ice evaporates or refreezes, the bacteria wake up, reproduce, and have a frenzy of activity before depositing endospores when conditions begin to return to normal.

Jupiter: Life floats in the cloud tops of Jupiter, basically similar as on Venus. It's adapted to the cold temperatures here, and an entire ecosystem exists in the atmosphere, with dead creatures falling towards the core and being crushed in the pressures.

Saturn: Life is similar to Jupiter, but the creatures are adapted to even colder temperatures and are ENORMOUS, with the smallest multicellular organisms being the size of Earthly blue whales.

Uranus: Life here is like Jupiter and Saturn's creatures, except they are around they same sizes as the Earthly creatures that fill the same environmental niches and are used to even more cold temperatures. They are unique (except for Earth life) in the Solar System for having sexual reproduction.

Neptune: Life here is similar to the other giant planets, except even colder temperatures are normal and they get buffeted around all the time by the enormous wind speeds. Here, creatures are small, with the largest being the size of an Earthly chihuahua.

 

[cubinator]

1 hour ago, KAL 9000 said:

Saturn: Life is similar to Jupiter, but the creatures are adapted to even colder temperatures and are ENORMOUS, with the smallest multicellular organisms being the size of Earthly blue whales.

Why do they need to be so big?

[Matuchkin]

41 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Why do they need to be so big?

I know, an element of fantasy? I think that, if life ever even happens on a gas giant, it will be microscopic, in cellular form, able to be carried by air. Otherwise, I can't imagine anything.

[KAL 9000]

20 hours ago, Matuchkin said:

I know, an element of fantasy? I think that, if life ever even happens on a gas giant, it will be microscopic, in cellular form, able to be carried by air. Otherwise, I can't imagine anything.

Big balloons . Like the creature is the tail of the whale, and the balloon is the whale minus the tail of the whale. Wait, what?

Edited May 10, 2016 by KAL 9000

[kerbiloid]

 

31 minutes ago, Matuchkin said:

Why do they need to be so big?

Not too big.

Spoiler

 

 

2 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

Earth: N/A

Why N/A ?!

Spoiler

 

Edited May 9, 2016 by kerbiloid

[Emperor of the Titan Squid]

Its more likely t hat martian life would be underground.

[Snark]

Regarding life in the craters of Mercury:  How would they live?  What would they use for energy?  No sunlight for photosynthesis.  No volcanic activity for chemosynthesis.  No liquid to allow biological molecules to flow around and bump into each other.  This seems pretty implausible to me.

Regarding the idea of critters that float in the atmospheres of gas giants:  Float how, exactly?  Those atmospheres are mostly hydrogen.  There's nothing that's lighter than hydrogen that you could use for buoyancy.  The only way I could imagine a buoyant object there would be if it were a hot-air balloon... which would raise the interesting question of where it would get the energy to generate the large amount of heat needed to make a significant density difference.  I just don't see a realistic way for this to happen.

Now, if you wanted to talk about the moons of the gas giants, those might have possibilities. 

 

[daniel l.]

7 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

Uranus: Life here is like Jupiter and Saturn's creatures, except they are around they same sizes as the Earthly creatures that fill the same environmental niches and are used to even more cold temperatures. They are unique (except for Earth life) in the Solar System for having sexual reproduction.

Why do the creatures of Uranus do that? Is this all a big pun?

[KAL 9000]

14 hours ago, daniel l. said:

Why do the creatures of Uranus do that? Is this all a big pun?

No, it's just a random fact. How could that be a pun.... Oooh! No  

15 hours ago, Snark said:

Regarding life in the craters of Mercury:  How would they live?  What would they use for energy?  No sunlight for photosynthesis.  No volcanic activity for chemosynthesis.  No liquid to allow biological molecules to flow around and bump into each other.  This seems pretty implausible to me.

Regarding the idea of critters that float in the atmospheres of gas giants:  Float how, exactly?  Those atmospheres are mostly hydrogen.  There's nothing that's lighter than hydrogen that you could use for buoyancy.  The only way I could imagine a buoyant object there would be if it were a hot-air balloon... which would raise the interesting question of where it would get the energy to generate the large amount of heat needed to make a significant density difference.  I just don't see a realistic way for this to happen.

Now, if you wanted to talk about the moons of the gas giants, those might have possibilities. 

 

It's not pure hydrogen. Add the 20% or so of helium and the atmosphere is more dense than hydrogen, so a pure hydrogen balloon would probably float. And there's very little free oxygen in their atmospheres to make a Hindenburg. 

[Snark]

17 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

It's not pure hydrogen. Add the 20% or so of helium and the atmosphere is more dense than hydrogen, so a pure hydrogen balloon would probably float. And there's very little free oxygen in their atmospheres to make a Hindenburg. 

It's still gonna be an awfully tough row to hoe.

Pure hydrogen is 2 grams per mole.  Mix in 20% helium, and that's 2.4 grams per mole.  This means that a critter relying on hydrogen for lift is only going to get 400 milligrams per enclosed mole for buoyancy.

Just to put that in perspective:  At 0 degrees C at Earth sea-level pressure, a mole of gas is 22.4 liters.  This means that under such conditions, a critter with a balloon sac enclosing a full cubic meter would have to have a total mass (excluding the gas) of less than 18 grams if it wanted to float!

Of course, this is Jupiter (or other gas giant), so depending on where you are in the atmosphere, the temperature could be considerably colder and the pressure considerably higher, both of which would raise the density of the gas and make ballooning relatively easier.  However, the key word here is "relatively."  Even at 1/3 the absolute temperature and 10 times the pressure, a cubic meter of balloon volume would still only allow about half a kilogram for the entire mass of the critter.

Doable?  Perhaps ... but also bear in mind that to pull that off, the balloon membranes are going to have to be diaphanously thin if they're going to be light enough to float.  Which means our hypothetical balloon critter is going to have one hell of a diffusion problem.  Hydrogen and helium are both very prone to diffusion (small atoms/molecules; very high molecular speed).  If you've ever had a helium balloon that was made of latex rather than that Mylar stuff, you know what I mean-- it floats only a few hours before the helium leaks out.  Helium will even leak through glass-- I don't mean getting out through cracks, I mean actually diffusing through the material of the glass itself.  For our critter to stay afloat, it's going to have to maintain that differential concentration of helium-versus-hydrogen, when the gas is constantly going to be leaking through the membrane.  And you can't fix it by making the membrane lots thicker, because then the critter's too heavy to float.

Not to mention... how does the critter maintain the helium-free reservoir inside itself anyway?  Helium is totally inert.  I seriously doubt any biological process is going to come up with a way to manipulate helium atoms.

[PB666]

41 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

No, it's just a random fact. How could that be a pun.... Oooh! No  

Time for a joke about Klingons.

[pincushionman]

I always have to question this idea that live could evolve floating in clouds in a hydrogen atmosphere, beyond even the "how would it float" part. I mean, we have life floating in water here, but life is not water. It's made of stuff that floats in water. And lots of stuff floats in water. You need a mechanism that transports sufficient quantities of "other stuff" for life to be formed and sustaned. And the whole "dead stuff falls down out if the environment" results in a net loss of already-scarce material.

Without a solid surface or relatively dense solvent to collect the basic building blocks in an energy-rich environment…I've gotta say I'm extremely skeptical.

[PB666]

4 minutes ago, pincushionman said:

I always have to question this idea that live could evolve floating in clouds in a hydrogen atmosphere, beyond even the "how would it float" part. I mean, we have life floating in water here, but life is not water. It's made of stuff that floats in water. And lots of stuff floats in water. You need a mechanism that transports sufficient quantities of "other stuff" for life to be formed and sustaned. And the whole "dead stuff falls down out if the environment" results in a net loss of already-scarce material.

Without a solid surface or relatively dense solvent to collect the basic building blocks in an energy-rich environment…I've gotta say I'm extremely skeptical.

Hydrogen only has a high energy potential if reduced metals or oxidizers are present. The lightest potential oxidizer as a gas is nitrogen, which weighs 14 time more than hydrogen (diatomic gas to diatomic gas).

[KAL 9000]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

It's still gonna be an awfully tough row to hoe.

Pure hydrogen is 2 grams per mole.  Mix in 20% helium, and that's 2.4 grams per mole.  This means that a critter relying on hydrogen for lift is only going to get 400 milligrams per enclosed mole for buoyancy.

Just to put that in perspective:  At 0 degrees C at Earth sea-level pressure, a mole of gas is 22.4 liters.  This means that under such conditions, a critter with a balloon sac enclosing a full cubic meter would have to have a total mass (excluding the gas) of less than 18 grams if it wanted to float!

Of course, this is Jupiter (or other gas giant), so depending on where you are in the atmosphere, the temperature could be considerably colder and the pressure considerably higher, both of which would raise the density of the gas and make ballooning relatively easier.  However, the key word here is "relatively."  Even at 1/3 the absolute temperature and 10 times the pressure, a cubic meter of balloon volume would still only allow about half a kilogram for the entire mass of the critter.

Doable?  Perhaps ... but also bear in mind that to pull that off, the balloon membranes are going to have to be diaphanously thin if they're going to be light enough to float.  Which means our hypothetical balloon critter is going to have one hell of a diffusion problem.  Hydrogen and helium are both very prone to diffusion (small atoms/molecules; very high molecular speed).  If you've ever had a helium balloon that was made of latex rather than that Mylar stuff, you know what I mean-- it floats only a few hours before the helium leaks out.  Helium will even leak through glass-- I don't mean getting out through cracks, I mean actually diffusing through the material of the glass itself.  For our critter to stay afloat, it's going to have to maintain that differential concentration of helium-versus-hydrogen, when the gas is constantly going to be leaking through the membrane.  And you can't fix it by making the membrane lots thicker, because then the critter's too heavy to float.

Not to mention... how does the critter maintain the helium-free reservoir inside itself anyway?  Helium is totally inert.  I seriously doubt any biological process is going to come up with a way to manipulate helium atoms.

Good points. I wonder if the creature could ionize the helium, and that might help in some sort of way? I know chemistry, but not that much. Also, the creature/species will now be called "Blimpicus Floatius" . I am putting up an entry for Pluto soon, because in my opinion, it's an honorary planet.

[Snark]

22 minutes ago, KAL 9000 said:

Good points. I wonder if the creature could ionize the helium, and that might help in some sort of way? I know chemistry, but not that much.

I doubt it would help, but the point is moot because it ain't gonna happen.  Helium is wicked hard to ionize.

It has the highest ionization energy of any element, by a wide margin.  You've heard about how insanely reactive fluorine is?  Helium's ionization energy is over 40% higher!  The difference being... fluorine wants to ionize, and that energy is what gives it the kick.  Helium really, really wants to stay put just like it is, and that high ionization energy is what it takes to convince it otherwise.

The energy to ionize helium is so high, in fact, that it's impossible to do via chemical means.  Nothing's strong enough.  That's why we don't have helium compounds.

It is possible to ionize helium, of course... but since you can't do it chemically, you have to use physics:  high-energy electron beams, extreme electric fields, that sort of thing.  We can do it in a particle accelerator.  But it takes scads of energy, huge massive equipment, and the helium only stays ionized for the briefest instant-- as soon as it touches anything at all, it snatches whatever electrons it needs and goes back to being plain ol' helium.

So no... there's no biological process that's going to pull that off, especially not one powered by a critter weighing a few grams that has no abundant energy source to work with.

[Spaceception]

Nice, do you have anything for Moons?

[KAL 9000]

2 hours ago, Snark said:

I doubt it would help, but the point is moot because it ain't gonna happen.  Helium is wicked hard to ionize.

It has the highest ionization energy of any element, by a wide margin.  You've heard about how insanely reactive fluorine is?  Helium's ionization energy is over 40% higher!  The difference being... fluorine wants to ionize, and that energy is what gives it the kick.  Helium really, really wants to stay put just like it is, and that high ionization energy is what it takes to convince it otherwise.

The energy to ionize helium is so high, in fact, that it's impossible to do via chemical means.  Nothing's strong enough.  That's why we don't have helium compounds.

It is possible to ionize helium, of course... but since you can't do it chemically, you have to use physics:  high-energy electron beams, extreme electric fields, that sort of thing.  We can do it in a particle accelerator.  But it takes scads of energy, huge massive equipment, and the helium only stays ionized for the briefest instant-- as soon as it touches anything at all, it snatches whatever electrons it needs and goes back to being plain ol' helium.

So no... there's no biological process that's going to pull that off, especially not one powered by a critter weighing a few grams that has no abundant energy source to work with.

Back to square one, then?

1 hour ago, Spaceception said:

Nice, do you have anything for Moons?

Coming after Pluto

[KAL 9000]

Pluto: Tidal forces between Pluto and Charon create a liquid water ocean underneath all the ice, similar to Europa. Many sea creatures live in this ocean, and the Plutonians have evolved to sentience, but their development has been hindered by the lack of fire underwater thing.

Edited May 23, 2016 by KAL 9000

[cubinator]

4 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

Pluto: Tidal forces between Pluto and Charon create a liquid water ocean underneath all the ice, similar to Europa. Many sea creatures live in this ocean, and the Plutonians have evolved to sentience, but their development has been hindered by the lack of fire underwater thing.

It's not fire that was the big invention. It was agriculture. The ability to settle down in a home and have everything you need to live is what started off civilization on Earth. I can't imagine that fire would be absolutely necessary for civilization. If the Plutonians can grow their own food in one place, then they're going to start civilization because they have leisure time.

Edited May 23, 2016 by cubinator

[RenegadeRad]

No one mentioned Europa? Or Titan?  

[KAL 9000]

7 hours ago, RenegadeRad said:

No one mentioned Europa? Or Titan?  

Moons are next.

[KerikBalm]

"Mercury:

Life here exists in the bottoms of craters that never see sunlight. It is adapted to cold temperatures and lives in the ice. (Yes, it's Mercury, but you know, craters that never see sunlight)"

No energy source in said craters... no liquid water on the surface. Anything would have to be underground... but due to Mercury's small size and proximity to the sun, its core has probably more or less equalized in temperature with the surface. There would be only a small temperature gradient near the surface. At any rate... there's no evidence of recent geologic activity on Mercury... so again... no energy source.

I'm saying no

"Venus: 

Here, life lives in the upper atmosphere, absorbing organic compounds directly from the atmosphere. The wind blows the bacteria around, and they die if they get close to the hot, corrosive, crushing surface."

The turnover rate would likely be way too high for any organism. There's additionally a severe lack of water vapor and H in general in the atmosphere. All life as we now it needs some metals(not in very large amounts) for certain enzymatic activities... there's no such things floating around in the atmosphere... even considering the low biological requirements.

No

"Earth: N/A" not so much NA, as no need to explain

"Mars: Life here lives on/in the polar caps. Most of the time, they hibernate in endospores, but when, once in several thousand years, a very warm summer occurs, a tiny bit of the ice melts. Quickly, before the ice evaporates or refreezes, the bacteria wake up, reproduce, and have a frenzy of activity before depositing endospores when conditions begin to return to normal."

No... the ice doesn't melt, it sublimes... because the atmospherice pressure is too low. At the bottom of Hellas it does barely get above the triple point of water. The surface brines they detected are way way way too briny... nothing on earth could come close to surviving those conditions, and there's plenty of selection in favor of that in the sahara and atacama deserts.. but nothing has met the challenge... likely impossible. Under the surface... perhaps, especially if mars has some residual core heat (I think I saw some evidence of recent eruptions only a few million years ago). In a pocket under the surface, pressure could build up higher to allow liquid water... spores would survive when the water is exhausted, and if there is a heating/cooling cycle, new ice could form before the next warming cycle... unless the water doesn't escape at all to begin with after its warmed.

"Jupiter: Life floats in the cloud tops of Jupiter, basically similar as on Venus. It's adapted to the cold temperatures here, and an entire ecosystem exists in the atmosphere, with dead creatures falling towards the core and being crushed in the pressures."

No, as others have said... the gas density is too low, particularly for an organism that will probably use carbon, water/ammonia, nitrogen etc, also the lack of metals, theres probably an energy problem... the atmospheric turnover would require a high replication rate for life. Even if complex forms could have some bouyand gas sack, that takes time to evolve, and if a more basic life form isn't viable, life doesn't start. It would have to be microbes suspeneded in the air just by their high surface area/mass ratio -ie drag... they fall slow, some get blown up, others sink - the turnover would be way too high.

"Saturn: Life is similar to Jupiter, but the creatures are adapted to even colder temperatures and are ENORMOUS, with the smallest multicellular organisms being the size of Earthly blue whales."

Just... No.. similar reasons as Jupiter

"Uranus: Life here is like Jupiter and Saturn's creatures, except they are around they same sizes as the Earthly creatures that fill the same environmental niches and are used to even more cold temperatures. They are unique (except for Earth life) in the Solar System for having sexual reproduction."

Just... No.. similar reasons as Jupiter.. even bigger energy problems. Why add this stuff about sexual reproduction... maybe I should also go back to your saturn comments too... this has crossed the line into pure fiction, rather than speculation/extrapolation of what might be possible based on facts.

"Neptune: Life here is similar to the other giant planets, except even colder temperatures are normal and they get buffeted around all the time by the enormous wind speeds. Here, creatures are small, with the largest being the size of an Earthly chihuahua."

Again... pure fiction... and Neptune is warmer than Uranus (look it up). All the planets radiate more heat than they absorb from the sun due to their warm cores... Uranus seems to have lost a lot of its core heat (likely related to whatever impact gave it that funky rotation). Neptune is warmer, because at that distance from the sun, internal heat starts to dominate.

 

Pluto... considering they are tidally locked to each other, I don't think there is any internal heat from that source... it would have to be heat from radioactive decay of a rocky core... and here we get into a theme well see a lot in the moons and dwarf planets (even ceres) at least those large enough to have a differentiated core... the idea that deep down, its warm enough to have water, and the pressure is high enough to have water even if it cant exist on the surface

[lajoswinkler]

On 09.05.2016. at 5:11 PM, KAL 9000 said:

Venus: 

Here, life lives in the upper atmosphere, absorbing organic compounds directly from the atmosphere. The wind blows the bacteria around, and they die if they get close to the hot, corrosive, crushing surface.

Venusian surface is not corrosive. Upper atmosphere is. It's extremely poor in water and extremely hypertonic due to sulfuric acid aerosol. There is really nothing imaginable capable of functioning anywhere on Venus.

[DDE]

On ‎10‎.‎05‎.‎2016 at 1:40 AM, Snark said:

Regarding the idea of critters that float in the atmospheres of gas giants:  Float how, exactly?  Those atmospheres are mostly hydrogen.  There's nothing that's lighter than hydrogen that you could use for buoyancy.  The only way I could imagine a buoyant object there would be if it were a hot-air balloon... which would raise the interesting question of where it would get the energy to generate the large amount of heat needed to make a significant density difference.  I just don't see a realistic way for this to happen.

Yeah, but what if we're talking exotic biochemistries and life much deeper in the atmosphere.

My bet's on Uranus and Neptune and something probably as exotic as nitrogen-based chemistry.

[Snark]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

Yeah, but what if we're talking exotic biochemistries and life much deeper in the atmosphere.

My bet's on Uranus and Neptune and something probably as exotic as nitrogen-based chemistry.

Well, if you're in an atmosphere that's mostly (or at least largely) ammonia and/or methane, then it starts to get a little more plausible.  Ammonia and methane both have hydrogen in them, while being themselves a lot denser than hydrogen.  So in principle one could imagine critters which, given an abundant enough energy supply, could crack hydrogen off those other gases, and use that for buoyancy.

That does leave the interesting question of where such critters would get their energy from.  They'd need quite a bit of it, and photosynthesis is obviously out.